crack crack » nous ne notons pas les fleurs

realities.

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:52:21 +0000

Out of the different kinds of realities,
what I prefer is rarely the truth.

Installation sketch for Nous ne notons pas les fleurs, Jakarta (2010).

Nous ne notons pas les fleurs is a cycle of multi-form works exploring the ideas of mobility and the impermanence of political borders in contrast to the tendency to freeze them. The title of this cycle, Nous ne notons pas les fleurs, is taken from a dialogue in Le Petit Prince (Saint-Exupéry, 1943), where a geographer tells the Little Prince that geographers do not record flowers because, unlike the earth, flowers are ephemeral.

Nous ne notons pas les fleurs, Jakarta (2010) is made with support from Potato Head and Ark Galerie. Thanks to Emmelyn Gunawan, Alia Swastika, Varadila Nurdin, Jefry Budi Mardianto, Gintani Nur Apresia Swastika, Elia Nurvista, Katherina Allo, Zakiah, and all participants.

The work is in progress and will be shown at Ark Galerie, Jakarta, in September. Please email me to receive an update.

flowers and spices.

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 06:55:32 +0000

In Jakarta, it started like this.

And ended like this.

Stills from Nous ne notons pas les fleurs, Jakarta (2010).

Thanks to Potato Head, Ark Galerie, Emmelyn Gunawan, Alia Swastika, Varadila Nurdin, Jefry Budiman, Gintani Nur Apresia Swastika, Elia Nurvista, Katherina Allo, Zakiah, and all participants. The video is being edited and will be shown at Ark Galerie in September. Please email me to receive an update.

nous ne notons pas les fleurs.

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 11:50:34 +0000

Nous ne notons pas les fleurs (2010), video triptych, three-channel unsynchronised video loop, no audio (remote control for each video made available to viewers).

Nous ne notons pas les fleurs is a multi-form work exploring the ideas of mobility and the impermanence of political borders in contrast to the tendency to freeze them. The title of this work, Nous ne notons pas les fleurs, is taken from a dialogue in Le Petit Prince (Saint-Exupéry, 1943), where a geographer tells the Little Prince that geographers do not record flowers because, unlike the earth, flowers are ephemeral. The work originally took form as an installation and interactive performance at Soil Bite, Khoj International Workshop 2009 in Patna, India, before taking the form of the above video triptych of the same title. The work was informed by the local context – Bihar, the state of which Patna is the capital, has the highest rate of out-migration in India, and is part of the eastern region in which border problems are prominent.

The video triptych shows the map of India through a single angle, yet from three different perspectives. The single angle is the bird’s-eye view of the recording. The three perspectives differ because each portrays the event partially, through different time-scales and a different time-ranges.

The left screen portrays only the process of shaping the map, referring to the man-made process of nation building. The centre screen portrays only the process of evolution of the shape where no human is visible, referring to the natural process of geographical evolution. The right screen portrays only the process of blurring the borders, referring to the man-made process of a revolution. The three videos – as a triptych – serve as an allusion to the trinity.

It is because of the allegorical nature of Le Petit Prince that I chose to quote the phrase, we do not record flowers, and use it as the title of this work. I chose to use flowers exactly for their ephemerality, and recorded the flowers for the same reason. Based on the four-colour map theorem that I have discovered when I started working with cartography on Terra Incognita, et cetera, I used four types of fragrant flower buds that I took off from the commonly used garlands for celebration and religious ceremonies in India: the yellow marigold, orange marigold, white tuberose, and red hibiscus.

I mixed the buds of these four types of flowers together and spread the mix to form a bed of flowers. Then I shaped the map by painstakingly separating the flower buds in a bed of flowers into regions of the same colour, following the outlines of the map of India and all its states. When I finished shaping the map, I asked the audience to trace their route of movements and migrations from one state to the other. The whole process was recorded with a video camera from above, resembling the bird’s-eye view of a cartographer.

Thanks to: Khoj International Workshop, Shambhavi Singh, Sharmila Samant, Rajesh Ram, Binod Kumar Gupta, Arvind Singh, Naresh Kumar, Suchismita Mohanty, Vichukorn Tangpaiboon, Moe Satt, Akhsay Rathore, Pradeep Thallwata, Ranjeeta Kumari, sister Prema, sister Suma, father Joe, Margaret and others at Taru Mitra.

ephemera.

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 13:48:11 +0000

I do record flowers, because they are ephemeral.

Nous ne notons pas les fleurs is a multiple-channel video developed from an installation and interactive performance with video as part of Soil Bite – Khoj Bihar International Workshop 2009 in Patna, India.

first half.

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:41:51 +0000

In Nous ne notons pas les fleurs, I started with a bed of mixed flowers.

I have previously made a draft image that showed the shape of India and its 28 states arranged with the four colours of the flowers that I have chosen – orange Marigold, yellow Marigold, red Hibiscus and white Tuberose.

Looking at this draft image on my laptop from a distance, I then arranged the flowers, separating the colours to form the 28 states of India.

I picked the flowers from around where I was sitting in the bed of flowers, taking the colours I want, collecting them in an area, and picking out the unwanted colours from one area at a time. A few times I took some flowers from my spare baskets of flowers outside of the site.

It took me about 9 hours, in total, to do this.

Why arrange the flowers so painstakingly only to have them mixed again? This whole meticulous process is recorded in time-lapse with a video camera above the site.

Due to logistics reasons I started at midday before the Open Day, and had to work through until the light was not suitable anymore for recording.

I had to continue early morning the next day. The colour of the light changes, as well as the freshness and the colours of the flowers.

The flowers were quite fragrant; the smell filled the whole building. The pollen as well, I guess – Sharmilla had an allergic reaction to it … even when she liked the work. Luckily, out of so many people, she was the only one with pollen allergy.

I edited the time-lapse video to be shown on the Open Day, to explain the process to the audience. The video was shown from my laptop.

On the Open Day, when people started coming, I asked them to trace their route of movements, including migration, by taking some flowers from one state and moving it to the others. They had to part the flowers with bare feet to approach the states.

Some people had quite an impressive list of cities they have lived in. These people had to go around the site to trace their route, taking a handful of flowers from the state where they were born, putting it in the second state, taking flowers from this second state and putting them in the third state, and so on.

This image courtesy of Akshay Rathore.

These images in this posting are only half of the work – at the end of the day almost all the borders were reshaped and the flowers were again mixed between the states. More images in my next post.

Stills are taken from video of Nous ne notons pas les fleurs by Tintin Wulia. Photos courtesy of Sister Suma from Taru Mitra, Patna, India except otherwise noted.

almost there.

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:12:03 +0000

I drove a car from Digha Ghat to in the Hanuman flower market in Patna this morning. Perhaps it is fair to say that it is quite an achievement? You can ask Arvind and Naresh for their accounts.

The rest of the day was spent working on Nous ne notons pas les fleurs.

Open day tomorrow.

les fleurs.

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:13:57 +0000

The flowers have arrived! Arvind was really kind to buy them in the Hanuman market for me. Yellow and orange marigold, red hibiscus, and white rajnigandha.

The whole day today, I prepared my site. I started with marking the outer edges of the video screen on the floor, and then simply pulled each flower out of the garlands. It took me about 5 hours to do about 650 garlands.

Sanjay, the security guard, came in the hall in the morning, admiring how nice the smell was. He was the first of many. Moe wanted to jump in. Pradeep followed. Moe suggested I should charge 5 dollars for each jump, and I challenged him. Some people wanted to sleep on it, including Moe again. Rajesh told me it looks like a wedding preparation – which I knew.

Tomorrow Arvind is going to help me buy more rajnigandha and hibiscus. They would be fresher as well. I will have to see how the condition of today’s hibiscus is tomorrow. Perhaps I will have to get new hibiscus on the Open Day.

Nous ne notons pas les fleurs – India is an installation with video and interactive performance. A bed of flowers is arranged to show a map of India, with its 28 states. A video on a TV monitor shows the process of shaping the bed of flowers of mixed colours into the bordered map. On the day of the performance, visitors are asked to move the flowers from one state to the other according to movements and migrations that they identify with. This performance is also recorded, and will form part of the final video.

Nous ne notons pas les fleurs is planned to be a series of work that talks about the ephemerality of geopolitical borders, looking into both people’s movement and the mutation of borders within a nation-state. The title is quoted from a dialogue in Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in which by way of discussing the ephemerality of the Little Prince’s flower, the supposedly lasting nature of geography is questioned.

This project is initiated at Soil Bite – Khoj Bihar International Workshop 2009.

nous ne notons pas les fleurs.

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:22:34 +0000

- Nous ne notons pas les fleurs, dit le géographe.
- Pourquoi ça! c’est pas joli!
- Parce que les fleurs sont éphémères.
from Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

It has been 4 days since I first started working with these flowers. When I thought of the idea, I began to check whether it was technically feasible, and thought that I had to make a bamboo support structure for my tripod. I waited for a day, and then started physically fiddling with the site. That was when I found out that it was possible to secure my tripod with some kind of rope to the balcony.

The location of my tripod is just in front of Jon and Moe’s room. When I finally managed to bring a rope and started securing my tripod, they came out and generously helped. I also found a powerpoint nearby, perfect for my video camera, which is going to record the time-lapse.

Jon (Vichukorn Tangpaiboon) and Moe Satt posing with my tripod

It might have looked like this idea came out from nowhere. I remember Shambhavi asked me where I wanted my site to be during a meal. Was it on a trip somewhere? I can’t remember now (but will update here later when I do). I blurted out this flowers-time-lapse idea and was amazed at how fluent it came out of my mouth. I was even sure I would be able to put my tripod up on the balcony and record from there. It must have been my Terra Incognita, et cetera experiences taking over!

Up until that conversation with Shambhavi, I actually was still thinking of doing something else. I actually have sketched this earlier idea in my notebook as well, and haven’t sketched anything of this flowers work at all.

This earlier idea had something to do with my early experiences in India. I have never been to India before, and have been told by friends that, contrary to my expectation, India would be quite different to Indonesia. I somewhat disbelieve it, and thought surely I would find many similarities.

The first day I arrived in Delhi and checked in at Western Court Hostel, I felt that everything looks quite similar to Indonesia, but extremely different at the same time. Almost hourly I would find myself thinking that I was in Flores, and I had to constantly shake my brain to re-convince myself that I was in India.

The streets of New Delhi felt somehow like Jakarta, or perhaps Jakarta and Bali mixed together. Or even perhaps all the cities in Indonesia mixed together. I could see stray dogs everywhere, like in rural Bali, and a mist of dust hung in the air, like in the metropolitan Jakarta. There was something missing, however, or perhaps excessive in some other way. Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that would have made Indonesia, shuffled to be reassembled, a few extra pieces taken, a few less pieces added. It was hard to pinpoint what was different. It is still difficult, but I have given up trying to figure out the difference, and am definitely getting used to being here without thinking it’s Flores.

I haven’t taken any photos in New Delhi. The first day, however, I went out and walked about, with one mission: getting a local mobile number. I found an office just in front of the hostel saying “MTNL”. They told me I should fill in a form, hand in a photocopy of my ID and my passport, along with a passport photo. Such bureaucracy.

Later I found out from Sharmilla that they are trying to control everything because of terrorism and the fact that mobile phones are often used to trigger bombs. By that time, I have experienced having gone to a stall where they apparently were promoting their MTNL products, hoping to have it easier, only to get the same old bureaucracy covered with sweet commercialism: the only difference is that they have instant gifts for people signing up. And of course a young lady with a nice smile saying “Hanji” (which later became my first proper word in Hindi) everytime I asked something. I filled in the form in situ, one of their staff took my ID and made a photocopy of it for 1 Rupee, while I chose my gift. A tacky wall clock to bring back to London for souvenir. Still, I had to go for the passport photo experience.

And there I went. The photographer took his job very seriously. He asked me to comb my hair. I did. Then he said something about my face. I didn’t understand at first, but then found out that it must have been quite oily. Lucky I had my Gatsby oil-absorbing paper with me. The passport photo looked excellent!

So up until that conversation with Shambhavi about my site of choosing, I thought I would just go to every passport photo shop in the city of Patna and make as many passport photos as possible, interacting with the people in the shop in the process. I remember Shambhavi emailing me about the migration out of Bihar, and me asking Shambhavi further about the migration. Are people familiar with passports? I thought of realising my “DIY: make your own passport” workshop. How complicated is the bureaucracy process to get a passport? I thought of somehow working with people imitating that bureaucracy.

But being at Tarumitra, having gone around visiting temples, having been to Nalanda, then Bodhgaya and reflecting on how important place, centre, movement and pilgrimage is for human, looking at marigold flowers hanging and remembering the abundance of flower petals we spread to the ocean on the day of my father’s death, I became fixated on these flowers, imagining them on the floor of the circular hall, and thought I should do something with them.

It seemed ideal. The mezzanine, I thought, would be perfect for filming. After giving up the frustrating idea of making a bamboo structure for my tripod, and discovering that it was quite simple to secure my tripod, I bought garlands of flowers the next day, de-string them, and started to try a few different framings.

It was clear since the beginning that I wanted to do something similar to Terra Incognita, et cetera, although I knew it wouldn’t be the same project. Why flowers, though?

I looked up “flowers and geography” in the internet, and found a quote from my favourite story, Le Petit Prince.

“I also have a flower,” says the little prince. “We do not record flowers,” responds the geographer. “Why is that? The flower is the most beautiful thing on my planet!”
“We do not record them,” says the geographer, “because they are ephemeral.”
“What does ‘ephemeral’ mean?”
“Ephemeral means ‘that which is menaced by imminent disappearance’.”

- from The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Serendipity? Perhaps not. I have read The Little Prince over and over again at different period in my life, and each time it gave something different, and each reading highlighted different parts of it. Or, perhaps, yes, it was only a coincidence. It doesn’t matter now.

Everything, you see, including geography, is ephemeral. Everything – our so highly regarded national identity, our so guarded boundaries, everything. We only need to play with time in order to realise this.

One day before the Open Day, I will start with a bed of flowers covering the floor area that’s recorded on my video screen. Then gradually I will arrange the flowers to shape like India. Slowly, I will then part the flowers by colour, separating the 28 states of India.

This image above with the two of me is a digital sketch.

On the Open Day, 8 Nov 2009, I will ask our visitors questions about places and migrations. They will then take some flowers and move them somewhere else. And so everything will be liquified again.