CONVERSATION PIECES : NEW YORK, PUNE & VIENNA
Conversation Pieces: New York, Pune & Vienna (2012) is a collaborative work was work borne out of geographical disconnect between Svea Schneider, Shraddha Borawake and Katrin Blantar. Three artists living and producing art in different countries, at varying space and informed by disparate cultural influences.
Talks began in 2012 when Svea Schneider, founder of the KINEMATIK Dance Theatre company, was invited by The Dixon Place (New York City) to create a piece for 'Crossing Boundaries', a dance/theatre festival focused on how people traverse thresholds of culture.
All three artists had worked together before, Shraddha and Svea on Multiple Personality Order (2009), a multimedia foray into how advanced technological devices and social networks enable and encourage us to maintain multiple replicated versions of our identity, and all three on Perfect Prototype, The Extension (2012), an exploration into the unrealistic expectation the media places on the everyday woman.
As the director of the mulitmedia component of this piece. I was fortunate to be invited as an Artist-In-Residence at ANIBRAIN a VFX company based out of Pune City. I was given 6 professional editors to help create a 12-Minute mashup of footage captured on the cell phone by the 3 participants - Svea Schneider in New York, Katarin Blantar in Vienna and my documentation in Pune.
Over the course of 2 months, along with Svea, a comprehensive visual brief was created to dance through the streets, open doors, walk in/walk out, ride elevators and escalators. The objective was to create a dance with images, as the varying speeds of the cities created a rhythm for the film.
These works were shot by the three artists without any brief. We danced in public places in our respective cities without the final score. Only to join it together with a track created by Svea from all the overheard conversations we submitted in the end.
A truly experimental exercise, received great response from New York.
It premiered at the Dixon Place in 2012 and then selected to show at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in LA at the Asylum Theatre in 2013.
Thanks to Jesh Krishnamurthy's mentorship and the support of Bhavik Mehta along with his team at Anibrain. We had a true international work created on home-ground in Pune city.
