[Reader-list] Independant Sarai Fellow: a ( dream) working question

[inder salim]

Dear All
In response to "what is Trans ? ": Independent Fellows- open
interactive session. Sarai CSDS- Working Questions, 4th to 7th Dec.
2007,  LTG Gallery, Mandi House, New Delhi concluding day.

Obviously there are many answers to this question, both old and modern.
But I want to share my dream, a dream which we all see when deep in
slumber, a dream which we remember…years after even.:

' I was in the audience. It was evening time, so I don't know the
gender, and therefore, let us say ' the artist' who was sitting on a
big iron plate. The round black iron  plate was upon something very
hot, but strangely no light was coming out.  Except small movements of
the artist everything was calm when I slowly moved closer and closer
to the artist. And no sooner I touched The Artist's shoulder it
emitted a spark like thing which almost pushed me back to my space.
After a moment or so, the artist began to build a wall of mud balls.
Each mud ball was almost bigger than a brick which was slowly gaining
height around his body; and within a minute or so the artist went
inside the circular mud wall,  and was completely inaccessible. I
remember so vividly the colour and the texture of the mud balls"

This much I remember, but I don't remember if I was disturbed by
something or the dream itself ended.
In the LTG lawns, two friends, with whom I already shared the dream
started interpreting it, which is perfectly normal, and it is
precisely here, that I also want to know the meaning of the dream, if
there is one.  Freud says that the dream is unreal but the sweating it
causes is real. What is sweating in this case ?

Sometimes my own performances afterwards look like  dreams to me even.
But I know what I did was not a dream. It was perhaps a mixture of
reality and dream,  self invented ritual, history and art history,
self and other, radical and mundane, political and aesthetic, inside
and outside etc.

One first layer about the dream is that I was one amongst the audience
and therefore I could not have been the artist, who was traveling more
and more towards his ' achinpur' ( village-inwardly ) or becoming more
and more personal. So as audience what I gained from seeing the
artist's performance ? In this sense nothing, because, in the end it
was all about her/him only. I can not imitate the performance in any
case because it was the artists's moment of death also, and if I want
to do die while doing a performance  I must die my own way, that is
the least. So what is the gain ? Nothing

So is there no benefit of that experience to the audience?
But I  guess, I had something to share. I am happy although I don't
know what actually happened
So I except a response from other independent fellows, if there is a
possibility to apply this dream to other  faculties as well, which is
quite unrealistic, I know, but still…

With love

Inder salim

P.S.  just a note of thanks to CSDS Sarai team... please convey my
feelings to other team members as well who helped me and others in
realizing the event joyfully ....

i am really delighted
hugs


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http://indersalim.livejournal.com