Reverberating Earth

Durational Performance at DER LÄNGSTE TAG / THE LONGEST DAY, Zürich, Switzerland, 21st June 2015.

I had conceived this performance keeping in mind Switzerland, the land of beauty and Nature. I had seen Switzerland in pictures, movie and photographs and had fascination about this beautiful land. My perception was like it is heaven and I wanted to respond to this in my work. Having said that I didn’t wanted to forget where I came from and cultural aspect of my country, my feet fully rooted in my culture and my mind thinking of Switzerland, resonating earth. Metaphorically match with resonance of earth by an act of making PAPAD (round shaped snack, using the act of making the shape as representing earth in the form of drawing).

The idea was to have a long durational performance from morning till evening but attention can be given to me in the evening between 4 pm to 5pm. The PAPAD making is sign of empowerment and self reliance for women in South Asian counties such as India, Pakistan Bangladesh etc., and it is one of the most successful businesses for women coming from poor economic background. I made metaphoric connection to the act of rolling and making PAPAD to vibrating and frequency of earth and ultimately saluting the great land of peace and harmony and also by performing through my body doing PRADAKSHINA (refers to Circumambulation of sacred place) on ground thereby symbolically connecting my body to frequency of the Earth.

Dimple B Shah

2015

Karmic Connection III

Performance at Leonrod-Haus für Kunst und Gelände Dachauer/Schwere-Reiter-Strasse am Leonrodplatz. 114 München. 6th June 2015.

Establishing connection with my audience through an act of "KARMA" (doing) was the whole idea of this performance. This performance highlights the hidden connections. We as human, constantly perform everyday activity and meet people in everyday life, some relations end being close and some at distance, this is automatically build up through our karmic connection and these connections are built with our act and in this process our relationship with other humans is established knowingly and unknowingly. For me it is a matter of personal importance, like whom I meet and how my relation is established with people whom I meet in my life.

I feel definitely there is previous association which I need to realize now and this performance will be an act to reach each and every human whom I meet. Each and every human holds a great importance and they are strongly connected to me. This performance explored how we connect our self to others (Audiences). This performance was an attempt to build bond through the process of interaction one to one in time and space, although my audience comes from different origin, roots, environments, spaces and experience, during the performance we experienced a moment of time and space together and through object as my tool helped them to look into past, present and future, in that moment we are built our bonds and we all recollected our memories of the past and remember in future. 

The audience could make a choice of kind of connection they have with me, spiritual or material through choice of material offered to them to touch. Performance was enhanced with audio and other material to get the impact and created a meditative environment.

Dimple B Shah
2015