The Silent Whisper

Childhood Toys disappears, but fond memories remain

Live Action 11 First Day of Performance Festival Performance inside Train from Goteborg to Trollhalten, and in Trollhalten Sweden 6th September 2016 

In this performance my attempt was to build a connection with my audience through objects of memory. The memories of childhood have lasting impression and impact in our mind. These memories of childhood are Pure, naïve and embedded with innocence. In this work my attempt was to build an endless connection with my audiences through objects of childhood which are mundane and lost its importance when grown up, but remains as keys to open doors to our childhood memories and also finds special space in our home whenever one want to connect to the past. My idea was to create situations for audience, where audience could experience the space I come from. Every individual person comes from diverse cultural and geographical background. Every cultural has it unique language and coded language, gesture which are unique; my idea was to bring this unique experience to my audience and evoke with new experiences.

The performance had started much before we reached the spot Trollhaltan, Sweden, Performance in Transit inside the train where I created a mood with sound and slowly Mauritz Tistelö also joined with hand full of grass. The sound created a meditative mood for me to involve myself to childhood memory I was making sound by using small toy which was given by Linda Mary Montano for me it toy reminded me of my childhood memory and also symbolically replicated self in some way.

we reached the Trollhalten and spot for performance, where I interacted with my audience by working on different sensory level like food and color and objects like kitchen toys from my place and with visual images of objects of my collection. These personal objects of memories are extremely important and plays important role in developing ones emotional stability and transcending the meaning which leads to sublime blissful feeling. This object are integral part of my life I presented this objects kitchen toys to my audience to play home game and create a situation for exchange secret code each individual reacted and connected to objects differently in way they could connect and get involved themselves to play home game through their perception and experiences. It was like building karmic connection through the act. It was basically about the relationship between humans and their memories of childhood.

As Alan Radley discusses, memory is a practice through which we “engage with the material world”. It is within this space that we recuperate the traces of ourselves and of the past, even if what we wish to do is forget about it; or, in fact, erase it.

Memory is sources of personal identity images of past perception, perception of experience we had, frequency of process that links different experiences in an individual memory. Memories goes beyond individual which is collective memory, the memory of a nation, culture and society, it is constructive in nature and links past to present, how do society remember this it through monuments, stories, literature, oral history and objects.

It is also process of making lost moment visible once again. Ordinary objects symbolizes experience, aspiration and identity without the object stories would lack vibrancy without the stories they lack significance taken together the object / images of the object and stories that evoke, lead the viewers on journey where the common place is transformed into remarkable stuff of history which is highly personalized. There might be events that transform ordinary things into irreplaceable carrier of identity emotion and memory this object help us finds way forward relics that are associated with tremendous powerful events it does matter how does ordinary things is not just ordinary any more.

Whether as a site, agent, or purveyor of memory, objects and the collections they comprise serve to inform us of the past in the present and communicate identities. Memory is a liminal space, made possible through a process of construction and conflation. memory is not just an individual, private experience but is also part of the collective domain, Recent research and theorizing in cultural memory has emphasized the importance of considering the content of cultural identities in understanding the study of social relations and predicting cultural attitudes. 

“Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories.” - Walter Benjamin"

  Dimple B Shah 2017

  Photo credit to  Ah Qiang