Nous ne notons pas /es fleurs:an etude in ephemera/ cartography

Nous ne notons pas /es fleurs, dit /e geographe. – Pourquoi c;a’ c’est pas Joli!- Paree que /es fleurs sont ephemeres.Le Petit Prince (Antoine de Saint Exupery, 1943)

In the recent years I have been working on the theme of geopolitics, in particular through reflections on place on identity, individuality, citizenship and structures of political power; on movement across borders; as well as on maps and cartography. With these interests as a background, since the beginning of 2009 I have intentionally been focusing on interactivity in my work. Participating in the Khoj Bihar International Artists’ Workshop 2009, these were the issues I was naturally drawn towards.

Even materials from the media – one of my sources during the workshop – also manifested in my first-hand encounters with local journalists approaching with a preconception to form a certain opinion. A simple, but hands-on, drive to the market put me in first-hand contact with the local traffic of Patna – a window to the inner working of its street ethics and strategies. My attempt to imitate the Chhau dancers literally put myself in another person’s mask of gestures and manoeuvres alien to my mind yet somewhat familiar to my body. My shallow disposition to learning Hindi colloquialism co-existed with my reflection on the Manipuri Indians and their seemingly exotic displacement. More than only reading about Bihar’s migration and border issues, I had the chance to experience how immediate these issues are to the Biharis; and the possibility of the Naxalites hijacking the Radjhani Express train to Patna suddenly felt dramatically real. Through these experiences and through an evolution of several ideas, I chose to develop a new work that I felt would best capture both the local situation corresponding to a global phenomenon, as well as satisfy my personal curiosity. In my work directly preceding the workshop, Terra Incognito, et cetera (mural, interactive performance and installation with video, 2009) I questioned the concepts of maps, cartography and territory. During the workshop, the environmental context of where we stayed at Tarumitra laid a contextual sensibility for me to focus on the ephemeral aspect of borders. Following these trails up, I decided to turn into local materials: with an idea for an ephemeral interactive performance and installation work using maps in mind, I started experimenting with garlands of flowers that are commonly used for decoration in festivals, weddings and religious events in India.

Based on the four-colour map theorem that I discovered when I started working with cartography on Terra Incognito, et cetera, I used four types of fragrant flowers that I took from the commonly used garlands: yellow marigold, orange marigold, white tuberose, and red hibiscus. The spatial quality of the site I chose for my work was equally important: it had to accommodate the need for my bird’s-eye view video recording; it also had to make it possible for the audience to see the work from a distance, as well as for me to invite the audience to physically interact with the work. The only possible site was the main rotunda of Tarumitra, the mezzanine on which I could station my video camera in. The circling shape of the mezzanine was ideal to accommodate my viewing audience as well. My video camera recorded, in time-lapse, the whole event that took place over the three days – the Open Studio Day and the two days preceding it. Having pulled the flowers off the sacks of garland we bought at the Hanuman market in Patna, I started with a bed of mixed-coloured flowers. After painstakingly separating the flowers to shape a map of India with its 28 states, on the open-day I asked the audience to trace their interstate movement and migration, by moving the flowers between the corresponding states. This act resulted in the flowers being remixed, and eventually in blurring the borders. A video in-progress was shown from my laptop during the open-day as well, to help me explain that I was recording the whole process.

The title of this work, Nous ne notons pas /es fleurs, is taken from a dialogue in Le Petit Prince (Exupery, 1943), where a geographer tells the Little Prince that geographers do not record flowers because, unlike the earth, flowers are ephemeral. In this work, it is exactly because the flowers are ephemeral that I used them to denote borders – and it is exactly because they are ephemeral that I recorded them (in video). It is also because of the fairytale-like nature of the story that I chose to use the title (inreality, geographers are aware that political borders are ephemeral, and flowers are integral to their studies).