In response to the June 09 creative assignment, "Translating Each Other, Translating the Past," I created an artbook that interrogates the North Indian light classical song form of thumri, which is traditionally danced by kathak dancers. I was interested in revealing the form's historical layers, erasures, and troubled eroticism by combining poetic text and photographic image. In many ways, the book is a companion piece to an academic article I have written, titled "the erotic trace/erasure of the courtesan in kathak dance and thumri music."
Here is a pair of images from the book, which is currently titled writingthruthumri:
Photo by Shyamala Moorty; text from “Thumri: The Role of Aesthetic Theory in the Interpretation and Performance of a Modern Genre” by Lalita Du Perron. The SOAS Literary Review (2), July 2000.
And here, from another section of the book, is a poem I wrote as an imaginative expansion on a single word, “wrist,” from the traditional thumri, “Kahe Rukata,” by Bindadin Maharaj. The writing style emulates that of African-American poet, Harryette Mullen, in her work Trimmings, which is itself an emulation of Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons. How does a woman come to be signified by and objectified into her body parts?
]wrist[
a delicate bandage a bone a twiggy little snap. oh slim white stab of a waist unwrapped. blackened sweet. a virgin chocolate bar crinkles her glittery skirt but such a disapproving purse. disapproving she twists her bittermelon mouth splitting shut. oh. oh oh no. white hot mirchi stops dead in her tracks. cut red. a rough and ready grab, a wolf whistling fist, an iron bangle tapping her curved rear.
1st image: You are marked up, black lines down your picture, like tears of mehndi. The photo itself is “exotic” as you peer out from the veil, but you are censored with someone’s harsh ink. Tears, rain, stream down, you are a marked woman.
ReplyDelete]wrist[ poem: I enjoy how the word “wrist” is between two backward brackets like bracelets. This idea is echoed in the photo with the hand holding the wrist, like a bangle. Strong metaphors (mouth, splitting, and cut) refer me to the female anatomy. It makes me feel uncomfortable, a sense of someone being violated. They are aesthetic but not pretty thoughts!
I could read and reread it over and over making new connections each time.
ReplyDeleteHaunting and ruminating...lovely!!!! I could see some of the images
and texts projected in between a live dance around the same themes.
I think all the source material you used would be nice to reference at
the end of the book. I don't feel that documenting the compositional
process is as necessary because to me the entire book is so poetic
that once we know the sources it's nice for the reader to try and make
their own connections with the process.