The Ritual Of Disguise

I immersed myself deeply within my practice for mastery of  Witnessing the Self by using varied methods such as note-taking, reflective recording, and video documenting. I have tried to be aware and observant of myself and the relationship I have been building with my experiences and actions through these methods. It was while I was developing my own tools to document my experiences   that I revisited Theory U by Otto Scharmer. Otto Scharmer in his theory speaks of 'Presencing',   which he describes as an act of seeing from the source, and as a state where we step into our real being, who we really are, the authentic. The core idea in this concept is to shift the perception of the source of a new emerging possibility. Scharmer's depiction of Presencing is plotted on a 'U' graph which moves into Enaction and Institutionalization. This depiction of future possibility was not relevant to my current inquiry hence, I decided to tweak the tool to suit...

The second part of the Adorning and Witnessing was designed as a Conversation Circle, using a few exercises the participants discussed the nature of experience, meaning-making, and relationship with the adornments. Participants were asked to share their observations and insights about the experience in the following format - What was Interesting and What was Important.  a) Important was defined as - Powerful, Salient, Principal, Major  b) Interesting was defined as - Engrossing, Absorbing, Gripping, Compelling, Engaging.  The insights and observations shared were mapped on a large sheet of paper that covered the conversation table. Q cards were used as prompts to further the inquiry. As a final activity, they were asked to put up  Post - It's that answered 3 questions -  a) What will you talk/think about?  b) What will linger on for you?  c) What will stay with you?  Exemplars of feedback from participants - ...

The world inside a mask is a space of vulnerability, more so because my mask was an adornment and not a disguise, it was not a place of hiding. I was adorning traits and a persona that would reveal meaning and experience for the other. My stomach was churning, I was nervous, I was not a performer by any right and to have made a grand announcement of providing an experience to my audience was beginning to scare me. To ease my frayed nerves, I made a few decisions - I will constantly be true to how I feel, I will not enlarge my role into playing a charade and I will reveal as the environment demands of me. I will witness the environment and be wholly present in it. I made sure that the audience did not see my real face until the final conversation circle. There was only Zaba and Bhootham in this environment, they were given no opportunity to build meanings with my real face. The entire act lasting around 1.5 hours was conducted in absolute silence. I was at War with Words like...

After my adornments were ready I planned a workshop Adorning and Witnessing where I could experiment, generate and transfer meaning and experience using Bhootham and Zaba. I envisioned the workshop as a space of co-inquiry between me and the audience which would be collaborative and participatory in nature. I used tools and activities from Augusto Boal to achieve these intentions. Below is the abstract of Adorning and Witnessing - I also created a Learning Design for the workshop which enlisted the overall purpose and intentions I was hoping to inquire into - The activities chosen from Augusto Boal were also planned keeping in mind two aspects - 1) The nature of the audience (there backgrounds as Designers). 2) The skills available in the audience which could be provoked to strengthen my own inquiry. The conversation circle activity was planned as a space of sharing and witnessing once own state of being, meaning-making, and nature of experience. For thi...

After 2 whole weeks of experimenting and imagining possibilities with different materials, my masks are finally ready! This has been such a fascinating journey where each decision I made was towards imbuing truth into my adornment. Materials and colors were not elements anymore, they were decisions made in absolute resolve and truth. By being 'At War With Words' I was infusing both my characters and myself with the truth of the adornment and persona. Under the layers of ' Maya' the many realities, I was slowly surfacing the true nature of the character I was birthing. Engulfed in the play and experience of ' Maya'  I was deeply aware of the stillness in being my own witness. Below the visual progression of my mask from idea to outcome - 

Creating my adornment has extracted out of me - patience, attention, and care. It is in experiencing these emotions that the mask gradually transformed into my adornment. In making, I was both, the ‘doer bird’ that was experiencing the sweet and bitter of my actions, and the ‘witness bird’ which was aware, sitting still and reflecting. The ‘doer bird’ experienced the hardship and trouble of long hours of making, it was faced with the decisions of materials, colors and aesthetics. It was experiencing the distractions, snags, and frustrations of the things not going as per plan. This bird enjoyed the help and goodwill of the guardians who lifted the adornment up by giving it their time and attention. This bird experienced the adornment through its senses. But deep within me the ‘witness bird’ reflected on my choices. It kept my compass in check. Symbolism and aesthetic areas not the only goals anymore, ‘the witnessing bird’ provoked me to find the truth of my adornment....

Today I decided to adorn Slow through Bhootham. The Bhootham’s persona is empathy and I felt that being slow would be a befitting companion this persona. What happens when I slow down? Where is my mind? Where is my body? Where are my thoughts? I wanted to witness this state of being by adorning Slow. This was a journey unlike what I expected, my body was rushing, it was used to the ‘normal’ pace of things. I was trying desperately to control my body through my mind, but the body would periodically ’erupt’ as though it had a mind of its own. Actions I take for granted were wilfully slowed down, and in this slowing down I became aware of the acutely physical nature of my body - the muscles each responding in revolt, all they wanted to do, was move. I provoked my fickle mind to pay attention to little things. On my daughters' study desk her everyday objects held my gaze, I witnessed them ( this was not an act of observation) By adorning Slow, I witnessed her little world, ob...

As a part of the ritual I have set for myself,  I adorned both Zaba and Bhootham today. After yesterday's disastrous experience I decided to adorn a quality/emotion today and not the character. I chose Empathy for Bhootham and Play for Zaba.  Before I adorned myself, I engaged in a few exercises that Augustus Boal advocates for actors to embody their roles. While identifying the primacy of emotion, Boal concedes how hard it is for an actor to move away from his personal 'Self' and to emote like the character being played. ( Even harder for someone like me who has no theatre experience.)  Boal enlists a set of activities -  Muscular exercises, Sensory exercises, Memory exercises, Imagination exercises and Emotion exercises to manifest emotions freely throughout the actors body.  Today, to manifest empathy I chose to  remember people with whom I have experienced this emotion. It was fascinating to see how my body reacted to these memories, the mask an...

The intention I had articulated for my Practice as Mastery in my Capstone proposal is as follows -  "My practice for mastery is a disguise. Through this practice of disguise, I will undertake ritualistic donning of masks through which I intend to witness the Self, to inquire the following - What is the nature of ‘Becoming’? Am I concealing or revealing realities using a mask? Do I surrender? Do I shed power? How do I build relationships when stripped of the known? How do I assume a different identity? How do I communicate in vulnerability? Does the mask become my shield? In my practice of witnessing through the disguise, it is by residing in awareness and attention that I want to observe myself deeply in order to understand what the mask, elevates, conceals or reveals. My own practice of disguise will sustain the inherent visceral nature of performative traditions by imbuing meaning into objects and relying minimally on word or text. As a part of my practice, by wearing ma...

Day 1 Many emotions accompanied the making process. The anticipation to see the finished product runs high throughout, but it is the sense of oneness with the act of making itself that I continue to cherish. Through my impatience to get done quickly, I reminded myself of the Theyyam and Koodiyattam artists who sat for hours, in absolute oneness with their act. The action of making in silence is a ritual in itself, in this space, all standstill. I was envisioning and planning the mask at many levels, color, material, symbolism, and aesthetics were active emotions. The need to be convincing and honest to what I wanted to convey with the mask (albeit an undercurrent) was omnipresent throughout. A disguise that reveals and not conceals, demanded that I interact with the baskets from the same lens. I decided not to interfere with the natural structure of the basket and did not camouflage the surface with any other material. The basket is experienced and witnessed as a basket. T...