The Ritual Of Disguise

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...

I decided to make my masks using sieves or baskets. The choice of woven baskets was driven by the natural and eco - friendly nature of this material. The structure of the basket also allows for fastening attachments without glue. For the colors and details, I had in mind poster colors for opaqueness and recycled fabric which could add texture. My original plan was to use a Tamil Nadu sieve which is unique due to its oblong shape for the Bhootham mask and a Circular basket for Zaba. Any Bangalorean worth their salt knows that for eclectic needs one heads to Russell Market and Shivaji Nagar, where anything can be found! I absolutely love the energy and rush of this market place and see it as a living example of everything that defines our culture and people. This market is a confluence of business, street vendors, color, noise, street food, clothing shops, and religion, all these establishments co-exist in close proximity, blending into each other and yet retaining their own mark. ...

After looking through the feedback I received from the many people who commented on the masks, I iterated on some of the actions of each adornment one last time. As I was comfortably placed with regard to my adornments, I began to plan the nature of my practice of mastery, which is 'Witnessing the Self'.  I devised a way to observe myself. I will wear my adornment for 30 minutes every day and observe what changes, moves or remains in me. My observations will be recorded in the format below - 

Before I begin making the actual masks, I felt it was important to test the masks on an audience. This check was purely to gauge whether the visual symbolism in the mask was creating any meaning or emotion in the spectator. I got the masks printed on cardboard, put them on myself, took a few pictures and put them up on Facebook and Instagram, seeking emotions and reactions from people. I was truly in for a big surprise, the comments were delightful, insightful and reaffirming. The symbolism was working!  Check out the emotions Bhootam created in others - 

Now that I had got both my adornments in place, I feel confident and happy.  However, before I begin making the actual masks, I felt it was important to test the masks on an audience. This check was purely to gauge whether the visual symbolism in the mask was creating any meaning or emotion in the spectator. I got the masks printed on cardboard, put them on myself, took a few pictures and put them up on Facebook and Instagram, seeking emotions and reactions from people. I was truly in for a big surprise, the comments were delightful, insightful and reaffirming. The symbolism was working!  When I created this mask, I was clear, there should be no gender to this mask. Mask 1 was not supposed to be anything, it was just ‘IT’. Then many people saw a happy frog king, hence Zaba (meaning frog in Serbian) was born. Through this mask, I am adorning ‘Abundance’. All the visual symbolism in the mask is playful and earthy, with multiple elements allowing for many, many meanings...

After I had envisioned Bhootam as my adornment as shared in my previous blog post, I started to create a visual image of this character. My adornment with Bhootham (Poltergeist) is empathy. But as I begin to conceptualize this mask, I decide to stay true to the worldly understanding of Bhootham - a fierce large creature who can evoke fear, who can play games with the mind, who can seduce the other, who looks untrustworthy and flighty. It is through the actions and experience in a performance that the empathy and affinity of this persona will be revealed. Even though I had decided to explore the empathetic nature of this mask during the performance, I felt the need to visually symbolise through subtle hints, the serenity, and affinity of this persona. Looking back now, I wonder if I did this more for myself than for the spectator. This was an act to reaffirm what I adorning, it was telling myself that this is the Bhootham of empathy! The process of drawing, making and envision...

After being unhappy about my inability to move away from trying to recreate 'Maya' and manifest traits in my first attempt, I decided to clarify the intentions of my adornments. Through this process I focused on the traits, actions,essence and persona of the adornments I was creating. This process allowed me to go back to the symbolism I had infused into my first mask too! I realised I had forgotten to articulate the thoughts behind the persona and had gotten too wrapped up within the concept of Maya.  Hence, this time around, before creating mask 2, I worked backwards, I fleshed out the intention, actions and other relevant details of each mask . Post this plotting, even Mask 1 seemed to work! Here is how I went about this process -  It is from here that I began to envision and work on the visual structure of the next mask. 

Based on my secondary research I attempted at creating my adornment of Maya. While I went about this action, I saw myself imbuing meanings into objects. I was thinking of symbols, colour and visual that could recreate the traits of Maya that I had identified. I was at war with words at this phase. I was attempting to make a mask that could be genderless but could create meaning using many parts. I envisioned making this mask on a bamboo sieve. I chose a circular form for my adornment to mean the circle of time and space. I also used the circumpunct as a symbol, which is meant to mean to - ‘ To know thyself, we must go within thyself’ . Here is a detailed annotation of the symbolism of this adornment within the context of Maya.  The symbolism of Adornment 1 My attempt with the adornment was wholly backed by the philosophical inquiry into the notion of Maya from secondary research, however, I found this method limiting, philosophy was constricting aesthetic engagem...

On engaging with prose, poetry, and verse to iterate on the nature of my adornment, I read The Parable of the Two Birds from the Mundaka Upanishad which I found extremely fitting to the nature of my exploration. The parable describes the nature of the human mind through the metaphor of two similar birds. In Sanskrit, the verse reads as -  द्वा सुपर्णा सयुजा सखाया समानं वृक्षं परिषस्वजाते। तयोरन्य: पिप्पलं स्वाद्वत्त्यनश्नन्नन्यो अभिचाकशीति॥ समाने वृक्षे पुरुषों निमग्नोऽनाशया शोचति मुह्यमान:। जुष्टं यदा पश्यत्यन्यमीशमस्य महिमानमिति वीतशोक:॥ यदा पश्य: पश्यते रुक्मवर्णं कर्तारमीशं पुरुषं ब्रह्मयोनिम्। तदा विद्वान्पुण्यपापे विधूय निरंजन: परमं साम्यमुपैति॥ Aurobindo translates the original verses of this parable as - “Two birds, beautiful of wings, close companions, cling to one common tree: of the two one eats the sweet fruit of the tree, the other eats not but watches his fellow. The soul is the bird that sits immersed on the common tree; but because he ...