Amol K Patil: 15th Gwangju BiennalePansori, a soundscape of the 21st centuryGwangju, South Korea
WHO IS INVITED IN THE CITY?
Working on the lives of people who are living in this vast city has a certain notion of how the system has profound layers which is what we know as society. The working-class people of the city landscape have never acknowledged their roles in society, often overlooking their contribution which directly or indirectly impacts our mundane lives.
There were a lot of people from different villages who started to move to the big cities, where they were assured of having a secure and stable life. The farmers mortgage their lands to move to the city in the hope of earning more and reclaiming their land. The city is disguised as an amazing place to work and earn more for their lives. They travel through time and kilometers from different villages searching for the light, hoping to secure a better future for themselves and the future generations to come which the city projected to offer, but as they reach closer, they face the limitless struggle and a never-ending road in that search for the light. The video depicts the lust that cities offer and they walk in the darkness in the search for the light only to find themselves caught in an endless loop.
Sound is something that has traveled through them for generations through vast kilometers. It is interesting to witness how people use traditional forms to talk about their lives while they are living in different cities. They talk about the freedom they look upon and add something to the conversation for the new generation to wonder about. These sounds have traveled through time and rewritten and remade these conversations when they are migrating towards different places and through time.
The sculptures recite the conversation of navigation and the methods they had to take to embark on the journey they took to reach there. The book ‘Thousand Hands and Thousand Voices’, inspires the multiple hands-rods sculptures and the relation for the protest when the workers had to struggle for not getting their salary worth of more than 40 years. These desperate times led the children of some of them to start stealing. They stole the cable wires around the city, removing the outer layers and selling the copper found inside them to sustain their lives. Leading to a gesture, making noise, and protest against the system.
These conversations connect individual lives into one as a community and raise their voice to talk about human relations, time, moments, breathing, and touch and how they can connect to walk together as a whole. This is what created the vibration of the city. The works have an amalgamation of these conversations of sounds and looking for lights in the big city.
