Projects created at Farm Studio and Testimonials
Eduardo Dana (Mexico/USA)
Community is the first word that comes to mind, art residencies have a tendency for community, naturally, with all artists living together in the same roof and often times in a remote location far from the city, we have no one but ourselves, and embracing each other through our art and our personal practices is what makes residencies so special.
I was quite happy for my short notice acceptance at Farm Studio, I stumble upon it while in Jaipur just a few weeks before, and what better way to experience India and Rajasthan. Having only 2 weeks and no concrete project nor idea, I knew it was going to be challenging, although, India’s present oriented thinking help me with this one. In the third day at farm, we made a day trip to visit the local brick factory which is basically ran by 2 families living in tents with tiny bits of shadow, some goats around and a few brick moulds to work with, the mountains of dark red bricks lying in the sun, contrasting the pink and red sari’s of the working woman’s made it to a side collaborative project which would eventually made me start this description with the concept of community. In the next days I started testing and experimenting with the adobe/mud that I was able to trade with the locals, the space in the farm was great for this, and Vaga was very helpful in letting me be messy throughout. By the 5th day I had already something going, alike some of my previous art work, I was trying to experiment with the qualities and behaviour of materials, in this particular case, the malleability of mud, and the contrasting rigidity of concrete block became my main motif. Not that I like to add much metaphorical substance to my work, but Monique, a Canadian dancer and performer artist mentioned something I liked, “it’s sort of resembles the subtle relationship between east and west”.
I usually have 2 or more projects running as backup and as a strategy against being or feeling stuck, usually there is always a main project and the secondary ones are sort of fun ways to procrastinate and allow for space in between. In my first day at Farm Studio, I saw the abundant termite structures, I wanted to somehow interact with them and somehow make them part my work, or better say, somehow make me part of their work… that small idea would eventually sprout my second project at Farm Studio called ‘Desert Interventions’, which consisted on contrasting morphological termite structures with minimal shapes, and allowing time to process and re shape such environments.
We used to go for sunset walks to the desert, a sort of ritual to give closure to the day and “work”, although he usually kept working until late night when it was cold and we all needed the bun fire chill and talk, which would eventually prompt Idhar – Udhar, the all artists side collaborative project I mentioned earlier, sitting by the fire, we all decided it would be fun to experiment with a short film idea, each artist would be given the chance to shoot and direct his own scene, the project was open ended although we all agreed on a max time frame of 1 min per scene, and after insisting a lot, they all accepted my idea of having to have ‘Red’ in all scenes, so it would help us with connections and transitions. The short film turned out great, it was a new thing for most of us, but we managed well, we will be submitting to film festivals around the globe, I specially think this part of Farm Studio was eyes opening for me, working with other artists on the same project without any structure nor clear direction was hard, but also very interesting, we all had to improvise, we all had to help each other, hear each other, and most importantly, we had to be open to someone else’s vision and let it flourish even if the final result wasn’t easily pictured. I was deeply inspired to see a group of experienced artist collaborating in an improvised idea, it was a great experience for everyone and I am thankful to all…
In the last days I was basically done with production of my main piece mud/concrete block, I had only to continue thinking about the setting, the assembly, the land, and how the installation was going to work together with the space, I found an lot nearby which was empty enough to allow the piece to standout, but also big enough to make it subtle in space, thanks to Monique and Kailash who help me finalize the installation by capturing more of my conceptual process in the photographs. I am more than happy for the opportunity and the time spent at Farm Studio, Vagaram was more than a great host and curator, he is not only an experienced and professional artists who was happy to share his knowledge and help develop my own work, but he is also a unique contemporary, who’s village life background reflects his understanding of the importance of building community and the potential of community values.
VL Mervada (India)
