Bizarrely blurring many a notion (Part 2)

Continued from last week...

By Dilshan Boange

I was one among the many faces observing the performance which unfolded in the morning of the 16th March on the pavement beside the Borella supermarket complex as part of the Borders and Lines event by Theertha International Artists' Collective. The performance which I witnessed was performed by Bandu Manamperi of which my commentary from last week's issue of Montage continues into this week's issue as a concluding instalment.

The performance was one that involved no dialogue but a very abstract physical series of actions that involved the artiste Bandu dragging a dead fish tied by a rope, along the pavement and road, and eventually being disembowelled by Bandu's bare hands.

As Bandu took the mangled, mutilated carcass of the creature he had disembowelled with his bare hands, on to his lap, and held it in his grasp as though he was concentrating into a meditative moment, I wondered whether his pose, his state of being, was meant to symbolise a person engaged in the Buddhist meditation known as 'Asubhanussathi bhavana' which is explicable as 'meditating on repulsiveness'.

This form of meditation being explained by the Buddha in the 'Sathara sathipattana sutra' and the 'Maha sathipattana sutra' is about grasping the reality of decay and decomposition inevitable in all living creatures, is generally practiced by observing corpses. What was the symbolic message that the artiste sought to convey to his audience I wondered. I, like any other, can only offer my conjecture. So for what it's worth, I simply think that the impressionistic act seemed to say that we, society of present are very much like a dead corpse.

We have been dragged along the dust and grime and disembowelled to the point of being a fleshy wreckage turning malodours. Perhaps that is what the deeper meaning was encrypted in the brazen bizarreness that Bandu redoubtably acted out.

In reflection, one of my concerns from a point of critical commentary would be, that this performance, owing to the part of the disembowelling of the fish being rather unsettling could be insalubrious to persons of a delicate or sensitive nature, like children in some cases, or persons whose state of mind may be adversely affected due to the shock effect the sudden sight of the part of the performance in question.

There was certainly much food for thought offered to onlookers from the performance I witnessed. It was a striking display of propelling the average passerby in Borella to stop, observer, and wonder what is going on and why? It was intriguing to some; to some it was nonsensically absurd, bizarre and good for a laugh; to others, perhaps a handful, it may have been thought provoking to the point of questioning conventionalities and the functions assigned to (public) space(s). Is there anything that will follow this series of events of Borders and Lines? I for one am very curious, and waiting.