Just a kiss from left hand

Performance

Space: 3rd of February 2011 in Dhaka Art Center (Event of International Performance Art Festival) and 8ht of December 2010 Open Space of Chittagong Institute of Fine Arts ( Event of 3rd Performance Art workshop Open studio day)

Materials: Foam Shave, Shaving Razor , Water, Jug , Towel, Table, After Shave Lotion

Busy two hands, easy to do help some thing. Hi and bye from the hands. Give good manners from hands. Make love with hands. Both hands impotence, just a first kiss from left hand. All the best.

We don,t use left hand to greet and to do something related to manners. We are used to do most of our regular works with our right hand. In the performance, my tool is my left hand. I came before audience, and greeted them "hi" from left hand, then I started to shave my left hand and then sent a flying kiss. At last bade them farewell.

Photographs: 3rd of February 2011 in Dhaka Art Center (Event of International Performance Art Festival)

I have performed the same performance two times. 1st performed 8th of December 2011 in the Open Space of Institute of Fine Arts and 2nd time 3rd of February in Dhaka Art center

Pray for Birds

Site -specific Project,

Open Studio of CRAC INTERNATIONAL ART CAMP 2010- Smaran Matsya-beej Khamar, Rahimpur (adjacent to Dhaka-Kushtia highway), Kushtia, Bangladesh 1st January 2011

In a village of Kustia the International art camp was held in a fish hatchery for the last week of year 2010. In the camp I saw lot of birds come in this area. Then I saw fishermen threw poison on the ponds for cleaning. Again some young people shot birds for celebrating party of 31st night. So the birds got frightened and didn’t come easily before people. I made some structures using bamboo, fence to attract the birds where they can take rest. Here I kept fish, leafs, and other stuff as birds’ foods. I fixed up this installation and people kept foods for birds on this structure even after finishing the camp. Birds came quickly and took food. I expressed my love for the birds through this art work.

The Special Memory Service

Seoksu Art Project2010, South Korea

Installation and Performance with local citizen

Performance Location: Seoksu Market, Anyang First Street,Anyang River Area,Anyang Art Park
September 2010

Here in the streets of Manan-gu, vendors sell vegetables, fruits and other commodities from the back of small trucks. As they slowly drive around these streets they announce their wares and deals from crackly loud hailers, literally drumming up business with pre-recorded and looped calls. But if those trucks instead of playing music, what if they announce dreams or recite some memorable event? How would that be?

This is the special Truck of The Special Memory Service for these special days.People of Manan-gu who want to share their happy or funny memorable moments and melodies can send to the heavens on these special days. Anything is Welcome - joks, songs, poetry and story telling , whatever you like. Like other people, I also use this truck bear my memories and imagination; the microphone of this truck broadcasts my voice and melodies.

Houses, villages and cities can be demolished but memories, dreams and music can't be wiped out so easily. The Truck will be around in Manan with a purpose of freely sharing our thoughts. I will give everyone this chance to become a street vendors. What do you think?

I transformed the vendor’s truck for a Public performance / communication.

I made a couple of paintings (Each size 288cm×202cm) using forms and techniques that I adopted from Bangladeshi Rickshaw Paintings. A rickshaw is a three wheeled vehicle used for transportation. I used enamel paint and plastic surface which is waterproof. I also wrote ”Manan haseyo!?” on the image in my own language of Bengali. SAP team me wrote “Manan Haseyo!?” in Korean text. These paintings were installed on a structure on the truck and a sound system was also installed (speaker, microphone, and sound recorder).

The whole installation on the truck was difficult for me because this truck is used for transportation purposes and different kinds of jobs and activities. This truck is very important to every artist. The truck was only available a few times to do my work. So I got help from the SAP team helped me with the truck installation and making the structure. On the back of the truck I used a text to invite people to participate in the event. The following text was used:

“저는 석수아트프로젝트에 참여하고 있는
방글라데시 예술가 '파라시' 입니다..만안구민 여러분!여러분의 행복과 추억을 나눠주세요!기억나는 시나 노래를 나눠주세요!그림이나 아름다운 말을 나눠주세요!”

(“I am Palash, an artist from Bangladesh

Welcome to Mannan People

Please let’s share your happy memories!
Please let’s share song you remember!
Please let’s share picture or a message! ")

1st experimental event happened on 1st of September starting at 5pm around the Seoksu Market.

When the truck was moving I broadcast my voice and music on the microphone.

And I was trying to broadcast the following Korean sentences like the vendors.

“만안구민 여러분!여러분의 행복과 추억을 나눠주세요!기억나는 시나 노래를 나눠주세요!그림이나 아름다운 말을 나눠주세요!”

("Welcome to Mannan People

Please let’s share your happy memories!
Please let’s share song you remember!
Please let’s share picture or a message! ")

I invited whoever was interested to write their message on the canvas. But there were other options to share their memories, like singing songs, telling stories, making jokes, writing messages or describing images. Every thing was open.

Most people preferred to write something.

3rd September. On open studio day the truck was only broadcasting my voice and music.

4th September at 4pm: The truck was broadcasting from Seoksu Market to Anyang, near Gwanak station, Anyang First Street and under the Anyang river bridge. The volunteer drove the truck and helped me to invite people.

Anyang First Street is a very busy location .Only a few people responded to me. Some people were angry so I left early and I went to some locations on the way to Gwanak Station. Here some old women were gossiping and playing. They were surprised. Some of them were laughing when they heard the funny voice in strange Korean.

Then I went under the Anyang Bridge. Here I got a lot of peoples responses. People of different ages wrote on the canvas. Some children expressed their feelings by drawing pictures on the canvases.

The last performance happened on the 11th of September. This day I went to Anyang Art park. It was a rainy day. The volunteer drove the truck and helped me to invite people. Here a lot of people enjoyed my project. They wrote on my canvas. Some writing was overlapping. And some writing destroyed because rain water dropped onto the canvas. When the rain stopped people came willingly. The volunteers helped me to invite people.

I wanted to present a surprising transformation. People know about the vendor’s kind of truck. I tried to transform the vendor’s style of broadcasting. I was using music and my voice to invite people. Vendors sell different kinds of good which people need and choose. Vendors are working all day and some goods sell and some don’t. I created also different kinds of options like telling stories, image sharing, singing, writing or whatever they wanted. I went out sometimes for one or two hours. And some people accepted the various options but some didn’t. It’s okay for me. I did not want to pressure the people. In total my activities made a memorable event. I saw that when the decorated truck was moving and broadcasting people looked like they were curious. Some people were laughing when they heard my voice through the microphone. A lot of local people knew me because of these activities.

I collected some of the statements of people who wrote on my canvases. These were translated by Soyoung Hyun. The canvases have more statements. But I didn’t have much time to wait for translation. I got some of the following comments.

1. Developing Anyang

2. You should come to Anyang

3. Lets make a happy and clean MaAngu

4. Lets be good friend forever to sunyoung

5. Go for ManAn gu

6. To Haejung I hope you will give birth of a beautiful baby

7. To enjoy you should practice hard playing Guitar

8. Bravo

9. Nature is Art Park

10. I love you, okey!

11. To citizen of Manan, I hope Manangu will be well developed and my daughter is preparing for get admission to University and I hope she can go to University.

Special Thanks

Mr. Chaneung Park, Sangjo Lee, Tetsuro Kano,  Yoon Ji Lee, Soyoung Hyun

Ibai Hernandorena, Gabriele Horndasch,

The Special Memory Service from Palash Bhattacharjee on Vimeo.

Tide of Time

Performance
Gallery of Chittagong Shilpokola Academy
Date: 6th March 2010

Short time of life. Life is bound by time. A life has many things to do but time is too short for executing those works. We lose our physical or mental strength in the course of time. I was perform with rope . I was binding a long rope which attached the gallery-window with my body and then I revolved in various position for 5 minutes.

Tidal letters

Tidal letters-1
Tidal letters-2'
Site-specific project
December 2009
Khagrachary, Chittagong Hill Tract, Bangladesh.

Tidal Letters, site-specific project, installation, photo from Samdani Art Award show at Dhaka Art Summit 2014 

Boundless tide.....tide carries over things from one place to another. Tide breaks lands and houses, again somewhere it develops island. The sound of tide is beautiful, but sometimes bitter. Hope floats on tide and dream also. Tide carries us from here to there. We find something in tidal waves, again this tide sweeps it away. My address is found in tide and my letter. Tide brings about the memory of the events of bloodshed. Tide never cares about good or bad. Tide is eternal.

In the hill tract of Khagrachari, Chittagong (a city of Bangladesh), there is a village named Khamarpara where we eight young artists participated in a five days Site Specific Art Camp.Tripura, one of the smallest ethnic group of Bangladesh live in and around this village. The hills, rivers and fountains of natural environment give us relief from the tiresome mechanical activities of urban life. Yet, electricity doesn't reach to this village. Small business and farming are the main occupations of the village people. We made our camp in the house of Joydeb Roaja, the only educated man of the village who completed his study from university. He is the only Tripura artist who participated in this Art Camp. Most of the people we met in the village, can't speak Bengali (the national language of Bangladesh) well,but their hospitality pleased us. They also enjoyed our company. We tried to exchange our thoughts and feelings with them. If we could speak Tripura language, we would have become more intimate. When they shared their feelings and experiences with us, we felt they have a kind of discontentment and despair in them. The encroachment of their lands by the powerful Bengali people, Bangladeshi Army's aggression, the political turmoil among their own ethnic groups made fear within them. Apart from these, the tobacco companies of city take away many cultivable land from them with a very small price. This may cause serious natural disaster in future.

We know that, Bengali people struggled to save their language, culture and liberty. But, now it is the Bengali people who attack the culture and honour of the small ethnic groups in Bangladesh with political and social support. For the suppression on these small ethnic groups, the agitation and despair of the ethnic groups are growing intense day by day.

I wanted to share with them some of my feelings that arise seeing their helplessness and despair. In the fourth day of Art Camp, I wrote a letter in my own language, Bengali. Joydev Roaja translated the letter in Kokborok language (Kokborok is the native language of the Tripura people) . Kokborok language has no individual alphabets, this language is expressed through Bengali alphabets in the letter.

Tidal Letters -1
Date: 4 December
Space: The Tea stall of Khamarpara village in Khagrachary

I installed hundreds of enveloped Xerox copies of the letters decorated with flowers on the only tea stall in the village where people used to take tea. People who came into the tea stall gave glances at the letters, and some of them read them. The letter in the Tripuri language created interest among the Tripuri people. The village people, who have at least completed primary education, can read. The other people, who cannot read at all, can hear someone reading aloud the letter. This is the first part of my project.

Tidal Letters- 2
Date: 5 December, Morning
Space: Chengi river in Khagrachary

In the second part, I enveloped about hundreds of Xerox copies of this letter and decorated the letters with flowers in the special process, then floated them on the river waves. People have to cross a river named Chengi to reach the village. This is a small stream; anyone can cross it by walking. There are more villages in that direction, toward which the river flows. I made some boat-like objects using a banana tree and floated the enveloped letters on the object. I floated the letters on the day of our return. That was a fog-swarmed morning. The small boats started their journey to some unknown destination.

" Well wishes hilly rivers,

Fountains and forests made us oblivious of the monotonous urban life. Your hospitality has pleased us. We are going to forget the colour of blood. We complain in necessity or without
necessity. We laugh and weep. We go to authority for saving us. Authority is the savior who can save. We are not happy and don't let anyone to be happy. Even a trifle subject can arise rivalry among us. Your complains are repressed. We, the so-called civilized fools pretend not to understand your despair. We never try to realize that your authority is brutal. Every cell of our brain is becoming toxicant. Before considering ourselves as human beings,we consider ourselves as communities. We know, you are enduring various attacks form different sides. We know the bloodstained assault that came upon you. Still you are facing discrimination. The covetous people of city are destroying the fertility of your lands. We are also helpless. We love beauty but incapable to protect it. We are floating with the tidal waves.
Take care.

Palash."

-This was my letter which was translated in Tripura language.

Sixer......

Performance
Patenga Sea Beach Chittagong
Object size: 100x100x100cm
Materials: Steel wire, net, oxide color
Porapara Performance Art Open Studio
19th September 2009

Six...Again six... The victory is obvious if we get six over and over again. After the surety of victory there are more expectations.  It is the time for the endless journey of six. Six has no fatigue.
I made a dice with one to six spots on the six faces. Then I entered into the dice and moved inside it to show up the point six. The craving for six that we are bearing in our heart inspired me to do this performance.

Suspicion

Policritix Print Project
1st Group Exhibition of all Policritizans:14th April - 16th April
Gallery of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Chittagong

Last Group Exhibition of all Policritizans: 13th - 18th June 2009
Venue: Gallery of Alliance Francaise de Chittagong.

From the time immemorial, we are struggling for saving our own existence. We still survive. But this achievement also faces crisis. Man created crisis for man. Perhaps our moral feelings have started to destroy. I feel the lacking of sensitiveness in the society. Perhaps this lacking would drag the destruction of our
existence more close to us.

Insensitive person can be compared with a fossil. In this art work,I used form of the animal fossil, human form, form of unknown object seeing which we may imagine there was something like that. I took the prints on leather using intaglio process. The Art Camp Policritix (politics+crisis+prints) was decorated with discussion, idea sharing and art projection.The first camp took place in 17th -27th December, 2008,and the last one took place in 14th - 30th May 2009. In the last camp, I named my art works as "Suspicion". Before these prints,I took only one print which i named as "If we are missing",with this same thought I took some other print. All of these i displayed on the floor.