SURA MEDURA - Blog 1

 

I came to Sri Lanka 12 days early - to settle in and do to some solo travel (something I have been putting off in my life for too long and never in Asia - got to face your fears as an artist! ). After a few days in Hikkaduwa I headed for the hills on the central railway line up to Kandy, Nuwara Eliya and Elle.

Sri Lanka is surprisingly easy to travel in, coupled with bouts of exciting and dizzying intensity.


It was great to see the landscape change and see how people are living on the land - my main point of interest in coming here. It didn’t take long for the generous spirit of its people and natural beauty to win me over. There are however clearly some major risks to the health and wellbeing of the ecology and people here. It doesn’t take long to notice on the train and at roadsides the smell of burning plastic filling your nostrils as people get rid of their domestic waste. Plastic waste is endemic. What is really going on here?


Now we all have been back gathered in Hikkaduwa for two weeks now..settling in and digging deep. Everyone on the residency has such a varied arts practice and I am learning so much from being around them. They have all doing such epic inspiring projects back home.


I gathered quite a lot of ideas and digital materials on my initial trip. SD Cards were fully maxed out. I have been letting that all wash around my hied and spur me on to do some creative experiments.


More of which I will share in later posts…


There is quite a lot of scattered information and commentary out there, around the ecological situation in Sri Lanka. I feel I need to be informed given I am interviewing people in Colombo around these issues this weekend. I have been reading about the unique and plentiful biodiversity and range of habitats, deforestation, the banning of pesticides, the effects of climate change on the island, the benefits of small market gardens and the poisoning of vegetables with heavy metals.


At the same time there is too much to get my head around but also there is a lack of up to date official information and huge gaps. The political and economic backdrop to this is still remaining elusive. This is part of the problem for Sri Lanka. As one activist said to me this week the politicians are “designing policies for the influencers and not for the betterment of the people.”


I have been lifting out key bits of the text out of context, the sharp pointy bits or more poetic moments and rearranging them in to a sort of script/poem.


This research is ongoing… They inform part of the story I need to tell and it feels important to find a creative way to share this information.


The cycle of water is vital to the county. The island receives a lot of rainfall but it is at major risk of contamination. As I observed in the high mountains of the central highlands where there are lot of tea plantations and small farms where it then tumbles down in fantastic waterfalls and finds multiple reuses in industry and homes and through an incredible myriad of irrigation channels on its way to the sea. I want to find a visual poetic way of telling this story.



I have been taking some time to move. Researching and being aware of the ecological situation brings up a constant thread of emotions from exhaustion at the situation to a sort of sadness/grieving to a helplessness. These feelings, lodged in the body, are important to listen to, work with, acknowledged and to become gesture, movement or dance. Improvising and seeing what kinds of movement comes out - the human reality  - I find they tell their own story away from sound, visual or text. It gets me away from the laptop! I’d like to build it in to the finished work somehow. 

Under construction  - Bamboo Stupa at Elle Temple

Coconut Fibre Rope

Standing Buddha Statue under construction at Dodanduwa

  
Bamboo is a common building material, used to prop up concrete construction and for scaffolding for the making of Stupas and Buddha statues.  I have become fascinated by these bamboo frames and their binding of coconut fibre rope - all natural materials - strong, ancient and archaic looking. They have this striking look to the eye. They are a bit like the visual digital 3d forms I sometimes make.

I want to try and build such a structure and projection map on it - place some of the music/sound I have been making placed among it.

It could become a sort of vessel and containers an installation and symbolic house for the materials I am gathering while I am here.  A spiritual immersive space, where I can give an audience an experience of the layers of this country.

The benefits of the new Sura Medura centre are becoming apparent - sitting out as it does on a peninsula on a tropical lagoon. The architecture of the space; letting the outside in and inside out means you can constantly shift your working practice depending on your creative need and the changing of the weather. Not to forget the cycle along the railway line to get to it!

Some of my fellow residents and I are off to Colombo for the weekend to attend the Listening for the Future Symposium. I am taking the opportunity of being there to interview people from the Centre for Environmental Justice, Dilmah Conservation and Mr Wijesinghe who has been working with a team of volunteers to protect the rainforests.

You have to just go with NOW with Sri Lanka, something wonderful will just come up! Ditch what you are doing and Go!

http://www.suramedura.com/