The Ground Beneath My Feet, was an exhibition of cutting edge performance art from around the world.

Situated on a barge docked at Captain of Ports Jetty on the Mandovi River in Goa, the exhibition explored the rapidly transforming relationship between human bodies, their natural environments, and technological infrastructures.

Barges in Goa transport large cargo of iron ore and minerals across inland waterways and ports as far as the Arabian Sea. Against a backdrop of the corroding history of industrialisation and the reverberating sirens of maritime trade, this exhibition reckons with the turbulent waters of geopolitics today, hinting at unrealised utopias and dark unknowable pasts. As bodies are hauled along the swelling rivers and rising seas and landscapes appear fragmented, the performance artworks and barge came together in this exhibition to pose the question: what is the ground beneath our feet?

The performance artworks in the exhibition were unique pieces that each of the eight artists composed and were executed live, in-situ. Vishal K. Dar, as Mise-en-scene Director of exhibition, brought to life the barge through three distinct immersive environments (Fathom, Time Oars, and Azimuth) that reshaped the site over the eight days of the Festival.

The Ground Beneath My Feet was part of After Event: Performance Art and its Mediations, a collaboration between Serendipity Arts Trust, HH Art Spaces, and Asia Art Archive in India.

(b. 1968, Germany)

Anja Ibsch has been actively practicing as an artist and curator dedicated to performance and installation art since 1993. Currently based in Berlin, she creates artworks that explore personal, cultural and social aspects of human presence that connect with and extend to the earth. In her works, Ibsch characteristically tests her bodily limits by creating images that combine conceptual concerns with the palpability of physical endurance and strength. Ibsch is inspired by myths of sainthood, sacrifice and release. Her works have included among other actions her eating dust, offering the surface of her skin as a nesting ground for worms, and melting ice on her eyes. Over the years, she has performed in various cities in Aisa, Europe, North and South America. Ibsch is a member of various organizations such as the Rheinische Fachhochschule Köln, the Performersterstttisch, and the APAB (Association for Performance Art in Berlin).

(b. 1988, Russia)

Regina Demina is a trained actress and dancer and also practices as an artist. Her works tend to come alive at night as she explores sensations that border on eeriness and morbid romanticism. Demina draws inspiration from East European mythology, Internet hyperactivity, Hollywood’s glamour, and rave culture that she discovered as a teenager in the Parisian Banlieue. Since her recent graduation from The Fresnoy National Studio Of Contemporary Arts, her works have focused on sound design and installation where she sings and collaborates visually with the experimental group ‘Music for Eggplant’. Demina performs for the House of Drama troupe and La Horde, a collective of choreographers and directors in France. Regina Demina moved to France in 1993 and grew up between two cultures as her mother is Ashkenazi Jewish from Uzbekistan and her father Siberian Orthodox.

(Japan)

Yuko Kaseki is a Butoh dancer, performer, improviser, choreographer and teacher based in Berlin since 1995. Her solo and ensemble performances and improvisations have been held throughout Asia, Europe, Russia, North and South America, and Australia. Her works incorporate Butoh dance as well as performance art involving objects, texts, and soundscapes. Kaseki has had a long-standing interest in breaking borders of physical possibilities as she collaborates with mixed ability artists and performers. She performs and organizes a dance-music improvisation series “AMMO-NITE GIG” (Vol.1 - 48 and on going) with international performers and musicians in Berlin that started in 2004. In 1995, Yuko Kaseki along with Marc Ates founded the dance company cokaseki.

(b. 1976, Bangladesh)

Kabir Ahmed Masum Chisty works with performance, poetry, drawing and animation. Based in Narayanganj and Dhaka, he explores through his art the depths of human psyche. Often working through the intricate meshwork of the relationships between mind and body, body and matter, myth and reality, time and space, his practice attempts to install in everyday surroundings a window into imaginary spaces, dreamscapes, and parallel realities. In the past he has presented his works in Asia, Europe and North America.

(b. 1991, India)

Diptej Vernekar’s art practice extends across different mediums that include performance, charcoal drawings, video, sculpted and found objects. His interest lies in exploring the different ways by which objects, spaces and surroundings become part of our identities. By stitching together faint memories of day-to-day occurrences with personal myths and collected stories, Vernekar attempts to weave a delicate web of visual poems with every work. Believing that stories can never be recalled in entirety, his performances play with the audience’s memory as he employs mechanical repetition of gestures, simple acts of drawing and erasing, and scratching and unearthing surfaces. Born in Kumbharjua village in Goa, he hails from a carpenter family. His works in the past have been shown in Kochi, New Delhi, and in Goa where he participated in the artist residency programme at HH Art Spaces.

(b.1976, India) Bhagwati Prasad works with performance, sculpture, video, graphics and research to refigure ways in which humans, machines and infrastructures intersect to perform the subterranean operations of a city. His works track the circuitry of water lines behind concrete walls, the bellowing of the earth in dug up metro lines, and the insurgency of tools when factories are asleep. Prasad is the author of the graphic book, The Water Cookbook published in 2010. He started researching popular culture and media life and histories in Delhi, which resulted in him co-authoring Tinker.Solder.Tap in 2009, a graphic novel on the history of media piracy in Delhi. His recent performances include the ‘Theory Opera’ in the 11th Shanghai Biennale, 2016, and Shit in ‘Talking Shit’, Delhi, 2014. Prasad works out of New Delhi.

(b.1980, India) Hemant Sreekumar is an artist & technologist. He performs synthetic audio compositions using principles of emergence and noise. His works respond to notions of decay, generative bias and loss of semantics. He has been tinkering with radio frequencies, broken appliances and crushed magnetic tapes since a very young age. Since the last five years he has been employing codes and data mediated processes to construct time based environments that fluctuate in textures. Since 2013, he has been curating ‘Disquiet’, a sound/noise programme. Sreekumar is based in Bangalore.