The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Your video Leaf fall documents a performance by a group of actors. Over the course of a day, they denude a Peepal or Bodhi tree by hand, leaving behind a single sprig. How did you go about making the work? Leaf fall was shot in autumn 2007 on a large stud farm in the countryside between Mumbai and Pune. I had been looking for a large tree, but not so large that I couldn’t do it in a single day. I knew it had to happen in a day and I knew that the leaves had to fall. Leaving the single sprig at the end was very important: I wanted to attract attention to that last remaining group of leaves. I had injured myself doing a performance a few months before that, so my arm was in a cast and my chin was busted. Having actors do the project for me was a way of fragmenting myself. I wanted the group of actors to look like a community, akin to the community of leaves that have fallen from the tree. Are the actors from a specific community? I was very careful to choose actors who could appear to have an intimate relationship, not just to each other, but to the tree as well. With one exception, they were all from relatively modest village backgrounds. They’ve had immense experience climbing trees. There is also that stilted aspect to their spoken English, as opposed to them speaking a language they’re more comfortable with. I was aiming for that jarring note when you hear something spoken. It seems like they’re channelling something. They don’t necessarily own the words. They’re very self-possessed in the moment of speaking. Do people respond to the work as committing violence against nature? I had that response prior to shooting the video, especially when I was trying to recruit actors and crew. The most urban, polished and well-educated were actually the ones who said no. The people who ended up saying yes were ones who have experience with trees. It’s a deciduous tree in autumn, after all. Which is to say, the tree was due to shed its leaves anyway. You see, I grew up Jain, not eating any roots, because if you eat the roots you destroy the plant. I know that as long as I’m not destroying the roots, the plant is fine. In fact, I recorded all of the conversations with crew and actors on tape. They asked the same question as you, why am I violating the tree? And that led to some lengthy and useful conversations. Once they were transcribed I distilled them into a handful of aphoristic lines. This gave me both structure and lines for the actors to say during the piece. The Peepal or Bodhi tree is sacred. People don’t cut it for firewood, traditionally. I was raised Jain, and though I’m not at all religious, I’m very conscious of spiritual needs that people around me have. The locals who worked on the farm are Hindu, and asked me to pray to this tree. I told them I didn’t know how. ‘Just talk to it,’ they said. ‘Tell the tree why you need to do what you’re doing. Let it know why this is important for you so that everything go well for you tomorrow.’ So I sat there late at night and talked to the tree. I told it, ‘I’m making a self-portrait. I know I’m doing this to you, but it’s a way of me doing it to myself. It’s the only way I can approach that sense of self I’m experiencing right now. Forgive me if you don’t enjoy this experience, but perhaps you will.’ The spoken lines are one underlying structure to the art work. The bamboo scaffold is another. It seems to confine the activity to the space of the tree. It confines the tree and also gives it a very abstract, rectilinear framework. But for someone in India, it’s just an ordinary scaffold. It immediately registers as scaffolding, not just for urban constructions, but also for ritualistic rural gatherings. Bamboo structures are easily erected for village festivities, for rituals or even for itinerant troupes of musicians, so it connotes festivity and ritual as well as construction. All of these ideas were important to me. Interestingly, for some people who don’t know my work, the response is anthropological. People have asked, ‘Where do they do this? Where is this ritual?’ Without the context of me or my work, they just assumed I was documenting something that pre-exists. That’s a fascinating way to think about art: the production of new rituals. It’s a way to affect reality and to understand the reality that precedes your intervention. Interviewed by Reuben Keehan, February, 2012. NEHA CHOKSI An interview 99