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“Devolution#5”-the being is a LIVE ART performance, which attempts to transcend cultures in search for a common understanding about ‘being’ a HUMAN. Reflecting on one of Jean Paul Sartre’s comment, “We are what we are not and we are not what we are”, my concerns about ‘presence’ and ‘being’ within a cultural context became significant to my performance.

The contradictory nature of human existence that is in constant tension between its universal transcendent nature and its added social and cultural values makes this world into a paradoxical theatre. Life itself has become expressive in its nature of living with hi-tech virtual and simulated gadgets and environments, hence sometimes fusing Art with Life and vice versa. Each part of our life is formulated as an act for that day, which becomes our memory; a past that is often stored in ‘files’ and ‘folders’.

The importance of this act of contemplation remains for me an ethical and meditative practice that seeks a redemptive transcendence, but recognising the contingency of the human. This manufacturing of thought via a mechanical rendering of soul is fitted into the finer aspects of my journey that provides a simple evocative power. This live art also stands parallel to all those finished works of art, which are defined by a ‘static beauty’. This is to express the occasional, circumstantial nature, the real aim of art being integration with the present- day world. Hence Art and Life will remain as a single indivisible expression of humans in quest of a vital imperative.

Our lives are centred on spiritual, philosophical or religious interventions and ideologies, which sometimes politically dominate and control our lives and can become dogmas. A constructed evidence of this process is our history. Perhaps, it might be better to evoke the spiritual in us to outlive this traumatic history, which initiated civilization some thousands of years ago.

SUDHIR KUMAR DUPPATI Teacher: VISUAL ART DEPT.MARLBOROUGH BOYS COLLEGE BLENHEIM, NZ, Email: sudhird@mbc.school.nz www.sudhirkduppatiprofile.blogspot.com 25th April 2012