00:00It's like you have a picture but it has a lot of missing pieces, you have a jigsaw
00:08but a lot of pieces are missing.
00:10So silence is those pieces, silence completes the context, it brings forth those horrors
00:17in the society or the cultural fabric or the political fabric that generally we do not
00:21talk about.
00:23Silence is like the subconscious in the human mind.
00:29If you can talk about Paper Planes and this idea of silence and how you look at silence
00:32basically.
00:33Paper Planes actually started in 2019, somewhere in 2019 and it got aggravated with the fact
00:42when I was kind of forced into not having any connection with the family, no know-hows
00:53of where the family or how the family is.
00:56So it was a general situation back at that time because there were curfews and cuts.
01:03And you were in Australia?
01:04I was in Australia at that time, I had no way of contacting my family for three months,
01:09it went on for three months, I guess 90 days is the number stuck in my head.
01:14And during that phase there was a sense of helplessness, irritability, like why?
01:22If something had to be done, you did it, why would you cut the communication off?
01:28And also what added to it was like there were people who were ill back home and you had
01:34no way of knowing how they are, did something significant happen?
01:38So this all led to this very basic kind of a feeling, this helplessness about we can't
01:45even deal with this simple situation which seems non-existent in many parts of the world.
01:54I had previously worked with a group of students in Australia and at that time also the curfews
01:59were a bit frequent here.
02:00So one day due to the projects they were proposing for kind of approval, I decided to indulge
02:14with the students in a different manner, I asked them that okay, you are saying all
02:17of these but they are fine, how if we look at the fact that I am your supervisor and
02:23you are not able to connect to me tomorrow?
02:26And they were like what do you mean, that's impossible, we have internet, we have phones,
02:30so how can we not connect with you?
02:33And I told them that see, we get communication cut-offs very commonly here, they couldn't
02:41believe it and they were like that's impossible, that's very much possible, what you can do
02:47is you can open up the Google and you can search this.
02:50And they did and they came back to me and they said yes it happens, so we had no idea
02:55it happens, it happens very much in the real time.
02:58So my question to you is how would you tackle a situation like this as artists?
03:04So what would be your mode, how would you investigate it and what would your questions
03:08be?
03:09So I made a project out of it and the project was also on the similar lines, they didn't
03:12make paper planes but what they did was like they took all the aspects into consideration
03:19and they found the impossibility of sending me anything and so they prepared a courier
03:26pack and they labelled it and they left it on the gallery floor to be posted, which it
03:32couldn't be posted and that was a very beautiful work from those students, it was a work that
03:37was invigorating on many levels, not just fulfilling the assignment, it was actually
03:44transcending the assignment by far by taking into account the global scenarios or the nuances
03:50in the global functioning of the communities and trying to apply it on themselves and giving
03:56a critical analysis of it.
03:59So similarly when this project started manifesting, those were the questions with me and I started
04:04reverting back to the basic question of the desire of having the freedom to at least connect
04:13with people and that was somehow being taken away.
04:17So I went to the paper planes and the paper planes because of their innocent image.
04:23Did you make any paper planes when you were a kid?
04:25Yes, we did.
04:26You grew up in Baramulla, right?
04:27I did grow up in Baramulla, I did make paper planes although they were very frustrating
04:32for me at points because sometimes I wanted to make those really intricate ones and I couldn't.
04:40For me it was mostly like paper planes because Baramulla, what's noticeable in Baramulla
04:48even now is that after 3 or 4, you'll see this moment of air, this breeze flowing or
04:56sometimes the wind is quite strong also but it's throughout there or mostly between the
05:02spring and the autumn season.
05:05So every day even if it's 28 degrees in the evening you will have a respite, you will
05:09have a bit of rain, some wind.
05:12Water bodies were a bit far.
05:15You have Baramulla as geographically if you know it, it's divided into two by the Jhelum.
05:22So there are not many access points to the river as such and the residential areas are
05:31a bit towards the insides and trails of the city.
05:37Saying that, I would make these planes and they would just be fascinating to watch fly
05:43and when I later came back to it in my research, when this idea of constructing paper planes
05:53struck me, I started definitely looking into the meaning and the symbolism or the metaphor
05:59of this paper plane, why do we kind of do it even as children and the only reason I
06:05found was that the desire to experience freedom or to attain something that appears unattainable
06:12because for a child to do that is a pinnacle of creativity and for any individual to desire
06:20a sense of freedom or doing something that they feel they have been barred to do marks
06:26a nature that is critical.
06:33But that being said on the conceptual front, the image of the paper plane is always silent.
06:40It does not have any, it's not loud per se, if I have to rephrase the last phase.
06:48It's not loud.
06:49It's just a subtle representation of an airplane that a child makes and that's what made it
06:58interesting for me, having such a simple image and carrying such a weighted connotation.
07:06It allowed, it kind of pushed me more into looking into it to the point where the project
07:12started growing and metamorphosizing into different executionary or different executions
07:20in such, different completions in such.
07:24Like I started with the idea to have these made by the people and then collecting it
07:29and then displaying it in the vitrines, like in the museum setting.
07:32But then it went on where I wanted to have it as a correspondence so that this would
07:39serve as a feature, as a letter.
07:41And then finally, I wanted to merge both of the initial and the later one.
07:47And in between also, I wanted to do these digital drawings of it, kind of having this
07:52kind of a labeled, classified aspect of paper plane, like I call this work as anatomy of
08:03paper planes to give that a sense of a more dissected and investigated form.
08:11Because silence is not taking out everything.
08:14Silence is just taking out the loud parts, bringing the noise down to the point where
08:22it feels like a whisper rather than a shout.
08:26So I think that's what's, that's how I work with the silence in my work and in my understanding
08:33of the issues or questions that I work on.
08:38Silence has been that kind of a part for me since my early childhood and it had continued
08:45through.
08:48But yeah, sometimes you, when you are experimenting in some works, you do not, earlier works,
08:54I was not being conscious of the silence, but it was only after a certain time when
08:59I wanted my work to grow in the sense I wanted it to be more mature.
09:04I wanted it to be more interactive.
09:09I wanted it to have a sense of inclusiveness in terms of the reader, that the reader is
09:14a part of it also.
09:16It's only then when I started analysing my work and its elements that I found that on
09:21the most important element that is missing in that context would be silence.
09:25So that's my relationship in terms of my practice with silence and has been for quite some time
09:29now.
09:30And it's best to have that silence if you are telling stories that have never been told.
09:35If you are bringing, if you are thinking of bringing up sentiments or if you are trying
09:43to reconnect the reader with the sensation or the experience, I think silence would
09:49be the best part to do it.
09:52Silence is kind of that sensitiser in it, in all of it.
10:01That's my understanding.
