Detritus – We are what we throw away

Brief Description

Detritus is a multiform contemporary performance that proposes a lightness of being and living in a world that is overburdened by what we consume and discard. Through its participatory nature, the work invites viewers to contemplate space for all living and nonliving elements that share space and time with us.

Process

Our process was initiated online with several impulse sessions for the Detritus team and partners by those working in the field. Nobina Gupta of Disappearing Dialogues, artist-scholar-researcher, spoke to us about the East Kolkata Wetlands and their importance, ecology, indigenous and natural technologies of purification, precarious conditions of wetlands and its communities. This was followed by Marc Rees from Wales UK, a creator and curator of installation and performance that artistically responds to place and community. Marc took us on a cognitive journey to our childhoods to create maps/patterns based around home and locale and the emotional connections to it. We then explored these ideas through movement. We then observed how the landscape had been altered with time ! These sessions were followed by detailed discussions around green policy, consumerism, relationships between art and activism and related ideas. All of this was carried into the studio as we started working on the piece with our choreographers. The rehearsals, notes, dialogues, preparation, and construction of the entire piece were laid threadbare for audiences to view at Experimenter - Hindustan Road, where the piece was birthed.

Detailed Description of Detritus

Detritus is traditionally organic debris that is typically through processes of decomposition and decay assimilated back into the ecosystem. Detritus however also indicates waste, remnants and debris of human activity, a mass accumulated from objects that we did not need in the first place or were not able to find enough usage for, objects that were never meant to be absorbed back into the system. The traditional detritus is now altered into an ever-expanding mountain of waste burning in toxic flames, breeding ground of disease and infection, where a population of humans and animals scavenge to survive, a Frankenstein of our making that we have lost control over. Through the 40 min piece we work with exploration of the problem and the proliferation of the problem into a monster, Detritus who looms large over mankind, contaminates and disrupts all natural processes of regrowth and regermination. Hope is not a strategy but community action is. The audience is invited into the piece at a critical point, as stakeholders in this problem and therefore its solution.

Credits