First day of the Residency

Posted on 3rd Sep 2015

First day of Residency: Austria
Morning meeting. Outline. Strategy. 
And the memory of Qara Koz came back…
To execute such project, I collaborated with Bangladeshis and Moldavians in Venice. 
Ronni Ahmmed was not present, but, a key person to kick off the project spiritually. 
I gratefully remember the contribution of the artist Wahid Zaman, and Arte Communications, and Paolo de Grandis. 
I am re-designing the Qara koz, as a public project, to be performed in different cities. 
My Curatorial note:

The Tomb of Qara Köz recalls the campaign--from the maternal matrix /womb to entropic little deaths/tomb,at tangents and accords with transformative desire--of the Mughal princess Qara Köz who exerted powerful influence in the Florence of the Medici.
The Tomb is organized in three planes: the multifarious narrative of Qara Köz established in the collective imagination, by Salman Rushdie's The Encantess of Florence and by the films Mughal-e-Azam(1960) and Jodha Akbar (2008) is (trans)located between realities in form of a performative architecture to activate an open network--and commons of emotion and memory--of Bengali (illegal) immigrants who re impacting the psychogeographical tapestry of Venice; 2nd plane, springing from the shifting layer of associations--e.g.the main body of the pyramid consisting of 1254 glasses recalls Calvino's Marco Polo--invoking the tales of fluid Venice(s); the cartoonish drawings on each egg employ fragments of Jacopo Bassano,Veronese, Jacopo Tintoretto,Paolo Farinati to raconteur the tale of Robert Coover's Pinocchio's adventures , Thomas Mann's Aschenbach in search of purity , Mahler reading Li Tai-Po ...
The Tomb's 3rd plane pays homage to Ai Weiwei's Documenta 12's project, Fairytale, and invites 101 Bengalis and records/transmits their secret desires as these new immigrants pay alms and prays to the Tomb of Qara Köz to make their wishes to come true . 

The Tomb of Qara Köz, in an uninhibited polyphenomenality of display, evidences lived live(s)--in transformation,in polyphony; its synthetic/syncretic approach,rooted in Opera Aperta-like traditional Bengali theater, attempts to stage a conceptual muse en abyme.