THEERTHA PERFORMANCE PLATFORM 2019
The 3rd edition of TPP will be held from the 15th - 18th of March, 2019 at Theertha International Artists
Collective, 39/4 A, D. S. Senanayake Mawatha, Borella. There are about 39 artists from 12 Countries Including Sri Lanka taking part in this event: Bangladesh, Canada, Germany, Greece, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Portugal, South Korea, Thailand and Sri Lanka.
Participating Foreign Artists:
Arpita Akhanda (India), Azam Tabatabei (Iran), B. Ajay Sharma (India), Beate Linne (Germany), Bhisaji Gadekar (India), Diniz Sanchez (Portugal), Ernesto Daniel Levy (Israel), Fenia Kotsopoulou (Greece), Ian Mozdzen (Canada), Jeetin Rangar (India), Mahmoud Maktabi (Iran), Mamta Sagar with Siddartha M S, Chand Pasha N S, and Namana B N (India), Mongkol Plienbangchang (Thailand), Natasha Jozi (Pakistan), Nopawan Sirivejkul (Thailand), Park Jihyoung (South Korea), Parmeshwar Jolad (India), Sharker Nasrin Toontoon (Bangladesh), Smitha Kariappa (India), Tamar Raban (Israel).
Participating Local Artists:
Bandu Manamperi, GR Constantine, Janani Cooray, Kirusan Sivagnanan, Lakni Prasanjali, Lohan Gunaweera, Omali Radhika, Priyanthi Anusha, Sivasubramaniam Kajendran, Susiman Rinoshan, Thulanjani Nirosha, Danushka Marasinghe, Gamini Akmeemana, Imaad Majeed, Isuru Kumarasinghe, K K Srinath Chathuranga, Kumari Kumaragamage, Lalith Manage poetry presentation by Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta.
This year’s concept “Texting Being”
It’s been more than half a century since Derrida made his famous remark ‘il n’y a pas de horse-texte’, variously translated as ‘there is nothing outside of the text’, or, ‘there is no outside-text’. The remark itself gained notoriety, being accused of misdemeanors from textual idealism to political conservatism. Today, however, half a century later, it seems, as idea has returned with a vengeance, like the Freudian Thing, perhaps, even, with an ironic twist that would render Derrida himself uncomfortable. At a superficial level, on the one hand, our day-to-day existence is entirely assimilated into, and constantly bombarded by, the telecommunication and social media networks, allowing the affective totality of our beings to be transferred and circulated as texts and symbols that are rapidly unifying the whole of humanity into a single platform. Ironic here is the question asked by Facebook, every time one logs into his/her account: ‘What’s on your mind…?’ On the other hand, all these mutations at the level of subjectivity occurs on the backdrop of a globalised capital with its monetary signs, a system that is by its nature all-consuming, total and planetary, colonising not only the places of the planet but also its disparate temporalities. The total dominance of the textual, one might claim, is now completed: il n’y a pas de horse-texte.
Where does art fit in this picture? This is especially a question of singular relevance with regard to the still novel form of performance art. For, the quintessential medium of this form is the Body, which is canonically considered as the polar opposite of the Mind that works through and exist within our discursive, textual universes. One obvious response to this proposition, of course, is the classical Post-structuralist position that takes the Body itself as a Sign, entirely overridden by the signifier, without any residue in the Real, a Body that is completely reduced to its symbolic function of meaning generation. This is one possible way of interpreting the medium of body in its various manifestations in performance art. This is at the cost of reducing the singularity to one among an endless line of objects that can stand in for the artistic idea, leaving behind the materiality of the body as the Real that which resists, as Lacan famously puts it, Symbolisation.