Where does a city live? We try to find our cities in blurry dots on copious maps, in familiar letters on identity cards, in hasty announcements at an airport lounge. Yet, do we ever come back to a city that we have left behind? Does the city fly off like a splinter as we wait, trying to hold on to its edges? I walked, collecting these lazy thoughts, through still rooms and idle staircases of an aged house tucked in a corner of a thin alley in North Calcutta. I could spend a solitary hour at Souradeep Roy’s performance, Terminal, developed in collaboration with the visual artist, Soumyadeep Roy, at Studio Bari, Calcutta. Both the artists engaged with a deep paradox of modern cities — people move, places change, loyalties shift while memories, like a heavy drop of cloud, hang in forgotten homes, Metro stations and old benches.
Souradeep has attempted to develop Terminal by weaving together radio play, autobiographical voice and objects installed in space. The radio play, shared as a patchwork of interviews and personal memory, was extremely evocative. A camera that constantly recorded my solitary presence fuelled unavoidable self-reflection. This segment of the piece touched upon the political history of old neighbourhoods of the city that nurture, resist, fracture. I found myself becoming a part of this conversation in silence and in echoes.
This was followed by an intimate interaction with Souradeep, who positioned himself as the character to whom the unknown voices could be pivoted. The performer’s ‘presence’ could have been worked on with more intensity so that the audience-participant-listener feels that the artist is evolved and that the artist can contain. The different vignettes of the piece did not speak to one another. But the way in which this performance addresses one audience at a time is an interesting plunge in the field of performance art in Calcutta. The piece ended in a theatrical stillness of the melting sun and the wakefulness of an old neighbourhood.