Curator's Report 

April - May 2014. Kalga, Himachal Pradesh.

By Shazeb Arif S., [Co-founder, Curator and Residency Director] 

In our dreams, we meet new people every time we sleep and we find ourselves in new places, we’ve never been to. It’s been just over 6 months since I had that first phone conversation with Hashim Qayoom (Karma Yatri) who spoke about a dream that he had of setting up an arts platform in his beloved village of Kalga ensconced in the divine Parvati Valley of Himachal Pradesh. And because dreams give you no warning of what to expect, when I first turned the last bend on the trek up to Kalga, it was like somewhere on the way, I’d slipped behind closed eyes and landed in a dream. A dream that was to be selflessly shared by a global community and that would only flourish in the sincere emotional and physical beauty of Kalga. The original dream, though now concluded in time and space, has rendered another dream, symbolic of our collective experiences at Kyta. The dream is 22-min long and is titled aLpha.   

Kyta was initiated with a long term vision of building sustainability for Kalga while retaining its essence of being a Himalayan village. The flip side with such special places is that over time they are commercialized which lead to more destruction than creation in such contexts. Hashim believed that the intervention of art would be the most favourable solution to address the situation. Bianca Mendonca, Co-Founder of Kyta and otherwise a mountaineering expedition leader, connected the two of us and the fact that it is behind us now seems hard to believe. In all, I think Hashim and Karma Yatri have been successful in creating what the best in travel business could be envying now. Art and travel, after all, have always gone hand in hand, whether a traveller is an artist by conventions or definition, or not.

Hashim’s purpose being deeply entrenched in creating a distinguished and stimulating travel and living experience with Kyta in Kalga, I found the perfect partner to establish an experiential multi-artist exchange involving cross-disciplinary and cutting-edge collaborative experiments. What I’d noticed in the few artist residencies I had visited was that even though multiple artists lived together, the opportunity of their collective presence was never leveraged - as the purpose of most residencies is to offer, and for the artists to receive, personal time and space to create. I’d decided to go around that and investigate what happens when 10 artists-in-residence, from different practices and skills, nationalities, unite to create a singular artistic result between them while using Kalga as the canvas of their creation. Add to this a set of visiting artists who’d extend the collaborative possibilities of the program.

While Hashim and Bianca began putting Kyta together on ground in Kalga by setting up what has been the best travel and living I’ve experienced anywhere, I was amidst one of the most chaotic curatorial processes trying to compose a group of 10 artists who came from diversely different artistic backgrounds. Along the way, there were multiple instances when I believed that the artist group was complete but the situation didn’t stop unravelling until we had the final group of 10 probably 2 weeks before the program began. And the fact that we had only given a 3-month window for the artists to accept the invitation and figure out their travel funding to New Delhi, we still managed a group with 5 international participants from 4 continents and 5 artists from different parts of India – this was only building our confidence in what was to emerge from this endeavour in its very 1st edition.

The artists-in-residence at Kyta were Alec Schachner, an American musician and linguist teaching in Vietnam; Sachin Pillai, an experimental film maker from Mumbai; Fernando Visockis, a new media artist and performer with diversified interests in audio and video installations from Brazil; Rashi Jain, a potter / sculptor from Mumbai; Wei Ching, a Taiwanese dancer, choreographer and theatre artist; Ameet Singh, an architect from Delhi with interests in aural / visual experiences; Damian Linossi, a photographer, sculptor and new media artist from Argentina; Sanaya Ardeshir, a fairly popular independent music performer and composer from Mumbai who’s work goes by the name of Sandunes; Emile Degorce, a French ceramic artist whose primary focus is magic in contemporary art; and Megha Katyal, a weaving-based artist from Rohtak who is giving the age-old tradition a completely new spin with her new media work. Haily Grenet, a French curator working in Seoul where I’d first met her helped me tremendously in co-curating Kyta along with contributions from my co-founder, Bianca.

The visiting artists over the month included senior artist and curator from Taiwan, Shanglin Wu; Jaya Ramachandani who will debut with her fascinating festival called The Story of Light later this year in Goa; Avinash Rebello who explored multiple facets of experiments in the blind as part of research for his endeavour, From Ear to Ear; Vinny Bhagat, a New Delhi-based artist who runs Shivnakaun Media Group with various audio-visual projects including Yamuna, an on-going media performance-based initiative to raise awareness and action to rid the river of pollutants; Romika Chawla, an expert in Intellectual Property; Roshni Mistry, a Yoga instructor and wellness guide; and Ami Shroff who taught us juggling, balancing and even flair bartending.

Our primary on-ground team consisted of Sanju, who led our experiences in Kalga and was responsible for the amazing management, food and hospitality served to us day after day. He was ably assisted by Ratan and Rana who added to the care and magic of our living experiences in Kalga. Bianca doubled up as the residency manager and along with artist manager, Rabia Khan, executed the program through the month under the direction of Hashim. The documentation was handled by the youngest in the group, Adityavardhan Gupta and well-established editor, Pradeepto Roy. After having been there for the 1st day, I returned for the last 2 weeks to direct, manage and co-ordinate the artistic course of the program. Arsh Sayed who came in with me also smoothly integrated into the program by developing a portrait-series of everyone at Kyta.    

The beginning of the Kyta experience started in New Delhi from where all the artists travelled into the state of Himachal Pradesh – most of who were doing this for the first time. And as none of us except Hashim and Bianca, had ever been to Kalga, the trek up from Barshaini, the last village that can be accessed by vehicles was going to be well, an uphill task. With help from porters, we climbed up to Kalga with an average of 3 bags per person and in wet weather that was not very welcoming for a short steep trek. But once we reached the village, the 16-hour long journey in hindsight was worth the display of a little mustard patch at the last bend of the trek. A few steps ahead was Sunset Café, our home for the next month that consisted of the oldest building in the village made almost entirely in wood and an outhouse that usually served as a restaurant but which was repurposed as the common space / artist studio. About 100 meters from Sunset Café was another beautiful wooden-concrete structure, New Hope, where the team members and the visiting artist were scheduled to stay.    

The artists were allotted rooms by picking chits though most of them were similar and each one had an awesome view. We huddled in for a little conversation / briefing session in the artist room as we were still not used to the cold. This is where almost everyone met everyone for the first time and we set the course for the month to come. With Karma Yatri founders, Phillipe and Abbas who came in just to see the beginning, we flagged off Kyta with a first party in which Alec had already pulled out most of his amusing music gear which was an assortment of instruments and sound-based toys. After setting the context in our conversations, we wound up the first night with a screening of a documentary of the Carnival of e-Creativity, probably India’s only cross-disciplinary experimental incident which I have been a part of since 2010. Abbas and I were to leave early next morning and we crashed in the artist studio where Sachin was just not getting enough of the night skies painted blue by the full moon. And the ice-capped mountains that surrounded us were a spectacle I’d never slept under. And these visions never left us, always shining through the panoramic glass panes of the artist studio of Sunset Café.

The schedule of the month that I’d designed was mostly keeping in mind that everything was strange for everyone to begin with – the people, the place, the format and the situation. In the first week, we’d scheduled a walk through the village to get familiar with the space, short presentations by each artist to get to know each other and a result discussion meeting to think about the many possibilities of the form of the artistic result that would be created here. Mornings began with Yoga sessions by Roshni Mistry and through the month we found that it was one of the more crucial exercises that seamlessly knitted the members of Kyta together. At the first weekend, Karma Yatri had scheduled an outdoor camping trip to the divine Kheer Ganga, which is at an altitude of almost 3000 mtrs and which is a hot favourite for its natural geysers. This is where Lord Shiva meditated for thousands of years. However, bad weather played truant so instead the group walked to the sister village of Pulga instead which houses a surreal fairy forest!

Through the presentations by the artists in the 1st week, I think a first level of comfort and familiarity would have been built to understand the paths and purpose of each of the artists. In these sessions we found a lot of interesting things about each other such as the fact that Damian Linossi creates new people by mixing and merging image and video data that he captures from real people – he’s created up to 500 profiles until now! He was also secretly building a new person within the very first week that was to become a trending topic in the days to come. The first week also yielded multiple episodes of a chat show hosted by the inimitable Emile Degorce in which he interviews fictional characters (Fernando, Adityavardhan, Wei and Alec) from the village on “Kalga TV”. Musical encounters between Alec, Sanaya and Fernando were flourishing in the meanwhile. Rashi and Emile had built a little oven to fire their clay work – the clay itself was being collected from the hills nearby. Kalga began to become more familiar territory by the end of the first week as the artists walked around and created new routines some of which lasted till the very end such as the coffee trips to Café Rama and Pink House nearby. And the absolutely stunning sunsets at Holy Cow. By the end of the week, the artists also had some kind of an idea about the local resources they could be using in the weeks to come towards the artistic result. And more importantly, they were being pampered with amazingly diverse food fanfare being cooked up as part of a 28-day set menu that Hashim had personally designed which straddled genuinely Himachali besides an assortment of Indian dishes and international cuisines. A special mention here to the local jams that made every breakfast rather sweet.  

As the artists settled in, the apple orchards that surrounded Sunset Café began to show their true colors. What seemed like subdued little trees on the first day were slowly beginning to burst into bloom. Through the month, the apple blossoms seemed to be symbolically synching with the peer-to-peer bonding and in effect, the flourishing artistic development at Kyta. And by serendipity, the orchard itself became an integral backdrop of the eventual creation. The rains continued to greet us irregularly through the month which would make it uncomfortably cold but I think it also created a completely different emotional experience of being in Kalga. Watching the icy peaks go into war with the clouds disappearing into each other was a frighteningly beautiful sight. And when the sun would decide to cut through the clouds, the landscape itself looked in conflict with illuminated patches hiding within the gloom. But on sunny days, it was a completely different story taking us to peaks of feeling absolutely full of life.  

The 2nd week’s schedule was designed to assist in bringing the artists closer together by getting their hands dirty with each other’s skills and expertise. There was a workshop each by all of the 10 artists through the week with a daily artist/practice combination such as Dance + Sculpture, Linguistics + Architecture, New Media and No Media and so on. We called it Wander, the Workshop Series. As such a format allowed only up to about 4 hours per workshop, a lot of the artists felt it was too rushed and needed more time which is now recorded as a major learning. However, there was simply so much that happened within a short span of a week in this context starting with Wei’s workshop of Body Balance that pushed the participants out of their comfort zone physically. Ameet’s workshop on sustainable architecture led into interesting creations which also included wearable concepts. Fernando’s Soundwalk workshop took the artists on an aurally-conscious tour of the nature around Kalga. Rashi’s workshop was simply about playing with clay and making sculptures that she would bake and return to the creators – and all kinds of odd stuff came from this including Damian’s pig-head, Sanaya’s perfectly carved clay leaves, Emile’s surreal forms, Sachin’s assortment of a brain-face-boot, Sanju’s smooth chillums and many more. In Damian’s workshop, everyone put up a performance based on what someone else in the group wrote in the form of a note. Sanaya conducted her workshop along with Fernando about sound design and creative collaboration through production of music and field recordings. Alec’s workshop on fast interactive language learning was an extension of his primary artistic focus to do with multilingualism. Emile’s workshop established the concept of magic in contemporary art. Sachin’s workshop on visual feedback was more an interactive display of this visual phenomenon but which he only ended up doing the week after as it involved two projectors and we were having a crisis with one of them breaking down. Megha’s workshop too was conducted in a short activity later in the program which left an indelible mark on the artist studio – she’d created a collection of rubber stamps each with an emotion etched on it and the day she brought them out, we stamped it all over the wooden panels of the studio. Alongside the workshops by the artists-in-residence, Avi Rebello, founder of From Ear to Ear, conducted blind experiments ranging from eating, listening and moving in the blind. Karma Yatri’s promised outdoors to Kheer Ganga was spontaneously planned according to the weather and on the back of a heavy workshop week, the group trekked up to the magical spot to take a dip in the natural geyser surrounded by threatening snow. This trip also marked the end of the first phase of Kyta’s schedule which was termed “Get Acquainted” and led into the next phase which would go on for 2 weeks until the end, “Experiment. Edit. Create”.  

A Sunday afternoon team meeting drew out the existing ideas that were created in collaborative-silos over the past couple of weeks and now we had the mission of somehow fusing the thoughts and works of all the 10 artists together. One of my greatest fears of the format – artistic anarchies – already seemed mitigated with the sheer camaraderie between each of the 10 artists which was almost unreal. I, in fact, felt much like an outsider at this point as I’d come in 2 weeks after having been there for just the first day. Though the decision of the final form of the artistic result was always going to be a democratic decision between the artists with absolutely no input or influence from me as a curator or from Karma Yatri as a host, I still had to create a forum to ensure that every artist shares his or her ideas towards a common and single result. What emerged from this meeting was that the artistic result will be a film with contributions in tangible and intangible forms by all the 10 artists. There were multiple installation ideas led by Rashi, Ameet, Megha that we collectively decided to execute which would become visual components of the film with the common thread being Wei’s performance and interaction with the other pieces. Alec, Sanaya and Fernando had already created a bank of field recordings and aural concepts that they were deeply engaging with at this point. Besides his installation of a woman suspended in mid-air in a coiled up position which was created in specific for the attic, Damian would also co-direct the film itself with Sachin. Lastly, Emile’s creation of magic rocks would be captured with macrophotography as part of the film besides he closely partnered Rashi’s ambitious endeavour of creating 300 clay bells.  

Through the last 2 weeks, Sunset Cafe blossomed into a little creative factory with multiple productions being planned and developed in different parts within and beyond the premise. Megha’s room had become her studio where she was weaving away reams of local fabric with sticks and little logs that she had collected from the village. In one corner of her room, lay an assortment of her ‘emotional’ rubber stamps that she was going to use to texture her fabric installations. Ameet too was immersed in developing a plan for a fabric installation that would become a site-specific 3-dimensional space in the orchard. He planned to use Orgenza, a fine netted white fabric that would interact with the landscapes in the day making it a translucent visual space while at night; he would use projections to activate the installation with custom graphic content he was creating alongside. Though Rashi didn’t end up getting to work on a beautiful tree just outside the Sunset premise, she chose an alternative subject in the orchard which actually expanded her original idea into using two trees instead of one. On one tree, she would be hanging 300 clay bells that would create a wind-based earthy soundscape. As other interactive layers of this installation, Alec was building a light-based sensor that would be installed in the tree to record variations of sound frequencies based on light readings. Besides Alec, Sanaya and Fernando had worked on a custom audio installation consisting of piezoelectric microphones that would attach to the environment of an installation or a performance making it an aurally interactive space. In the case of Rashi’s tree, 3-4 piezos were planned to be attached to selected bells to record live data that they would then abstract as sound or music. Ditto for Wei’s performance in the attic for which the piezos were stuck to the ceiling of the floor below the attic to record her every gesture and movement as data. Rashi along with Emile and the gang also built a traditional clay firing pit with which they did a successful test round of all the sculptures built during Rashi’s workshop.  And this would now lead into the next firing of all the bells for the tree installation. Through rain and shine, the development of the firing pit continued in the front yard almost through the whole of the 3rd week. Between Damian, Sachin and Wei, a series of performance sequences were planned to be performed and shot which would in all become the crux of the artistic result. Multiple performance sequences planned in the attic, the kitchen, an abandoned house in the village, in Holy Cow’s gallery, in an outdoor spot and in unison with Rashi and Ameet’s installations. And in between all of this, Sachin couldn’t get enough of the star lapses that he toiled through the nights with his assistant, Sheroo, our home dog, who would guard the tripod from other dogs but ensured that he never toppled it over himself. Alec and Sanaya continued to build up on their extensive bank of sounds and field recordings including a series of conversations about dreams.

Vinny Bhagat, a friend and long-time collaborator visited Kyta and presented his work as an aural and visual experimental artist. Vinny also runs the Liveroom, an online performance space from his studio in New Delhi which usually involves distributed performances with the presence of multiple artists, physically and virtually. Ami Shroff, an award-winning flair bartender, ace juggler and mixologist, visited us for a week and conducted various workshops besides treating us to some of her awesome cocktails and mocktails. Hashim too was whipping up some amazing desserts on and off which would get wiped out in no time. Another round of barbecues, lasagne cooked in the garden oven, pasta, siddu and more awesome dinners made every night a little party of its own. With incongruous electricity in the village, food emerged as the most sustainable of the creative practices we experienced at Kyta alongside weaving and performance, which too didn’t need anything other than natural resources to create. Everyone had to scramble to charge their electronic devices and primary creative equipment every time we turned on the generator as the electricity did elude us for a lot of the last two weeks, when it was most critical. What also emerged was that the projection-based installations or activities would be set back as the generator could only power one projector at a time. And we slowly learned to live with the constraints but never stopped to create in the last 2 weeks. One of the last visiting members at Kyta, Romika Chawla; a lawyer specializing in intellectual property (IP) came in to discuss and advise on best legal practices for creators. The last visiting artist was Shanglin Wu, an artist and curator from Taiwan who had facilitated the participation of Wei Ching via his Hotspring Project. Shanglin came in the last week and stayed with us until the end being an observer of the artistic production besides experiencing India in a completely unconventional way in his first visit.

We helplessly hurtled towards the last few days of Kyta not feeling good at all about having to leave a place that was now deeply wedged in all our hearts. Emile was struggling with a tooth ache for which he had to make a trip to the dentist at Kasol which certainly dented a little bit of his exuberance but thankfully the medicines helped him bounce back in the last couple of days. The general atmosphere was a bit gloomy anyway as Fernando’s wallet, laptop and hard drives had been robbed on the 2nd last night. Part of his loss was his documentation for a mobility project he was working on to take back home as research – this is what had earned him the grant to be part of Kyta. Fernando just wanted to go back to New Delhi but Hashim helped him plan an alternative to put his research project back on track but which meant that we’d not have Fernando with us for the last 2 days. He was to travel through the region documenting what he’d lost and meet us on the bus back to New Delhi.

But there was a certain sense of justice that prevailed and though we shot the last sequence – Wei’s performance with Ameet’s installation - on the very last evening, we didn’t end up missing out anything from the original plan. Rains in the last week played havoc at important hours of the day but would usually clear up in the night - it was almost like it was challenging the ambitious plan of the artistic result. But not without delivering pure magic for the perfect anti-climax to end a month to remember. It was our last evening in Kalga and we had only last slot of time left to shoot Ameet’s installation with Wei. We planned to shoot at sunset going into darkness. If we missed this slot, we’d either have had to extend a day in Kalga and miss the presentation of the artistic result scheduled the day after at Zorba the Buddha in New Delhi, or regretfully forego the sequence altogether. The skies had been grey all afternoon and we feared the worst for by now, we’d all learned the ways of the weather. At about 4pm, it started raining and the left of the apple blossoms were flying around in the gusty wind making it one final surreal sequence. Soon after, it hailed. And we’d never had hail through the month yet. The main electricity was miraculously back but only for a few minutes. To some of us it may have signified that these were signs that there would be no further allowance of creative interventions before we departed the next morning.

But the sun came out fighting with the last of the drizzle. As we gathered around to look at the skies clear, we saw rainbows stretching around the eastern landscape. 3 rainbows, at least. The perfect goodbye from our last evening in Kalga had by its force gathered the entire group hunting rainbows together. And the rest of us scurried about setting up the last sequence in the orchard where Wei performed with Ameet’s installation. Again, this was probably the first of the performances which had an audience and all I can say is that it was a privileged experience to be outside watching Wei weave herself into Ameet’s dreamy installation that fluttered away in a mild wind. And we’d reached the magic words after this shoot – “it’s a wrap!” The last dinner was planned as pizza night at Holy Cow Cafe and in a rather mixed feeling of conclusion and the procrastination of departing the next day, we gathered around candles and memories of the spectacular month it had been. The last walk home to Sunset Cafe was more painful than ever for most of us tread in moonlit paths without the need of any torches. At least for now, this was the last night and the last set of dreams awaited us in our rooms.  

Kyta for me was a demonstration of how the dreaming state forms the eternal loop feeding from the past and present physical reality shaping our individual and collective experiences into the future. Hashim had a dream to engage those who have an innate love of nature to his beloved terra firma, Kalga, for many years, which in turn began shaping my own dreams of establishing a new challenging path to original creation. The artists came in, each, with a personal dream of mining their expressions in a situation like this which was designed to create a sense of ultimate freedom and liberty. And once we came together, all of these dreams collided into each other forming the artistic weather of Kyta which nurtured the birth and blossoming of our collective existence and co-creations. The unified artistic result, aLpha, a film set to the theme of various dream stages fusing the works of all the 10 artists-in-residence and their imaginative processes reinstates the living reverie that was Kyta - symbolically, metaphorically, metaphysically and existentially.

The last day of Kyta dawned – there was a lot to pack up with a heavy heart. The first batch departed soon after a late breakfast. The 2nd soon after lunch. After making a quick shopping stop at Kasol, our gang of 18 congregated at the bus pick up point in Bhunter. We’d littered the side of the main road with at least 40 bags of our combined luggage. Fernando was also back after a solo documentation trip in the region for his research project. After an hour-long delay the bus to New Delhi arrived and we were on our way on a 14-hour ride. Alec and I sat together and I watched him watch Krish 3 fixatedly even though the film didn’t have subtitles. Damian too loved it enough to share it on his social network.

We arrived at Zorba the Buddha in New Delhi, the final stop of Kyta where we were to present the artistic result. The weather had drastically changed for us within a few hours of travel but Zorba was the best transition we could have had on our way back home. Zorba hosted us in a wonderful apartment complex with duplex rooms surrounded by lush greenery. Even the food lived up to the high standards set at Kyta. Through the day we lazed around coming to terms that we were back in a city but still esconced within the verdant arts village of Zorba. Sachin was still a very busy man fighting against time to finish his edit and render the film by 8pm when we had scheduled the presentation. Alec and Sanaya were still deeply engaged in the audio work making some final modifications while Fernando rested in the room next door with a bout of food poisoning. He definitely wasn’t having even a reasonable last few days before he returned home to Sao Paulo. As evening came around, Ameet began to set up his fabric installation, an allusion to a cloud, in the area outside the auditorium where the Kyta presentation was scheduled. The rains had followed us to New Delhi. It was 7pm and the film was still being rendered while Alec and Sanaya began to set up for the performance that would follow the screening of the film. We had a few guests as we started the presentation with an image slideshow and the weekly episodes documented by Adityavardhan Gupta and Pradeepto Roy.

None of us including the artists had seen the artistic result in its final complete form though we’d seen some bits and parts while in Kalga. I spoke briefly to set the context of the project before Sachin summarized what went behind the making of aLpha. The screening started and we were catapulted back into the dream that was. At the end of the film, very few of us could actually control the tears. It was one of the warmest feelings to have had shared that moment with each and every member of Kyta who was in the room. Wei, the primary character of the film, wrapped Sachin in her small frame with a tight hug after seeing her performance. It was a time to embrace the moment, embrace each other again and express in pure emotion what was too elusive as words. Hashim, Bianca and I were overwhelmed as we greeted each other in the culmination of what we’d managed to have achieved almost perfectly-to-plan in our first outing together. A dream had realized itself with many manifestations. For Hashim and Karma Yatri to have successfully established an artist residency in Kalga and to have drawn the attention of a lot of discerning travelers that will bring them to this special spot on Earth. The realization of what was just a question in my head – can a set of artists from different disciplines break the barrier of artistic pride in collaborative work and come together to create a unified work that they are all content with. The realization of a new structure to author original artistic work which blurs the boundaries of its collaborators’ contributions making it sincerely ‘one’ in that sense. The intertwining of a travel and living experience with that of an artistic pursuit that didn’t just compliment but influenced and shaped each other. The cultural and skill exchange that was not just between the artists but between them and every other member in the team, the animals, the nature and the resources of the village. The future collaborations between the artists that have already begun with Alec having performed with Sanaya at the prestigious NCPA in Mumbai and Vinny having hosted Alec, Ameet, Sachin and his brother Kartik in an 8-hour long Liveroom session involving participants from multiple countries in his New Delhi studio. The conversations that are still alive in our private virtual group and the many plans and desires to visit and work with each other in the future. The sharing of images and videos on the Kyta Facebook page remains perennial reminding us every day that the memory of Kyta won’t subside easily, at least for now. The conclusion with a live performance by Sanaya and Alec with the backdrop of the film and Wei performing with it was priceless. Shanglin came up to me and said that we had managed to have a very disciplined set of artists as Sanaya and Alec took us back deep into Kyta again with a focused performance though there were only a few of us left in the room. It was this trait that held the force of the artistic integrity through the month and was one of the significant factors that made it possible to actually achieve an exemplary piece of expression, from beginning to end, in a short time frame of a month.

Though the primary artistic result of Kyta is the film, there was an even more powerful human result. The sincere involvement and the fearless sharing of the artists with each other’s personas and works has built a complex of bridges between them where they will surely meet each other again, if not as collaborators, then as friends and people they have come to love, admire and appreciate. And of course be there to follow, support and be proud of the next thing they all do. Kalga made this possible to a large extent with its spatial and emotional identity within the realm of which the artists came together. This bond between the members of Kyta and Kalga will endure as one of the landmark experiences in our lives which we will itch to relive by going back to this enchanted village. And in that is the momentous result for Hashim – there may be many similar spaces like Kalga but there is something ethereal that makes it so divine and special and just like that there may be many travel initiatives, but Karma Yatri has unlocked by its deed in this artistic indulgence with a location, the true value and integrity of traveling into the unknown. As a site-specific result, the earthen soundscape of Rashi’s tree of bells in the orchard of Sunset Cafe will always remind its local residents and guests about Kyta. Likewise with the many scribbles left behind in the artist studio, the artist rooms and the many sculptures that are now permanent residents of Sunset Cafe’s art collection including the hand-baked pizza oven made by Rashi and Hashim.

To comment on or analyse the artistic result or the film in specific would be folly for me to attempt being at the core of this endeavour. I would rather leave this for the viewers of the film. We plan to take the film to experimental film and art festivals around the world for a year before we release it online. Of course besides film festivals, there will be private and public screenings arranged in different parts of India and all the countries our international artists came from – Brazil, Argentina, Taiwan, France and Vietnam. And I’m sure there will be even more screenings through our collective global networks – and the reason I feel that this film will travel far and wide is its collective ownership and its individual emotional connection with all those who were on this journey. And if it does travel the world, at every destination that it stops, the echo of the experience that made Kyta possible will resonate loud and clear – travel and living. 

I’ll conclude with an account that Wei wrote during the residency and which was translated by her friend followed by a poem written by Hashim in the honor of Kalga.

I was never a country girl. I was not a person who gets close to nature. Thinking of being an urbanite sometimes makes me feel ashamed. Furthermore, back to my hometown Taiwan, where I grew up, I have never been to the highest mountain, neither the original forest.

But now, here I am.

In my mid-30’s I come to this mountain village of North India: Kalga Village.

Parvati Valley Himachal Pradhesh located in the branch of Himalayan range, corner of The Roof of the World. One can only come here with his/her own foot.

We (I and other 10 lovely, brilliant artists from different countries) live here together, create together, sharing our life and art and everything.

Fragrance of firewood, spread in the mist. The sunlight reflects off the snow-covered mountains bedazzles me.

We live outdoor; we live with sun, moon, and stars. During day time, we eat and bath in the sunshine. Flocks and herds, pony and donkeys carrying goods are our daily common scenery. Needless to mention those friendly dogs, they are our best companions.

All you need is an Incandescent light bulb for a single guest room at night. You don’t need medicine for a mild flu, it will recover itself in couple days. Almost everything you get here is handmade, Woodworking, pottery, knitwear is everywhere.

When power goes out all day unexpectedly, I can stay in the kitchen watching out chef cooking by candlelight.

I do yoga and dancing barefoot in this foreign mountain at an altitude of 1700 to 2000 Ft, wondering that I might be a tree in my past life.

My arms and legs were climbing and growth into soil, I can feel breeze touching and the heat of sunlight.

I breathe the scent of dirt after rain, enjoy the fragrance of a beautiful apple tree.

I imagine the respiration of seeds, respiration of this land, and the beat of mountain and mother earth connect with my heartbeat.

As an urbanite I yearn for a simple, original life. We never need so many material stuffs to enjoy our daily life.

How tiny I am comparison to the old tree of original forest and the huge rocks.

How lucky I am I exist at this very moment, feel everything.

My body and four limbs are awakening now, from my heart, from my deep inside.

It’s for you, Mother Earth, and for all original creatures who live a simple life.

​

~ Wei Ching-ju

You in the bridal white of snow

You in the colours of autumn aglow

You dappled on golden moonlit nights

You in the emerald of monsoon flush

You wearing your misty veil

In your bosom I stared at starlit nights

I snuggled in your warmth on winter mornings

In your arms I lazed in summer noons

I bathed in rain showered evening light

I lost myself in your embracing dawn

Your dresses bedecked with apple blossom

Your tresses deadlocked, the alpine forest

Your green skirt, flecked with mustard yellow

Your fragrance a refreshing whiff of desire

Your caress, a fleeting touch of wind, mist & sun

In your midst I spiritually energise

In your paths, doubts no longer surprise

In your silence I open the door to my soul

I listen to sounds, hear the voice of stillness, of hope

I find illusion, confusion, direction – control

​

~ Hashim Qayoom