surameduranatasha

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Day 1 - 24/10/16

LANDING

Settling in, first encounters with the beach, Chaminda, dogs, washed up objects and coconuts in many forms, bursting pods with white waxy teeth, husky brown shells or premature lime green smooth.

Thinking about - - -

Beach structure and erosion --- How to begin to instigate focussed interactions with people for projects, specific questions? visual? ---- 

Explore the divide between up-season and down-season, tourism and local life? Black marbled sand speckles, passing stories along the beach and between people, collecting stories. 

Reef - Romesh Guneshekera

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Day 2 - 25/ 10/16

Thinking about: 

-Printed paper Sculpture  - based on repetitive forms found in natural structures. 

-How tellings of Scottish Sea Stories would translate in the Sri Lankan Sea community. Weird? Still relevant? Similar symbolism? 

- Ways to use methods of rush weaving in paper sculptures, to make a paper shelter / printed sculpture?  

- ways of using paper to manipulate shade, or an artwork to work with the wind. Something kinetic? 

- Using the Looooong open space of the beach to its potential / vs. getting off the beach which is the immediate draw! 

- Rain activated? Stories about the rain?  Heavy rains and thunder  - we hear the rainy season has started to come later, the sudden down pours are a welcome break to the heat but the very humid air makes everything feel inescapably damp!

More about coconuts: apparently they get cut down once a year, at the beginning of the season. Every part of the tree is sorted out and has a specific use; rope, rooves, drinks, flowers. By law you have to remove heavy coconuts from your trees although apparently skilled / willing Coconut Tree Climbers are increasingly hard to find.

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26th - Day 2? or 3? 

Make a Jungle side trip, meeting the railway and the small web of tracks leading from it into the jungle. 

Kusuma lives just a little behind the railway. She shows me her lotus garden, different food plants, chipmunks, her turtle, tells me about her family. Intense green and gurgling noises fill the space. 

Realising the beach draws immediate attention but it would be interesting to push work inland... possibly art but also useful? House painting? Sign painting? Tuk Tuk intervention? 

And how best to use the beach to its potential - space / users / weather / sea. 

Feeling a little overwhelmed by the engulfing unknown nature - cunning mosquitos, dense forest, unknown creatures! Need to become more familiar/ get used to them, but its an interesting feeling.  

--- Noticing that there are very few women on the beach, as soon as you go over the railway there are many though. a project with women and the beach? Sea? 

-- Multicolour garish billboards selling ICT, mobile companies, maths lessons on sticks are set against the rest of the jungle undergrowths - as strange trees - they make an interesting contrast. ---- would it be possible to make a non-linear narrative and visual treasure hunt with similar images used in this way? (Improvised poetry traditions)

--Or a different take on advertising? With graphic screen prints? 

--Mural / sign painting onto undecorated shops, to illustrate their stories and encourage attention to them. 

--- Evening walk along the train track - lots of people sitting there and relaxing. Maybe a portable workshop to go along the train track could be developed - is evening a particularly good time? people relaxing?  Attach workshop to bicycle?

--- Train crossing shacks - wonderful improbable structures: could I make an intervention using these? 

Reading about Sinhalese Plant Lore : Naming of plants is used to denote the local and exotic. 

some sacred mythological trees - - - Na, bu-nuga, sola kalyana, Tumbuk, Sona, Sarula, Bamboo, Bakmi, Sapu, Many more! 

Parasutu: a Heavenly tree offered by the Devas as a mark of respect. 

Kapruka: Comes into being once in a millennium - when the world is happy - producing everything you desire. Used to describe a generous person. 

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people watching & trying to get a grasp of the sea, endless movement & sudden rain! 

Thinking of the cruel/benevolent sides of nature, here the awareness possibilities of both side feels prevalent; heavy rain brings much needed life, but also flooding; The calm lapping sea holds a world of food and buoys the body but in a moment could flip, rear up over the land or drag you away; The fine border between a sun warms and a sun that scorches. 

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27/10/16 - DAY 5

--- Collecting Narratives, specimens, stories.

-- Sourcing materials: paper? wood? - find screen printers & paper factory we’ve heard about to see whats practically possible for the project. 

-- repetitive prints covering shops, in similar way to repetitive covering of adverts over shops? But instead of advertising the Big brands, illustrating and advertising something local? 

-- Mapping how people interact with their environment?

Thinking about using Transient/ waiting spaces & things for an installation - Shops, Bus Stops, Signs, Tourists, Traing Junctions. 

-- Making Colouring in Murals? Printed combined with drawing to invite participation? 

--Printed paper Sculpture - How would this erode? actively through participation: people invited to harvest the different elements used to build the structure? 

-- Find a new building site with mysterious structures - coconut flowers in the centre of the site and woven baskets in every corner. What are these for? 

Feeling the Heat!!

Walk up the railway and talk to a fisherman at the next bay, Dodanduwa, he tells us about boats going out and in, morning and evening. Also about Poisonous Seed pods that we’ve picked up. What are they exactly? 

-- Thinking about Control of nature and the uncontrolled growth of nature everywhere here - plant structures climbing over one another to build canopies and sprouts in every possible corner. Unstoppable life. So Green! A collage of different plants, endless structures, jewel flowers & rustling creatures all woven. 

--- Towards Dodanduwa that beach becomes more and more strewn with drift objects, revealing the constant sweeping and cleaning of the tourist beaches. strange pods, dog shit, faded string, barnacled flip flops. Printing textures? (maybe not the dog shit). Picking up interesting drift wood in the shore line. would like to print these, along with other natural textures - would they still be recognisable? - Also adding carved imagery to create an encyclopedia of the landscape through stamps. These could be interacted with, encouraging people to build their own life/ environment through combining different objects/ specimens / textures and adding extra drawings and notations. Need objects from Sea, Town, Jungle. 

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A Cuttle Fish Mountain, a Sea Seed and a Wooden Wave - - - looking at the landscape, big and small & thinking about the surreal links between the structures of objects and landscapes. 

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Talking to the learning monks (what do you call them?!) about Kumara Kanda temple and the possibility of using their hall for a workshop (apparently anyone can use them in exchange for a donation of alms ). 

We are shown into the hall which is covered by a beautiful & very old painted ceiling. Its interesting how this is over looked, while the repainted and garish paintings at Dodanduwa temple or the main room of camera kanda are seen as much more impressive.

Also very interesting, to compare both temples, both with paintings that are apparently over 300 years old. At Kumara Kanda, the paintings look ‘old’ in faded and crumbling frescoes, however at Dodanduwa temple the decorated walls have been retouched and in a way modernised: Neon paints fleck snake’s skin and the men standing over the wheel of life are dressed in suits! Its interesting to think about cultural differences concepts of restoration and conservation, refreshing and updating a treasure versus trying to freeze it in the same ancient state as it was found. 

Chatting about Elaborate hats, cats and sleeping (dead) Buddhas.  

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A test for a stamp ( Muddara ) or a grass hopper (Thenakola Pettha) - - - carving bits of landscape & its belonging specimens - fragments of understanding of the landscape, slow learning through naming, uses & observations. 

Can I use these to provoke more answers and detail about the object/place in the stamp? To encourage people to combine these separate stamps to make narratives revealing of the environment / activity? 

Also, through beginning to look for Sinhalese translations for different words, with dictionaries and the patient help of Asantha, Kari and Chatura, complexities and puzzles of communicating, words and impossible translations are brought up. Use stamps be used to play with language & translations?  

--- Research and draw on the traditions of Mask making and carving - -- 

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Carving Workshop, Ambalangoda-- Top to Bottom: 1.Blocks of Balsa, 2.Wenura drawing a design, 3.First cuts along the drawn lines, 4.three stages of a carved ear,  5.how to hold the chisel, 6.icecream break, 7.mask examples, 8.detail of a finished & painted ear. 

Off to Ambalangoda, home of the mask makers, to learn about the process, history and daily uses of carved masks vs. provision for tourists.

In a workshop next to the museum I chat to Upal and Wenura, two mask carvers about carving & ask if I can spend a little time learning -  showing them my own relatively tiny carving tools and then exchanging different ways of working. 

A day of chipping away at wood in the workshop,repeating ornate ear after ornate ear, with patient adjustments and hints from the other carvers.

This way of working away slowly together, half engrossed in work but also chatting, tea breaking, lunch, aimlessly singing along to background ‘SHA radio’ & taking in the other’s slapstick jokes and visits from family / other people in the workshop throughout the day feels strangely familiar to other print workshops and the studio I share,  a strange form of comfort - I could imagine settling in! 

Would it be possible to document these kinds of working environments? All different but similar in the atmosphere of working? 

Learning about the mask carving process was fascinating (and I think, by the end I’d almost got the knack of my one very specific shape). Interesting too to gradually gather a sense of the ways that these carver’s lives worked, their relationships with the others in the workshop - some old friends or family - and the way that they had come to be carvers: To become a Carver takes 7 years of working under a master carver, the mask making workshop is split into carving, paint, assembling areas, each a separate group of people. In the carving section there is an area for larger and more ornate masks and an area for simpler, repeated models, churned out for the many mask shops surrounding the workshop. 

How much is tourism driven and how much still a living tradition? Interesting when everyone and then a tourist would come into the workshop the man working nearest the door would shout back into the workshop, prompting everybody to take on their ‘show’ working positions. 

Afterwards, thinking about how to incorporate / refer to Sri Lankan mask making traditions in my own carving here. 

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After our talks at Colombo university, Pryantha shows us around the studios. So great to see people engrossed in their work and interesting to learn about how different teaching techniques here are compared to in Britain - - very technique and materials focussed. 

Interesting to learn how difficult it is to find nude models ( which makes me think about the stories behind the exoticised photographs of Nude Vedda women ) 

Also to hear that the school is free and so apparently has students from a whole range of backgrounds which is refreshing! 

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To Galle to get a staple gun, got one! - the end of a wild goose chase through Hikkaduwa & Galle’s stationary shops - - one of a few logistically tricky bits, slowly discovering that most people will go to Galle to find practical things - from material to Tupperware - resigning to getting things done at a slower/ more convoluted rate.

Opening up Elephant Complex  by John Gimlette - So interesting to find out more about Sri Lanka’s entangled history, cycles of war & invasion & snippets of insight into daily life.  

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Slowly details emerge about the tsunami, on one hand something long passed, almost ten years ago, but on the other an event who’s aftermath forms the structure and population of Hikkaduwa today and continues to pop up into conversation. 

Everybody has a different story, and the different approaches of individuals telling these straight away to newcomers or of just talking about them as they become relevant in conversation is interesting.   

I’m beginning to realise that gathering solid facts about things is very difficult altogether - - - how far out do the fishing boats go? 15km, 4 or 5 miles, 3 miles, 30km, 100km, less than a mile...all answers given as fact. How high was the wave? 40ft, 2 meters, 20 meters. How many people ran to Kumara Kanda ( to the temple on the hill?) 600/700? None? Did the people who stayed out at sea live? Or did they all die? So many different versions of the story. Each one is hard and fresh to hear. Do these different ‘facts’ reveal how the tsunami felt to different  people?  Vivid imagery: an empty sea, fish flopping on the sand, a wall of rising water, a churning, debris full wave, crowds running up hill, or as far as possible, and the long and gruelling clean up.  

Interesting - - - attitudes to the sea & fish after the Tsunami   --- the Sea walls & no build zone --- the role of the coral reef in protecting the coast and the damage caused to it by the tsunami.  

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Small structures for Transient use - interesting locations for installations & to create a narrative between them?

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Ideas for installations in temporary / transient spaces, something to look at while waiting and a sequence of installations along a transport line - - - Bus Shelters - - Fixing broken ones? Adding to current ones?

Working with a welding/ wood workshop? Sun Shade & the Shadows cast? temporary or permanent?  - - --  to tell a story about the landscape through bus stops. 

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Graphics & Advertising. 

A few Mass Brands - usually Anchor, Maggi, Munchee, v.s. a million local & hand made products. 

Thinking about making installations that are some kind of riff on this plastering use of advertising posters & the decorative way that they look, due to the repetition & clashing combinations of them. 

Instead of covering buildings in mass & impersonal advertising I’d like to get to know specific businesses and make designs and installations for them that reflect the individuality and specifity of what they do and sell. 

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Learning more about the diversity of products, species and traditions in Sri Lanka and how these vary widely from area to area due to the wide variety of geographic conditions, I have begun to collect information about these. 

I’m interested in the way that more traditional/ local / day to day activities & places & products still exist in a town that where most services and shops are there to support the tourism industry.

Using drawing & diagrams as a way to spark up communications, to chat with and learn from people I’ve begun to try to map these daily activities and products that are specific to Hikkaduwa or an integral part of the community.

----Its been interesting to learn about the way that different kinds of soil or rain quantities lead to bananas and mangoes that shift in species and flavour within a very small radius.----

I hope to gather and build more and more information through drawing conversations, to build up a fuller picture of daily life in Hikkaduwa, and the interplay between tourism and living activity. 

--- In the market, goods laid out onto cloths, composed and coloured like drawings - full and frenzied stores at the market front eventually trickle off to people with a blanket  - two bananas, a fish, a few limes - whatever they have found to sell. Can anyone set up stall? Could be an interesting project. 

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As I’ve been building understandings of different people’s working, lives & daily spaces through drawing and chatting I’ve been encouraging people around me to draw their own perceptions of how things work. Its really interesting to see how the drawings reflect nuanced understandings and to compare the details that different people pick up on.   Here is Veneta’s Cousin’s Granddaughter’s impression of the shop, alongside my own.

Below are two people’s visual explanations of Rope ( lanu) making contraptions in Dodanduwa, they make so much more sense than the drawing I tried to make! Revealing of how confused I was about the process & how clear it was to them. Sometimes, people draw a full picture / diagram & sometimes they add words/ images / arrows to my own.

Its really interesting to see differences in understandings of the way things work through comparing these drawings. I’d love to continue to collect these and in some way collate them.  - - also to explore how a child’s understanding of an activity or place may compare to an adult’s.