The World of Seekers
Ebin Siby
The community I’m discussing is a fictitious one, as most of my work revolves around fictional worlds and people that I create.
The work I produced as part of the community project is a jamboard, with 19 slides. Through each slide I describe the fictional world of ‘Island 80085’, using the narration of a fourth wall breaking detective, who is well aware of the fact that he is a part of an artwork. The detective describes the place and the circumstances in a playful manner and at the end opens to the plot that introduces the character - Kambithiri Kalyani,a sex worker who went missing. Primarily this work was done in the form of a crime board(an installation). At that point, my work had an element of abstraction in it, since I’ve converted it into a digital jamboard, I gave it a playful narrative. This work contains various elements, there is the story described using the sticky notes and the writings in white, then there is the fourth wall breaking detective’s comments and talks using the speech balloons and the writings in red.
Through this work I intended to represent the communities that exist across the globe that do fulfill the function of a community to some extent, but actually exist as a community on a psychological level. These people have common interests but they might not know each other, it is these interests that give them a sense of belonging or maybe a purpose. For instance the members of a digital platform that deals with a subject that is taboo in our society, they knowingly or unknowingly become part of a community, the members of this semi-realistic community don’t really want others to know that they have such interests, so these communities tend exist only in a personal or a private level all though in their conscience they do know that they are part of a community. I made this work of mine, a fiction in their interest, not to break their anonymity, I believe it’s unfair to expose them for my own personal gain, plus they still exist in a state that is still too weird from the perception of people who live in normality. I’m in no position to make a judgment about them, I believe they add diversity and complexity into the world of normality, let that be positive or negative, after all we are just a part of a series of a chain of events.
This jamboard, let alone doesn’t represent the community that I’m discussing, the whole process that I’ve undergone represents them. Knowing their presence, understanding their interests, the building of the plot, making the sketches, all the hypotheses, all my understandings, the decisions that I made in creating the jamboard as it is, even ending the work in an unfinished way.
RLV College of Music & Fine Arts
Radha Lakshmi Vilasam "RLV" College of Music and Fine Arts is an academic institution situated in Thripunithura, Kochi in the state of Kerala, India. It is affiliated to the Mahatma Gandhi University and offers graduate and postgraduate courses in music, performing arts and visual arts.