Performance ‘Text-ing-Be-ing’ with Danushka Marasinghe and K K Srinath Chathuranga
28 July Friday, 6–7pm
Artists Danushka (b. 1985) and Srinath (b. 1987) activate their interactive performance ‘Text-ing-Be-ing’ (2019), currently on display in ‘The Foreigners’. Taking up positions on either side of a grid of red plastic tape on the floor, they slowly begin to write Sinhala letters in white chalk within the confines of each square. Their goal is to work their way from one side of the grid to the other. Meeting in the middle, each artist subsequently begins to erase the other’s writing, replacing it with their own. After repeating this exercise a few times, the artists invite the audience to participate, giving rise to a collective writing performance which introduces further disruptions to the grid. The work explores how a language establishes a system of communication that is impenetrable to those who are foreign to it. Within the rules of engagement of the performance however, one language could be overwritten and erased by a foreign tongue.
This Performance has been curated as part of the Public Programmes of the exhibition ‘The Foreigners’, on view until 22 October 2023.
