Ingredients of Encounters: Recipes of Reciprocations

Two gatherings on 30th and 31st July 2022

Poetry, participatory performance, projection, potlis and potions

This work was developed during a collaborative residency with Jyothidas K.V. at the Van Gogh House, London, UK. We dive into archives, objects, and physical fragments of cities and sites where our words encounter contexts that are site-specific. ​​Continuing a series of works earlier created for Miami in 2021 and New Delhi in 2019, this work stems out of written conversational exchanges that include text and poetry that build a series of interactive engagements to look under peels of paint and plaster, engage with forgotten histories and draw references with architectural excerpts that point toward historic continuities.

The Van Gogh House London seeks to share the history of 87 Hackford Road, the Georgian terrace where Vincent Van Gogh lived between 1873 to 1874. Rather than become a time capsule of Van Gogh’s year in Brixton, 87 Hackford Road celebrates the house’s remarkable legacy by hosting artist residencies in addition to guided tours, exhibitions and events, to create a space that is generative and a history that is ever evolving.

Both of us carried our tools (literal, literary, imaginative and experiential), and one secret historical ingredient that was disclosed to one another on the third week of the residency. The ingredient meets stimulants derived from the house archives and its present context, to understand our histories, its trajectories, and was shared with the audience via two gatherings. In the first one titled "Recipoems: Trails of Reciprocity" the ingredients were concealed yet told tales about itself through its shape, size, scent and weight. In the second, they were present in their many iterations.

We worked on two text pieces that created participatory performances by the visitors, written in response to fragments of paper with calligraphic writing found under the floorboards in Van Gogh’s room, now archived and placed in the house-museum, providing a prompt and a start to the work the audiences encountered. They were also prompted to take as many posters of the text they read during the participatory encounter and place the writing in this city at any place, private or public, that they feel suits the conversation it presents.