HORNBILL Public Art 2011

Ruth Buck, a Swiss artist will be participating in the Hornbill Public Art Festival, which is part of the Hornbill Festival at Kohima, Nagaland. Ruth is currently on a residency in India. [ dated December 2011]

Ruth Buck, a visual artist from Switzerland will be participating in the Hornbill Public Art Festival, which is part of the Hornbill Festival to be held from 1 to 7 December 2011 at Kohima, Nagaland. Ruth is currently on a residency in India. 
Date: 1 to 7 December 2011 
Venue: Kisama Model Village, Kohima, Nagaland 
Entry: Festival rules apply 

The artist: Ruth’s studio apartment at Sanskriti Foundation is drowned in the cackle of a thousand birds, the unusual calls building up to a cacophony in sudden crescendos, crashing like waves against our ear drums. Recorded at Percé, Qué in Canada, Ruth Buck intends to use these sounds at the Nagaland public art festival in December. Previously having played these sounds at a metro station at Montreal, Canada, the artist piqued the curiosity of the passersby, overlaying their regular associations of the space with new ones. Released from their origin to an urban or geographic setting where they did not belong, Ruth used the sound scapes to create new meanings, deconstructing their notions and experience of that space. 

During her ongoing Pro Helvetia studio residency in Delhi, the artist has been continually fascinated with what she is able to see and find on the ground on her walks around the city, evocative of the contrast and diversity that she thinks epitomizes India. From garbage to manicured lawns to the coolness of the stone flooring beneath her feet at a Mughal tomb, Ruth is currently working on a project where she wants to ‘hang’ pictures of the ground on the wall. Using light as her constant source of inspiration and expression, an artwork of hers that the artist wants to carry to Nagaland to work on with the people there, apart from her sound-scapes, is her photo-performance. Titled ‘Blind Date’- the installation, initially put up in 2003 at her residency in Canada, consisted of light boxes with ethereal pictures of the artist in different body postures. Hidden behind the gauze screen, would be the bodies and stories of the Nagas whose faces need to be seen, who are an inconspicuous part of the country today. It is such mediums of expression that the artist works with, where there are multiple meanings new meanings to be discovered where the result cannot be known. 

For more information please visit: www.hornbillart.blogspot.com/2011/11/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html 

Organiser and Partner: Shelter Promotion Council, India The Art Festival is being supported by Lalit Kala Akademi, Ministry of Culture, Nagaland and Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council