[+] MONALI MEHER (INDIA)
Reverse/ Rewind/ Replay: Seven acts from the Past.
If we were to return to the past would we do exactly the same thing? Would we repeat the same acts, behave in the same way? Can we recreate moments of the past in the present? In this performance Meher revisits seven of her earlier performances from 2003 to 2006 that are concurrently screened during her performance. In response to these recorded moments, Meher responds to time, present and past, by constructing the ‘now’ through the states of remembering and forgetting. The larger question her work opens up is how can re-enacting acts of the past transform the future? What are the boundaries that this negotiation demands? Meher’s time-based performances create an atmospheric quality that can be experienced within a theatrically ritualistic and cyclical pattern of destruction and renewal. (Text by Arshiya Lokhandwala.)
Meher was born in 1969 in Pune, India. In 1998 she received the ‘Unesco-Aschberg’ Residency in Vienna. In the same year she made her first performance, Reflect, A personal window display in Mumbai with the statement ‘Nothing is permanent’. She presently lives and works in Amsterdam.
Reverse/ Rewind/ Replay: five acts from the past, curated by Arshiya Lokhandwala, was performed in November 2005 in Brooklyn, NY as part of Performa ’05.
Photo by Rob Uchelen