The project began with a workshop at The Free Tree Commune in Vemgal in the Kolar neighborhood in Karnataka. Here the artists became acquainted with one another and created a shared basis with which to approach the journey's themes. From here, the group moved along the Nila river in Kerala, where they encountered - and clashed with - the contradictions and illusions of sustainable tourism. Meeting with local communities led to the discovery of the multiplicity of traditions represented in the river culture – from the orchestra of bamboo musical instruments to shadow puppets - suggesting, at the same time, the need for deep thinking about role that tourism can play in the preservation of local cultures. The next leg of the trip brought the group to Anegundi, in Karnataka, a village whose gastronomic culture is likely to disappear in the near future due to the village's proximity to Hampi, one of India's hippie tourist havens. In Anegundi, the artists interacted with the village women and together they prepared roti, a kind of local bread, which they then brought to Hampi, on the other side of the river, to share with the tourists who only eat spaghetti and falafel. The "caravan" then returned to Bangalore where the story of the journey was presented to the public at 1Shanthiroad (http://1shanthiroad.com/) in a three-day open studio.
Three questions accompanied M.A.P.'s journey: in what ways can the act of travelling be understood as a learning process as well as a space for creative collaboration? How can we approach mobility in terms of artistic process? What forms of exchange can activate critical thought about the relationship between different polarizations (perception/projection, observer/observed, inclusion/exclusion, artist/tourist)? As well as being the most unusual, the last one proved to be a key to understanding and interpreting the entire project. One of the provocations used by the organizers to stimulate discussion at the beginning of the journey was: "I am not a tourist, I am an artist." In a rift that is as hierarchical as it is ironic, those who create new realities - like artists – are counterposed to tourists who consume landscapes and experiences, creating a sort of distinction between individuality and mass consumption.
For most of the international participants, it was their first time in India. The intensity of the smells, the exotic colors, the power with which India is revealed the first time obfuscated the already fragile limits between the two polarities. Like the tourist, the artist gathers impressions, captures fragments, freezes moments and memories. A message on a postcard that flows black-on-white in a multimedia installation: what is ultimately the difference between the two if they share a common point of view on travel and exchange? In M.A.P.'s specific case, the difference should have been in the exploration of the possibility of finding new ways of creating, generated by the alchemies of mobility and collaboration. The project tried to determine whether this could be a real possibility; if a "work in progress" could be a way to reveal transparency in the development of ideas as opposed to the pressures of the finished product. The weeks of travel and the open studio demonstrated that it is not such a simple question. However, the project was not a failure but a great opening: to new questions, to the deep need to think, or rethink, the methods, the limits and the arrogance of authorship. Between the tourist and the artist, it is the tourist who seems to win - perhaps due to honesty or perhaps due to lack of pretense. Not even the recovery of the "surface," that Deleuze attempts in Différence et Répétition with the metaphor of the swimmer, can completely legitimize the limits of the sketch and the impression. But the format and the questions that the experimental approach proposed in the Mobile Artistic Platform highlights the unspoken urgency of the art world: the need to reconsider approaches to, and possibilities for, creative practices in terms of collaboration and sharing. Francesca Recchia
