SUCH UNTIMELY DANCING
Kinetic-Sculpture / Essay-Collage (in-process)

A collage of clocks presents the paradox of the breaking of some bodies for the making of others. A kinetic sculpture: a mechanized assemblage of a body in a (counter)clockwork dance of continuous un/making. A textual triptych (re)telling stories of once dismembered bodies, and their periodic re-membering across pre-modern, pre-industrial and post-colonial times. Seen together, the stories and sculpture speak of ethical, mythical and technological cycles in the continuous de(con)struction and (re)creation of bodies.

This work is an homage to the autodidact engineer and entrepreneur, Gopalswamy Doraiswamy Naidu (1893-1974), one of India’s pioneering, yet underrated technologist-entrepreneur who publicly performed the destruction of his own body of work as an early act of political dissent against the nation-state.