Deepanwita Roy
bangaloREsident-Expanded@WELTKUNSTZIMMER

© Purnendra Meshram

Deepanwita Roy is an independent contemporary movement artist, working as a dancer, performer and creator. Her works are aimed to create impact on the environmental, social and personal level and focus on researching inward movements.

Trained as a movement artist and educated as a biotechnology engineer, she looks beyond her genres of training and education to test the limit of her creative potential. A risk taker and lover of nature, she often goes out of her comfort zone experimenting with her ideas, and connects her practice to address social and environmental issues. She believes movement is the way for humanity to bring about change in persons and society. She aspires to spur development in Indian movement practice and create a self-sustainable structure connecting art and nature.

CONFLICTED (working title)
Isolation and detachment of humans a species from the natural environment is highlighted in this work. We are so cut off from nature that we see cities with wifi, roads, buildings, electricity, vehicles – everything but nature to meet human requirements. We have no idea where our food or water comes from, who produces them and how, and how much we actually pay for it all.

CONFLICTED works with postures, images, emotional expressions, spatial relationships and time, through movements to investigate the human body's responses and reactions in the city and towards natural elements (nature).

The bangaloREsidency-Expanded@Weltkunstzimmer was my first residency experience outside India, which took place in Düsseldorf in collaboration with the dance company Freiraum and Goch in collaboration with the Goch museum in Germany. It gave me every opportunity to fully immerse myself in the project's study and practice while also exposing me to a wide variety of contemporary art practices in Germany.

Deepanwita@WeltKunstZimmer_1 © © Deepanwita Roy Deepanwita@WeltKunstZimmer_1

During my residency, I was given 24x7 access to a studio (exclusively for my use) for my dance practice, movement exploration, and generation, allowing me to practice at any time of day without any constraints. In Weltkunstzimmer, I could also delve into the architecture and vacant spaces of the exhibition halls, which inspired a range of movement patterns in my practice. Apart from that, the residency aided me in visiting numerous museums, exhibitions, and art organizations both within and outside of Düsseldorf and Goch, as well as seeing performances, exploring places, and conversing with local art practitioners from various disciplines. This, in turn, enabled me to directly observe socio-cultural environmental politics as an outsider, which has a significant influence on my current research.

Deepanwita@WeKuZi_2 © © Deepanwita Roy Deepanwita@WeltKunstZimmer_2

The ongoing gentrification in Düsseldorf piqued my interest, leading to a focus on the invasive nature of humans. I chose a specific site for performance where I installed soil and experimented with shifts in my movement approach as the soil properties changed through the rehearsals. The researched work with the working title “Erosion Story” performed at the Residency presentation featured looped movement paths, on-the-spot walks in large and small circles progressing into intense running, mapping of the area with active eyes, and a repeat movement sequence of going to and coming out of the floor. The observation during my stay and presentation also made me think about the conventional structure of performing in a particular set or specific site, challenging the reach of the artworks to the larger populous.

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Deepanwita Roy bangaloREsident-Expanded@WELTKUNSTZIMMER

Deepanwita Roy@Weltkunstzimmer (May - June 2022)

Deepanwita Roy
bangaloREsident-Expanded@WELTKUNSTZIMMER