Motive Emotive

ArtWorks Liestal

September 19-28, 2014

Click to see All Prints / Click to see photos of Vernissage

MotivEmotiv

motiveA reason for doing something.

emotivearousing or able to arouse intense feeling.

Motive Emotive, these two words sum up my life. But I was never asked about this when discussing my football or my work. Somehow, being Indian or a woman, an outsider or a minority was deemed more important a discussion point. And yet, this missed the point of my being completely, no matter how much influence being these things may have had on my life.
I started my journey away from a Science career which had given me conventional success because it lacked the feelings I had gotten from my sport, that pure 100% feeling of being so engaged in something that nothing else exists. I had never believed I had it in me to be an artist because, for all the canvases and paints I invested in, I was unable to make that first stroke onto the canvas. A lifetime of being aware of what was right or wrong, a product of my background, culture and personality, how could I ever start? No wonder I felt more comfortable in the world of data and numbers as a computer scientist. And then I discovered the kinect camera, a camera made for me. I do not take videos from it, I simply record data of the positions of everything it sees. The camera did everything I had ever dreamed, it cared only for the motion of a person, the sex, colour or age of the person was irrelevant. Data, a world I am comfortable with. Everyone is reduced to numbers, something we all say we never want to be. And yet, not one person has looked at the most basic visualisation of themselves as simple white pixels and said anything other than, “wow, that looks beautiful”. “You are beautiful” I agree. Noone looks at a visualisation of themselves jumping and turning through the air and groans that their hair looks funny, their facial expression is all wrong, missing the whole beauty in what they are doing. These abstract visualisations, I hope, strip of superficial qualities and all that remains is the beauty of the motion, of a moment, of someone just being and doing what their heart desires.
All the people I have chosen to represent in this style share my philsophy of life: Motive Emotive.

I wish to thank all the people who so kindly and happily gave their time to me and have allowed me to abstract them as I please:

Jorge Garcia Perez, Debora Maiques Marin, Alba Carbonell, Sergio Bustinduy, Camille Auble (Ballet Basel)
Adrian Sieber, Simon Ramseier (Love Bugs)
Elia Rediger (Bianca Story)
Tatiana Heintz (Okou)
Arnold Gjergjaj, Angelo Gallina, Zoe Koh, Eva Chayenne Wottreng (Box Club Basel)
Christian La Furia Martinez
Kat Fischer (DJ Kat La Luna), Janiv Oron (Goldfinger Brothers)
Shalini Trefzer (DanzBollywood)
Samira Susuri (FCB)
Rebekka Nuescheler (FC Concordia)
Nina Bradlin
Clemens Wepfer
Katja Reichenstein
Gian Kaur (My mother)
Sab, Aman, Samar, Eshervir, Ishaan (The Jhooti’s)
Woodstock and Wilma

Also at the exhibition, was the Basel premier of Heart, a biofeedback installation first shown in Stuttgart at the Kunst Im Klub festival, 2013.  This has been done in collaboration with Armando Braswell, Joachim Riederer and Phillip Kannicht.  This was a first time project for us as a team and great to be a part of. All three are really excellent artists and I was very fortunate to be able to work with them.