GURUGRAM: Can there ever be an optimal balance between tradition and modernity? A unique coming together of the arts strove to provide if not an answer to this question, then at least a journey towards that answer.‘(Dis)Orientation and (Dis)Sonance’, curated by Serendipity Arts and DLF5, presents a juxtaposition of the traditional (a bamboo prayer hut) and the modern (a televisual demonstration of the moment). Nepal-based ABARI and Desire Machine from Guwahati are featured in this project, which received an incantatory unveiling by way of the chants of Lama Tashi (former principal ‘chant master’ at the Dalai Lama’s Drepung Loseling Monastery , in Karnataka).Here were works of installation art as diverging as the philosophies of our times. While one showed, via images and sounds of the everyday, the mundane as part of life, the other sought to explain, using meditation, how the mundane needed to be disrupted, for the sake of lucidity and harmony.‘Noise Life’, as the title implies, delves into the blare and frenzy that is the 21st century. Cinematic art, says Desire Machine founder Mriganka Madhukaillya , is built on perceptions, and the film is an attempt to connect with the sensory overload of the day-to-day, and how we perceive the outer world.Voices, as he reminds, incessantly keep on playing in our heads, and ‘Noise Life’ looks to give expression to these voices. “It stresses upon making people understand that now is the time to realise and act, and to be aware of your own self.”The Guwahati collective uses cinema and art to articulate its message. “I personally don’t believe that the medium is important, but expression of the idea is vital,” adds Madhukaillya, who feels art has a role to play in helping us see.By contrast, ‘Kora’ dials down on the energy. The transliteration of a Tibetan word, Kora refers to the circumambulatory pilgrimage undertaken by Buddhists at sacred sites.The Kora installed at the city’s One Horizon Center resembles a shell, consisting of several (and different) layers, says Nripal Adhikary, founder of ABARI, a Kathmandu collective that works at reviving Nepal’s indigenous architectural customs, and looks to create new ways of design by “marrying” the contemporary with the traditional — including by using bamboo in architecture.“Millions of people associate with this plant but it is neglected even though it’s a very strong material, stronger than steel,” said Adhikary. “But somehow, in the course of modernisation, we’ve neglected it. So, we’re trying to bring it back, trying to glorify it.”Bamboo, he points out, is culturally relevant in the South Asian context. And by situating bamboo in an “ultra-modern” space, Adhikary and his colleagues seek to create a rupture, to shake people out of the complacency bred by the habits of a consumerist society. To get back to roots, literally.A wander within the Kora, then, is a way to an alternative reality. In it, you embrace shadow as well as light.“As you go through, you are revealing certain things about yourself,” explains Adhikary. “As people are moving, they’re not going to a destination, they’re seeing different things.”It is, in the end, all about finding the centre. And finding yourself.‘(Dis)Orientation and (Dis)Sonance’ will continue until May 31.

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