18 Jan Dust to Dust

Durational (7 hours) site-responsive performance by Reetu Sattar at P K Sen Building during the 5th episode of Uronto Residential Art Exchange Program in Chottogram, BD.

In regards to the context of her work, Reetu mentions a well known saying in Bangla ‘Dhulai Milay Sokoli’. The beginning and ending of life is hard to define. It is an utopia of thinking about the living. Existence is equal to no existence. Breathing is feeling to live. Breath out is a feeling of nothing. The nothingness is what we live in.

Buildings like P K Sen has been a witness of time, culture, memories and celebrations. These structures are build form scratch from the dust when there was nothing like this in nearby areas. After years of witnessing the changing time slowly these kind of buildings are slowly becoming abandoned, neglected and vanishing into the dust along with the narratives and memories that survived with it.

The 7 hours long performance by artists started in morning from the prayer room of the Hindu family who are the owner of the building now, then continued till afternoon where artist created a mesmerizing atmosphere by creating live sound, making smoke and the gesture of her body. She created various unknown sounds from a hideout and appeared suddenly and ended up into dust in the dome on top of the building. She collaborated with Sze for the sound installation and live sound making.
The live sounds from the hideout was distributed around the house as an indoor live telecast without letting audience know about the main source of the sound along with her presence. this was a way of addressing the sense of nothingness yet a connected existence. Then she merged herself with into the dust reflecting the ultimate destiny.

After all those celebrations and good/bad moment of life what we might leave behind is just a mark on the dust.

Reetu Sattar (1981, Bangladesh) is a performance artist. Her work moves between theatre, video and text. Sattar combines different mediums to create unique performance art about presence and absence, memory, loss, resilience and the temporality of existence.

On behalf of artist, special acknowledgement to Sze Ka Yan, Sohorab, Porag, Shihab, Decorator man Enam, Prince and Sadya for their contribution and cooperation in the work