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BEAUTY OF FORM
2016
Full HD video | 16:9 | 11.13 min. | color | sound


Beauty of Form takes up the Asian tradition of philosophizing on form and formlessness, which for centuries has been disseminated through musical performances. The film examines the relationship between subject and object in the context of the Eastern intellectual traditions and poetically relates them to the Western Platonic concept of form. The point of departure for the work on the film was a song by the Hindustani singer Kumar Gandharva, composed in the tradition of “Nirguni bhajan,” that discusses the impermanence of the physical body, which forms the film’s soundtrack. In reference to the metaphor of the veil or curtain of “Maya” in Hindu philosophy, highlighting the illusory and deceptive nature of the material world and encouraging individuals to seek spiritual enlightenment and liberation by looking beyond the superficial appearances of reality, the viewer is led through a red curtain into an empty Indian villa. The various rooms now function as a stage for the performance, presented in five scenes, and stand metaphorically for interior spaces of the human body and its psyche. Here, the “cosmic play” of form and formlessness now unfolds: in each scene of Beauty of Form, flowing ritual movement patterns are contrasted with the static character of golden objects that are derived from basic geometric forms, or suggest ideal Platonic bodies from which all phenomena in the world can be derived. Even when the sequences are sometimes dominated by the element of serenity and other times by dynamism, in the course of the film, the idea of an everlasting form is increasingly undermined and subjected to constant mutability. 



Concept / Directed / Edited: Kay Walkowiak
Choreography & Solo Dance: Ruchi Saini
Group Dance: Avantika Gupta, Shruti Mishra, Deepali Lai, Vidhya Sharma, Rupa Singh, Soujana
Performers: Chandrashekhar Gupt, Anil Ji, Sonu Kumar, Chote Lal, Anil Pandey, Rajesh Pandey, Navin Rai, Nandita Raman, Shanti Raman
Camera / Postproduction: Brett Novak
Color Grading: Andi Winter
Sound Mix: Nigel Brown
Production Assistant: Aruna Raman
Object Fabrication: Bidi Bhagwandas
Special Thanks: Shrinkla Agrawal, Daulat Meghnani, Cari Pittillo
Supported by: Federal State of Austria, Province of Salzburg, City of Vienna, Otto Mauer Fonds