Biennale artist Aleš Šteger provides visitors with a sense of being in exile

Shaji N. Karun joins ‘guided tour’ performance for an immersive experience
 at installation ‘Pyramid of Exiled Poets’ in Aspinwall House, Fort Kochi

Kochi, December 15: Disembodied voices speak in strange tongues from within the walls of The Pyramid of Exiled Poets as you hopelessly fumble in the dark unsure of the way and wait for your eyes to catch up to your feet. This is what Aleš Šteger imagines life to be for those cast out.

Slovenian artist Aleš Šteger  at his installation 'The Pyramid of Exiled Poets' in Aspinwall House, Fort Kochi.

Over the first two days of Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) 2016, the Slovenian litterateur and participating artist held a series of 10-minute walks through the pyramid installation that dominates the landscape at Aspinwall House, Fort Kochi. Like its title, ‘Fire Walk with Me’, the performance – in the guise of a guided tour – took its cue from the auteur David Lynch.

It is fortunate then that the eminent filmmaker Shaji N. Karun is in this particular ‘tour group’. The performance begins with a quick briefing outside the structure on the life of an exiled or ‘disappeared’ poet and a forewarning about the difficult path ahead.

“This is an archaeological site that references the Khufu pyramid in Giza, Egypt. This pyramid is a tomb for poets who have been exiled from republics and nations for centuries. This is their final residence. So, repeat after me: ‘Fire walk with me, far from home, I’m going to set you free’,” Šteger intones as he leads the way into the pitch black.

If, like Lynch, the intent is to unsettle, the effect is immediate as poets – both long-dead and living – moan, sigh and speak their pieces in rasping voices. These are the vocal remains and testimonies of Ovid, Dante Alighieri, Bertolt Brecht, Czesław Miłosz, Mahmoud Darwish, Yang Lian, Joseph Brodsky, Ivan Blatný and César Vallejo.

“The darkness is interestingly conceived. It is clearly a metaphor for the condition of being in exile as the voices and spirits of the past ask you to go back, but you must push forward,” said Karun, feeling his way across the mud- and thatch-lined corridors of the mausoleum.

Eminent filmmaker Shaji N Karun after experincing the  performance titled ‘Fire Walk with Me’ by Slovenian artist Aleš Šteger at Aspinwall House, Fort Kochi.

At the exit, there is a pause as each member of the tour group utters the first word that comes to mind, crumples a flyer with a poet’s name and “releases his/her spirit” in a campfire.

His role as ‘tour guide’ over, Šteger drops the pretense to reveal his artistic intention. “There is a recurring trend across and over civilisations where writers and poets are cast out of their homelands and have had their histories erased. This is both my monument to the histories kept hidden from us and an overturning of the status quo that builds memorials to tyrants,” he said.

This iconoclasm is built into the structure. Where the tombs of Pharaohs were embellished with riches, Šteger’s pyramid is built from wood, matting, mud and dung.

“There is an existential power behind this trend that someone has to go out of the territory where his or her language is spoken and being able to write for no one. I wanted to capture the helplessness someone in that situation feels so that when the visitor leaves this space, it is as though they have been reborn,” he said.

Commenting on his immersive experience, Karun said, “In having to give up their sight, visitors get a sense of what a life of absence, loss and longing might feel like.”