Chorus of the Unfulfilled

Surfatial’s artist’s novel is a text that chronicles a sequence of events already underway. Our protagonist is the person who wants to be fulfilled. As the narrator, Surfatial tells the story of mounting an ideal exhibition that attempts to engage our protagonist, the viewer in the most fulfilling way. The process of building the novel in real time begins with a set of diverse practitioners contributing detailed schematics of an ideal exhibition that they each imagine. These contributions are compiled into a book, which will be published as a part of the Srinagar Biennale (India). The book is an entity in our artist’s novel as well as a book in real life. The narrative of arriving at the book and taking it further is material for the artist’s novel. Later in the narrative of the artist’s novel, the narrators discuss, excerpt and draw from the specifications from the contributions in the book to formulate an execution plan to physically install the exhibition. This is not a smooth process and involves struggle and conflict. In effect, the proposal for our artist’s novel includes the creation of a book that leads to an exhibition installation which combines the multiple contributed exhibition plans.

This Artist’s Novel is the story of engagement. Our protagonist is the person who wants to be fulfilled. A group of people gets together on a social network to design an exhibition that will aim to fulfil the exhibition visitors, i.e. the protagonists. The designers agonise, discuss and arrive at their own personal imaginations of the exhibition. The book will therefore have a dynamic structure that unfolds as a branching narrative. It will reflect the discussions of the group of practitioners which unravel in parallel with real life. This constant adherence to the format of the novel as well as following the events as they unfold in real life, makes the process much more a reflection of how artists conjunctly negotiate between their imagination and reality.

Our approach to the novel’s text will closely follow the magic realism and documentary genres. Sections of the novel will include philosophical discussions commenting on the intended plans as the narrators imagine the feasibility of executing each plan. The imagination of the execution by the narrators will manifest in verse as a song and dance routine.

The various elements that go into the final presentation of the artist’s novel including text, sound, visuals and performance will be designed and executed by Surfatial.