KARACHI: Amin Gulgee Gallery seems to have become adept at holding performance art shows. And with each show the themes are, unsurprisingly, becoming bolder in terms of artistic expression. The event curated by Zarmeene Shah and Amin Gulgee on Thursday evening, called Dreamscape, attempted to create a dream-like ambience that sometimes bordered on surrealism with a dash of bitter reality.

It is difficult to ascertain how many artists participated in the event because of the heavy presence of art lovers at the venue, but according to the curatorial statement there were about 50 of them performing a variety of roles with the aim of achieving a ‘kind of collective dream’. It is difficult to go along with the notion of a collective dream, simply because dreams imply an intangible moment of awareness, whereas the performers were trying to create a tangible effect, something which was visually understandable accompanied by loud, if not deafening, sounds. It has to be said that a few of the acts were attention-grabbing, and since it is difficult to mention all of them in a short write-up, let’s skim through a few of them.

Arsalan Nasir’s ‘Tell-Fection’ (installation/performance) was a poignant reminder of the changing times with a tenuous attachment to the past. An indifferent looking young man playing a video game on his mobile phone as a Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan song blares out of an old TV set was a piece of theatre that is readily identifiable.

Sadaf Malaterre’s ‘Tea with Alice’ (interactive installation/performance) imparted a new feel to a character that most art lovers are familiar with. The scene created for the purpose was inescapable, in the sense that every entrant, symbolically, had to go past it. Without much trepidation, at that.

Syed Ammad Tahir’s ‘Sleeptalking’ had a Freudian touch to it, made more than obvious by the performer himself who held visitors by their shoulders and whispered a word into their ears. TBP’s ‘Seeking Security in Chaos’ was indicative of the environment that the modern man has become accustomed to, therefore, in a manner of speaking, covering almost all important issues faced by society today.

Now I come back to the concept of a collective dream. While you can understand the thought behind the desire, it, ironically, itself is a distant dream. There can be collective goals borne out of the disparate dreams that individuals see, and to that end, Dreamscape was a successful attempt.

Published in Dawn, December 20th, 2014