Art from everyday life

A simple steel trunk, with a colourfully painted front, greeted visitors from a far corner at Studio 21 as they trooped in to hear film-maker and installation artist Tassilo Letzel speak on his works on February 9.

In the city for the project "Von Ingolstadt nach Indien (From Bavaria to Bengal)", Letzel spoke about his works by means of photographs and short films. "Art is a beautiful way to make people reflect a little more," said the artist who had started off as a photographer but is now a freelance film-maker who uses a combination of documentary techniques ' photography, films, videos and walking/bicycle tours ' to communicate his perception of a constantly changing society.

The interactive presentation was meant to familiarise city art lovers with his way of working with materials from everyday life.

One of the presentations showed an exhibit, titled "Das leben geht weiter (Life goes on)". It showed a strange-looking machine sticking out of a box of paint, facing a wall with an abstract pattern. "Just like an artwork!" said Letzel. But it was a short footage following it that explained the process and had the audience in splits.

"It was a random agricultural tool that I had picked up, just to see what visitors at the gallery would do," the artist said. "Would they press the button marked 'start' or not? The question was, how far would you go to do something that you wouldn't do normally?" The footage of the audience caught quite a few visitors merrily pressing the button ' only to be surprised when the facing wall got spray-painted. "All I had to do was re-paint the wall," laughed Letzel, before moving on to other works.

Manas Acharya, the curator-coordinator of Studio 21, said while introducing the artist: "His works express harsh topics in an ironic language, trying to provoke an impulse, to instigate people to think or start reflecting on their surroundings."

Letzel's current project, "Von Ingolstadt nach Indien", is a film that traces the relocation of oil-refining machinery from a plant in Ingolstadt in Bavaria to Haldia. The movie documents the story of the sudden shutdown of the refinery in 2008, after 43 years of producing petrol, and then being sold off to an Indian company to be relocated at the East Midnapore township.

And what about the trunk sitting in the corner? Letzel had a film on that too. "People often asked me why I wasn't getting myself a suitcase. Why a trunk? I needed something to carry around my stuff, but at the same time, I wanted to play with the trunk." As the film showed the trunk being painted at a roadside shop in Calcutta, the question on everyone's lips was, why get it painted like that in the first place?

"Handicraft is very expensive back home, and almost everything is machine-painted," said the artist. "But over here, you can do it for so little. If you look around, even the shops have signs and placards that are painted, not printed. Painting the trunk was very much a way of defining what the city looks like."

After four months in Calcutta, what was the artist taking back with him, apart from material on the oil refinery project and the painted trunk? "I did a lot of cycling in the city, along the EM Bypass. I made small videos. I am looking for different approaches towards this city. I just love the way this society is working."