Sakala Kalavallavan, (master of arts) the Tamil musical I have produced is a remix of two cinema songs, belonging to two Tamil cinema eras. The first half belongs to the early 1980s and the second half early 1990. In the remix I retained the original Tamil verses to depict what I know and what I feel. The two macho Tamil heroes who played in those musicals by name Kamalhasan and Rajinikanth, vociferously advocated, the Elvis Preslian country western dress codes and dance modes that were new to the Tamil soil, the Tamil regional heroism, politics, sexism, so on and so forth. Living alongside this generation yet building sandcastles for Picassos, and Tarkovskys in thin air, I almost missed the buzz of my own pop culture, until reinvented it through the study of semiotics, anthropology and structuralism associated to Tamil cinema and Tamil popular culture. The Italian avant-garde artist Francisco Clemente, who had his studio in Madras, the Cinema capital of Tamil Nadu in the late 80’s painted from the popular matchbox pictures, the calendar deities and the barbershop paintings left an indelible mark on my artistic awareness.

‘Sakala Kalavallavan’, single channel video – 2008 The video ‘Sakala Kalavallavan’ is a study on the cultural catharsis, a visual sign that consists of the signifier and the signified. In semiotics sign includes words, images, gestures, scents, tastes, textures, and sounds – essentially all the ways in which information can be communicated as a message by any sentient, reasoning mind to another. My video too is a sign that promulgates and portrays the core of Tamil cinema culture. It is a collective cathartic memory or cultural history, which is constitutive of my life’s experiences.

‘Sakala kalavallavan’, single channel video – 2008. Addressed as ‘Hero’ at the shooting site and amidst one hundred and odd technicians, I ratified the dance sequences with co dancers, which made me understand the world of glitterati and lights. Thomas Carlyle a titan of 17th century English literature, in his important work Heroes and Hero-Worship (1837) writes,’ How can a man act Heroically? ‘The doctrine of Motives’ will teach him that it is, under more or less disguise, nothing but a wretched love or pleasure, fear of pain; that hunger, of applause, of cash, of whatsoever victual it may be, is the ultimate fact of man’s life’. The video Sakala kalavallavan, technically follows the visual language of a standard Tamil cinema. The costume of a disco dancer, village hero, a politician the military man or God himself comes as an accepted wardrobe for a Tamil cinema hero. God as Hero, military man as savior, politician as village champion echo

‘sakala kalavallavan’, single channel video – 2008 people’s cathartic passion for heroism and their desire to be in the shoes of the hero himself. The sets in the video reflect the Tamil Nadu rural or urban street scene. A bullock cart, a mobile teashop, a wall pasted with Tamil cinema posters, political flags, and all mirrors the timelessness associated to the Tamil culture. The popular choreography used in Sakala Kalavallavan combine physical exercise and dramatic body gestures that narrate, power, sex and valor of the male protagonist.