Hi dear Jaskaran Anand, what`s your routine at the moment?

Regarding my daily routine, it involves a significant amount of networking and concept development. I spend a lot of time meeting with artists, cooperation partners, and running between funding institutions. Since I am currently working in the freelance market, my daily schedule varies depending on meetings, deadlines for fundraising, and assisting artists or team members with concept development.

What`s now particularly important for all of us?

What’s particularly important for all of us now is to move beyond identity politics and focus on internal transformation. We need to stop seeing each other as victims or perpetrators and instead, cultivate an awareness of our interconnectedness. It’s crucial to consistently work towards psychological well-being within the web of relationships we inhabit.

To „Dance“/ celebrate and enjoy with a focus on how different body parts are connected… as I believe it helps to understand also the abstraction, glitches and flow amongst the decison making and helps to deal with paradoxes and dogmas

a) first within ourselves and

b) one that makes the society and thereby us. It helps to understand the performance/performativity we as individuals are inthe society play due to agential realism (Karen Barad).

Further, each step in a way that we take to consistently work towords our own psychology in the well-connected web that could „flower-out“ the  inter-, rather intra-connectedness.

New start, new beginning. What will be essential and which roles will art play on society?

We are indeed facing a new departure and a fresh beginning, both socially and personally. In this context, art plays an essential role as a tool for reflection, community building, and celebrating awareness. It serves as a base for individual expression and can create spaces for personal and societal development. I’m particularly interested in exploring how art can foster transformative self-culture through rituals, self-reflection, and research. It can help establish the inside-out apaproach for understanding transitions and transformations..

What are you reading currently?

Currently, I am reading through the letters from my social project „City Voices/Lettes of Trans(T*).DisCity“ which was held in Linz until April, as I am finding text for my new immersive theatre performance, and how the data could be mapped to bring the information to required institutions and politicians for transformation.
I am also reading about „Tawaif’s“ , courtesans from the Indian sub-continent whose status changed in the society after the British colonialisation.
I question, whether we, as a society,  have adapted a culture long ago of monetising bodies and have never changed them? For me, here it is also interesting to compare Tawaif’s multifaceted identity with artists especially performers due to the exposure of the self to larger public for „money, resources and survival“.

Meanwhile, I am immersing myself in various texts, ranging from philosophical treatises and scientific papers on self-awareness, and transformation. like The Ending of Time dialogue between J.Krishnamurthi and David Böhm… Revisiting „Glitch Feminism“ by Legacy Russel…..
Each offers unique insights into the human experience and informs my approach to networking, concept development, and fostering inter-, rather intra-connectedness.
Moreover, as I am also a social media consumer, I have recently got into texts of Vedic cultures, aesteroids, and spirits.

Which quote, text will you propose to us?

One quote that resonates with me is by Alan Watts: „The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.“ It encapsulates the essence of embracing change and finding harmony amidst chaos, which aligns with my vision for navigating the complexities of our current socio-cultural landscape.

Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts and insights.

Warm regards,
Jaskaran Anand/Harmonical.Self

Thank you very much for the interview, dear Jaskaran, all the best for your great art and you and in these days!

5 questions on artists: Jaskaran Anand_
Transdiscplinary and Performance Artist, Researcher and pedagogue

Jaskaran Anand is an internationally recognized* performance artist* and lives in Vienna and Linz. Jaskaran works in directing, project management, choreography, education, cultural initiatives and film. In his* work he* explores the formation of reality and interconnectedness within the geopolitical human body and space-time anomalies. He* explores this through philosophy and the avatar Harmonical.Self. With a mix of scientific, technical, artistic and cultural development skills and experiences, his* transdisciplinary works include dance, choreography, directing, creative contributions, writing, performance, music, film, scientific ontologies and technological interfaces.

His* long-term projects place of attachment and L-INKED (imagetanz Festival 2021 and 2022 at brut) deal with transdisciplinary approaches, and his more recent works In-between Privacy, Hibernating Further and MachinegedHuman! deal with transdisciplinary approaches and digitalization, ecological-psychological aspects, body politics and posthumanism. Since 2009 he* has been performing, choreographing and teaching throughout Europe and India. He* performed at the ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival, the Ars Electronica Festival, the European Theater Night, the Long Night of the Museun, the Opéra de Lausanne, the Tanztage Burgenland and Roma Europa Festival, among others. He also worked in collaborations and performance projects with/by renowned artists such as Ivo Dimchev, Salvo Lombardo/CHIASMA, Dr. Sandra Chatterjee and Liz King.

Based on dance theater, meditation and art pedagogical practices, he* leads and organizes improvisation-based workshops and educational projects designed under the ideologies Deforming-Body, City Swarming – a dance marathon, Moving Energies and the very famous Playful Bodies.

https://www.jaskarananand.com/

Fotos_  3,4, Claudia Erblehner / erblehner.com Erblehner.com , otherwise Jaskaran Anand

Walter Pobaschnig _ 8.5.2024

https://literaturoutdoors.com