Sankalpa

Sankalpa is an installation by the artists Shekhar Kapur and David Adjaye shown at Swarovski Crystal Worlds in Austria. The Title “Sankalpa“ is taken from Indian yoga-thought and means “resolution“, “free will“ and “imagination“. The moving picture installation transforms the abstract term into a sensual experience in the form of a spatial crystallisation and is an interpretation of the short film “Passage“ by Shekhar Kapur.

The Installation

In search for a new hybrid format two art forms merge in this installation: film and architecture. Together, the film maker and the architect embark shifting conventional limits that determine the viewing of a film and the experience of architecture. Kapur’s filmic “Passage“ penetrates Adjayes’ kaleidoscopic space and invites visitors to explore and to experience extraordinary architecture and multifarious levels of meaning.

Concept and Artists

Since his multiple Oscar nominated world success “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” (1998), starring Hollywood actress Cate Blanchett, Shekhar Kapur has become one of the most successful international directors of today. Together with David Adjaye, also an internationally renowned contemporary architect, Shekhar Kapur has now designed a venue for a sensuous filmic experience in the Crystal Worlds. They are answering the questions: How might the cinema look like in the future? What happens, if films are no longer simply viewed, but if they integrate the audience into the happening? In the installation “Sankalpa“, not only pictures are set in motion, but also the visitors: In an “art room” that has been exclusively created for the Crystal Worlds, the visitors follow the sequence of the filmic happening and start to devise their own stories in their heads.

Kapur’s complex film “Passage“ is projected through Adjayes’ crystalline architecture, it is interrupted and can be experienced in its endless facets and ideals. In “Sankalpa“, the mystical connection between film and crystal becomes evident: The fascination of crystal as “a moving picture“ that brings ever new aspects and perspectives alive, while it cannot be ultimately explained, is reinterpreted by the film as contemporary light art. With “Sankalpa“, the visitor enters a spiritual crystallisation transformed into image and space: both artists invite to become immersed into their filmic “Crystal World “and to follow your own fantasy, your own “Sankalpa”.

David Adjaye, who only came to architecture after a “detour” via art studies, has realised joint projects with numerous stars of the art world such as Olafur Eliasson or the Turner laureate Chris Ofili. He describes the experience awaiting the visitor of “Sankalpa“: “A mysterious and hypnotic way of becoming immersed into Shekhar Kapur’s film.“

“Passage“ - The Movie

Kapur’s film “Passage“ is beyond conventional reception: Instead of narrating a linear story, atmospherically and emotionally charged scenes are arranged in such a way that the question of their “correct“ order arises in time. “In the comprehensive experience, which I create for you artistically, I invite you, each individual visitor, to decide, what it means for you”, so formulates Shekhar Kapur his creative principle. Accordingly, the story in “Passage“ can be decoded by everybody differently: the Hollywood-actresses Julia Stiles (The Bourne Identity) and Haley Bennett (Music and Lyrics with Hugh Grant) as well as the British actress and supermodel Lily Cole find themselves in mysterious ambiances, the exact context remains to be unravelled. The film, however, does not only present things to see and to think about, but also to hear: The soundtrack composed by the Academy Award winner AR Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire) plays with motifs from diverse styles of music.

External links

• Sankalpa at Swarovski Crystal Worlds, Austria
• Passage Filmproject
• Shekar Kapurs Official Website
• Website of Adjaye Associates

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