Bosnian life is an unwanted mandala

“Bosanski život je neželjena mandala“

(Bosnian life is an unwanted mandala)

a Performance developed and made by Dženan ŠEHIĆ

With this performance idea I have applied to ZVONO (see their website for details) and I did not want to relief any details about this performance on my blog before, but after almost 4 weeks since the application deadline is over I have decide to show it to you– In my opinion it is one of strongest artistic ideas I have ever head and it is a rare one I actually do like!

Before continuing to read you should inform you a little bit about the meaning of a MANDALA. The mandala form and their traditional meaning I used to compare with is an old version of a Tibetan mandala where the monks build their mandala just to destroy it - to become aware of their existence and their own passing by.

To be really aware a student monk should build and destroy 1000 mandalas! I say that the Bosnian, or Balkan life (even actually everyone's life in a way) have been an unwanted mandala. Whatever you do it will be destroyed one day and in the Bosnian life in the past few generations it was mostly twice destroyed during their life's! We, the people from Balkan are aware of our passing by and our existence!

To symbolize this I choose to build a mandala that represents a Bosnian carpet with one different s – in the middle I have put a circle (everything, the one, god, universe...) and 4 circle alike forms around it – the first 3 stands for the circle of life (birth, life and death) and the fourth one have a motive from the carpet on it and it symbolize the impact on ourselves – the memory / emotions or whatever that we take with us in the next life, the next stage, the heaven /hell or whatever follows!!!

I hope that you got my idea and here are a lot of photos from the performance and it s preparation (Marie CASTEL has helped me a lot with all the preparations).

Step 1 - preparation of the sand (including traditional coloration)!!!

Step 2 - building the MANDALA

Step 3 - and the final step - the performance (destroying the carpet-mandala with a vacuum cleaner)...

In detail : First: I walk in and change my shoes with some clogs and put away my jacket. I take the vacuum cleaner and star cleaning / destroying my carpet / mandala...

In the end all it is left behind is a little mountain of mixed sand who has transform his colors in one color: something between gray-violet...

I hope you enjoyed my performance experience STAGE ONE!

Cheers

Dzenan