Cedric Bregnard on the Roots from the Sky collaboration

Auroville Today: Superficially, it’s just a matter of making a beautiful photo and then asking people to copy it.

Cedric: Simply copying would be sterile. A machine can do that. But when you add the sense of observation, seeing where the light is and where is the shadow, and how the revealing of one depends upon the other, you enter into a process. Through the simple action of bringing back the shadow with the light or vice versa you start to interact intimately with the leaves, the bark, of the Banyan.

And you do that not alone but with all the others – more than 450 in this case – who have been working on it over six days. The goal is the same for everyone, to contribute to the completion of the image, but no two people will do it in the same way. So you start to experience the diversity, and not only the diversity but also the beauty of diversity: that is possible to be so different and yet to be in unity.

Through this process, people who had known the Banyan for 30 years or more experienced it in a new way. As an artist, it’s interesting for me to see this happening in Auroville with people who have such an intimate relationship with the tree. It’s like an affirmation of what I’m doing.

Do you provide guidance?

Not at the beginning, but in the final days I give more and more guidance when there are still places which are untraced, because it is necessary to decide what needs to be filled in, and what can stay untraced. We deliberately keep some spaces free to keep the silent quality. What is most important for the process is that the tree finds its harmony.

At this moment, I explain to the participants that it’s not a personal choice which part of the tree they work on. It’s a collective choice to achieve that harmony, because if people get too involved in one section they are not participating in the larger process.

In that sense it is much more than an art project…

Yes.

Will this work be displayed permanently in Auroville?

The original piece will be sold as a donation for Art for Land. But we will make reproductions on fabric which will stay in Auroville, perhaps at places like the Matrimandir. Individuals can also order a photo in a smaller size through the Centre d’Art of either the original photo, or the inked one which was the outcome of this collaboration.