Seite - 20 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 07/02

20 | Amruta Patil www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 15–30 en to certain prophets to speak without reflection. Theirs is a gnostic, not epistemic, equation with seeking. They cannot intellectualise their process. I sometimes feel that my relationship with this material is like that; when I start taking a position that even hints at any kind of authority over this ma- terial, words are being snatched away from me. So my approach to the ma- terial is more that of a sadhaka [practitioner], rather than a pandit’s [teacher]. Bornet: Let’s turn from the figure of the storyteller to your visual style, which is very striking: the colours are so bright, sensual, luscious. Why did you choose this kind of style? How does this style resonate with narratives around mytholo gies, the body and so on? Patil: I talked about the transformation that comes about because of visual spaces. I’ll give you one example: In 2013, I attended the Dalai Lama’s teach- ings at the Tsuglagkhang Temple in McLeod Ganj. I sat there with my fold- ing cushion for three days and found that the thousand-armed gilded Av- alokiteshvara located to the left of the stage that the Dalai Lama sat on was the thing that was causing some bizarre and wonderful effects. My state of heightened whatever-the-hell-it-was had more to do with that monumen- tal statue than with the teachings. I realised after that experience that we underestimate and undermine the effect of the visual and material. Ornella: Your visual style is very colourful, but it also has a tactile dimension [fig. 1]. You said elsewhere that you want your books to be touched. But since we’re so immersed in digital media and this digital environment – and even now, we’re having this conversation over Zoom – how is it that the tactile, the material element is so central to your artwork? Patil: In extension of the earlier vein of thought, there are people whose silent presence can make others in a room feel good, no words need to be articulated. And we should recognise that. It is an important mode of transmission. We over-valorise the intellectual, but the sensual-erotic touches something more visceral. And that path, too, is very much within the sanātan tradition, of wisdom that is body-out. You need to get dis- cursive, you need to offer yourself up to the sound, smell, the saturated pigment. I would like my readers to locate the stories within themselves. Knauss: This resonates with something you said earlier about being interested in the gristly stuff of body and spit and flesh and blood. It seems as if that the- matic interest is reflected in the way you tell stories, how you combine visual style and text. Patil: In Aranyaka, I could well have used the metaphor of love and sex instead of the metaphor of food. But my purple, deep-diving, cavorting al-