Living atmospheres
The Ramlila in Garhwal
For his MA project, Paul Hußmann conducted research in the northern Indian region of Garhwal on the Ramlila, a hinduistic festival during which the epic story of the god Ram is performed over several days. He argues that every action in the fairground, whether from the audience, the performance or even non-human actions such as a cow entering the ground, has the potential to influence and change the events of the Ramlila. To investigate this thesis, Paul examines how atmospheres are created in the Ramlila and how they evolve in the fairground afterwards, in order to understand the possible meaning and effect of the diverse action-networks in the Ramlila. These atmospheric processes demonstrate that every action in the fairground, no matter how seemingly unimportant, has the potential to attract attention and thus either creates a unique setting within the festival or influences the flow of the performance itself. This new perspective on the Ramlila therefore contributes to our understanding of the role of the audience and the event dynamic, both of which receive too little attention in existing literature on the festival.
