Baiju Parthan:
The Techno-Shaman Speaks Out

Baiju Parthan

First of its kind, in a candid interview with Amrita Gupta Singh, exclusively done for artconcerns.com, well known artist Baiju Parthan speaks about his formative years as an artist, his moments of struggles and triumphs and how he evolved a ‘mediatic art’ many years before someone coined the term ‘mediatic realism’. Excerpts:

Amrita Gupta Singh: Your origins are from Kerala, which has a history of Marxist ideology, much like Bengal, with the concept of “labour” being one of its fundamental ideas. You have spoken of “labour” being important in your work. Please elaborate.

Baiju Parthan: Growing up in Kerala especially during the early sixties there was no way to avoid coming across Marxian ideology. Of course like everything else this ideology too left a positive as well as negative impact on me. I grew up in a working class environment that idolized all socially constructive activity, and was acutely aware of the class struggle. ‘Hard labour’ was never looked down upon but was seen as something one should respect. And during those days among intellectual circles the term ‘bourgeoisie’ was used almost as an expletive!

Because of having such a background, I am constantly faced with the dilemma of justifying my existence as an artist within the context of a ‘socially constructive act’, while operating within a bourgeoisie environment. My answer has been to conceive myself as a technician of perception, an ‘art worker’ toiling and producing objects and ideas that affect and change entrenched perceptions and usher in fresh meanings. At a very mundane level I have stubbornly avoided assistants and helpers so that I can continue to experience the struggle and toil that is necessary to maintain a studio single handedly and the actual physical labour involved in producing large format canvases.

AGS: You studied at the Goa College of Art, and also came in contact with the hippie subculture. How has your experience with this subculture been, has it molded your world-view in anyway?

BP: Yes, my encounter with the Hippie culture had a great impact on me. There I was among dropouts who have chosen to go against the grain and the establishment. I had left Kerala, dropped out of engineering studies to become an artist against the ‘better judgment’ of my family and relatives and I felt completely at home among the hippies who were themselves engaged in the search for the real and the natural.

This encounter exposed me to a stream of underground literature which consequently played a role in reshaping my world-view. I read Leary, Castaneda, Anton Wilson, Sri Aurobindo, and finally Husserl and Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, which is a long way from the Marxian fold. The exposure to this literature led me into cultural anthropology and philosophy and left me with a lasting fascination for subcultures.

AGS: You also worked as an illustrator in the Times of India before turning to a full-time artist. Was it a difficult decision to quit your job, considering the state of the art market then? Was this conscious choice to pursue full-time painting liberating, or did you go through periods of uncertainty?

BP: I ended up working as an illustrator mainly to earn a living. The art market as we know it today did not exist during the eighties. I was trying to be on my own from the time I moved to Goa to study art. As a student it was relatively easy to exist on my own steam, as I could sleep in the class room, and class assignments could be worked around with a bare minimum of materials most of the time over painting the same canvas a couple of times, and my friends would feed me.

Once the student days were over things became difficult and I came to Mumbai. It was the late 80’s and surviving in Mumbai with no support system other than the friend who allowed me to share his room was really tough. So I began to work as a freelance illustrator for Times Of India and would make three to four hundred rupees a month. But I was saved by the subsidized Times Of India staff canteen where I was allowed to have my meals. I could get a full meal for one rupee! That facility allowed me to stay on in Bombay though I was not earning much. Later on a couple of years later I became part of the Times staff and was able to earn relatively well.

I worked with the Times of India for six long years and leaving the security of a regular job was a conscious decision, though it was not an easy one. But it was essential for me that I make that choice in order to get back to myself. It was while working as an illustrator I realized that being a painter in the fullest sense without holding back is an existential necessity for me. It was the same mood which drove me to quit engineering studies for arts studies and once again it forced me to move away from the comfort of a regular job. It was a difficult decision to implement, and I did go through a couple of rough years trying to survive and keep working. But things eventually changed for the better.

AGS: What made you decide to be an artist? What are its satisfactions? Its problems? Your position as a “techno-shaman”.

BP: In the early days as a young boy I got hooked to the sense of magic in art making. There was something magical about the way a flat empty surface could transform into a seascape or a portrait through the ministrations of the artist. Though I was equally hooked on to science, art became a domain where I could feel total control and it also made me feel very special. But it took a long time for it to dawn on me that art making is that singular act that would allow me to reach my authentic being- as a truly existential activity.

From the satisfaction point, yes being an artist is satisfying in every sense of that term. I consider myself fortunate that I am able to do it 24/7 and the material rewards are incidental to the main act. I could say that being an artist makes me feel worthy of being alive, and I think I will keep on doing it even if the rewards aren’t there.

I came across shamanism and its strong links with art-making (in so called primitive cultures) as a result my foray into cultural anthropology and comparative mythology.  The shaman as a proto art historical figure generating signs and metaphors which are then engraved in sand or stone for the tribe with the sole purpose of defining the limits and possibilities of the world made a very strong impression on me. And from that position it looked as though art and communication technology all had its origin in this one singular source. 

Within the underground music scene the DJ who oversees and guides a rave music gathering with his turntable and mixers and samples towards ecstasy and epiphanies is usually called a ‘techno-shaman’. As I started embedding more and more references to technology into my art activity, Ranjit Hoskote who knew my fascination for shamanism and my penchant to dredge for the metaphysical implications of high technology especially virtual reality bestowed upon me the title of ‘techno- shaman’. 

AGS: With an eclectic academic background of science and engineering, botany, hardware technology, comparative mythology, philosophy and art history, 3D graphics and animation, how do you integrate such diverse pursuits in your art vocabulary?

BP: In more than one way art making is a place where I can bring together all these diverse interests. At least that is the way I approach it, as an inclusive space that doesn’t impose any restrictions on the type of content.

In my experience it is rather difficult to maintain water tight distinction between one's work and the life one leads. Whatever you are made of is going appear in your work through some kind of osmosis. Of course one could apply a strangle hold and prevent one's life from encroaching into ones work, but that would amount to a lack of integrity in my rule book.

So my policy has been to allow as much as possible of me as a person to encroach into my work. And that certainly creates problems which drive one to invent pictorial devices and compositional tricks in order to accommodate this diverse material and influences into a coherent whole.  But it is not an easy project as a lot of what goes into the work could be incomprehensible to those from the art fraternity who search for obvious historical references in order to contextualize a work, while it makes absolute sense to viewers who come from areas far removed from  mainstream art. So all in all you win some, lose some. But that is OK.

AGS: How do you arrive at a decision about what artwork to make? Its formal aspects? Its content? The process you will use? The context you will relate your artwork to? The source material of your work & art historical references? Any literary influences?

BP: Every artist of merit would have a conceptual position that acts as a lens which amplifies certain things and excludes the rest. My position has been to excavate and amplify the existential dilemma-s that pops while coming to terms with the technologically augmented reality. So a lot of my references take their lead from communication and digital technology with a certain emphasis on virtual reality, surrogate identities and the protean aesthetic of computer code. And the position I have adopted is to probe how virtual experiences and actions are reshaping reality. The source material for my work mostly comes from the media, archaic knowledge systems, readings in theory, computer programming, and philosophy and so on.

Having said that, I am also aware that my work exists within the larger context of art activity which has its own intellectual history and what I am doing while stretching the envelope , should not end up as an anomaly, though at times it does end up so.

The fact is most of the art that we see today invariably needs to invoke some art historical reference or the other to resolve itself and my work is no exception. On one hand I do not like to load obvious art historical references into a work for the sake of legitimizing it. But on the other hand I cannot ever escape the readily available frameworks art history as an intellectual discipline provides.

AGS: You speak of the Eastern self versus the Western self. How do you interact with the Eastern selfhood in your work? Please elaborate.

BP: The notion of the eastern and the western self is actually the difference between two respective world-views that emphasize different qualities. It was during my studies in comparative mythology I became aware of the existence of different world-views and how these world pictures in turn construct cultural identities. In order to part take in a culture the prerequisite is that one has to imbibe the world-view specific to that culture. If one proceeds on that line of thinking one would invariably arrive at he conclusion that what makes the east differ from the west is the difference in world views.

The conclusion I arrived at was that the eastern world view is characterized by the inclusion of a large amount metaphysical properties, and the interactions between these properties governed by codes arrived through inductive reasoning. By contrast the western world-view is characterized by a predominance of physical properties and a system of interactions and strategies governed by deductive syllogistic reasoning.

Based on this premise the eastern self is bound to have a strong metaphysical core, since it is the product of a worldview that harbors such properties. So I intentionally include covert metaphysical references through the use of symbols and motifs that reflect my self and location. I generally use motifs and symbols that have metaphysical implications from a pan global/Jungian perspective.

AGS: Your work explores the nature/culture/technology debate. How do you view nature and its role in your art? How does your art relate to contemporary realities in its socio-political, economic and cultural (Indian & global) contexts?

BP: ‘Nature’ in my work appears either as a lost ideal, or as something that has to be apprehended through its absence and also as a lament.

I cling on to a rather organic flow in my work that reflects my own dilemma in dealing with the rapidly changing world around me. And as such I speak about the implications of technology on our life and how it is reshaping for the better or the worse our idea of the world. Often I would end up with scenarios that are similar to the cyberpunk version of dystopia where we are at the mercy of the technology we have created.

As I mentioned earlier my involvement with art revolves around existential concerns and my position is that one need not be deliberately socio-political. The fact that one’s work occurs within the matrix of a particular cultural and historical milieu and the awareness of that milieu would bring in material that reflect and articulate the concerns that are relevant to the milieu. Probably due to my Marxian ideology dominated past, I wouldn’t like a work of art to acquire the resonance of agit-prop. But that is very personal choice.

AGS: You position yourself as a post-modern artist who is interested in playing with existing hierarchies and subverting the established order of things in general. How have you subverted hierarchies in your art practice & in your world- view? What is your view of the constructs of “high” & “low art”?

BP: If one observes the timeline of history one can clearly see that what was considered ‘low art’ at one point in time eventually acquires the mantle of ‘high art’ and what was high art invariably ends up as a cliché. The truth of the matter seems to me that while high art represents a closely guarded centre low art represents the excluded periphery. And my sympathies are always with the periphery.

Subverting existing hierarchies in the realm of materials and medium is not something that I have pursued, though I could claim that one of the first HTML based interactive art project exhibited within a gallery space could be my ‘Brahma’s Homepage’ in 1999 at the Lakeeren Contemporary Art Gallery in Mumbai.

My engagement with subversion of hierarchies was mainly through the inclusion of media generated material into my work. It was my past experience as a media insider that prompted the use of ‘spent information’ which I characterized as media excreta in my art. The methodology was to re-signify context drained media imagery into evocative objects through artistic intervention. This was much before the term ‘Mediatic realism’ was coined to distinguish a whole group of Indian contemporary artists who are working with media generated material.

AGS: You are one of the pioneers of Net-based art in India. Your main medium is painting. How often have you explored installation art?

BP: I am primarily a painter. By that statement I am expressing my comfort level with a medium that allows me to be totally in charge and produce something of value entirely through my own effort/labour. 

I started doing installation art when some of the things I wanted to say could not be accommodated within the framework of painting. The kind of installations ( interactive computer generated video installations)  I have been doing are still very much a one-person project, where I myself write the computer code for interactivity and shoot and edit the video content. But whenever I have the need for expertise that is beyond my ability I have taken help and also used collaborations.  On an average I produce one installation piece every year.

AGS: One last question…you have said somewhere that “Art is all about shattering the glasshouse of reasonableness…logic and art are strange bedfellows”. Art is the creation of a third reality…of the artist & the viewer. How do you respond to multiple modes/responses of the viewer in context to your above statement?

BP:  Yes, I do agree that art is a third reality between the viewer and the artist. In fact I would welcome non-linear multiple readings as only then the work of art would justify its status as an evocative object.