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Kolkata Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Air Port. When the flight came above the city, I could make one thing out-why my Malayali and Bengali friends are like what they are. These two states, Kerala and Bengal look same from the sky; squares of paddy fields and the hairy mops of coconut trees. Buildings play hide and seek with trees. And both the states have a strong presence of Communists who like to see everything written in Capital(ist) letters.
This is my first visit to Kolkata so I am alert and curious. I don’t know how to manage myself in cities. Any city I go, the first thing that catches my eyes is the sad face of a man or a woman. That face defines the melancholy of the city. Like Orhan Pamuk says, a landscape becomes worth remembering through its melancholy. Here in Kolkata I find a woman dancing in a traffic island. I ask the taxi driver about her. He looks at me through the rearview mirror. ‘Vo Pogal Hai’ (She is mad), he says. A mad woman, complete with the emblematic red bindi. I think of Satyajit Ray. His movie, Devi. I remember the young face of Sharmila Tagore. Then her old face that I watched recently in television.
I cross the Howrah bridge; a picture postcard becomes a reality for me now. My aim is to catch the first train to Shantiniketan. I eat my humble pie with the morning hour traffic ‘jam’. When I reach Howrah station my train is gone. So I catch the next ‘fast’ passenger. Once I am in the train, I decide to delete the word ‘fast’. It moves like a snail. Later in Shantiniketan, Prof.Sivakumar tells me, ‘Oh, fast passenger is the word here we use for shuttle trains’. HA Anilkumar, art historian from Bangalore exclaims, ‘But you could see the richness of Bengali Landscape for five hours!’
That was true. I was looking for cultural references everywhere. And people who came in and went out looked at my sorry figure; jeans, t-shirt, heavy boots, a pair of goggles and a bag with the airline tags. I obviously looked like a joker amongst these simple village folks. More and more villagers come in as the train stops at each station. Most of them look like workers. They have rough hands and beautiful faces. Many artists have drawn them. They embody the spirit of rural life, many artists believe.
Bolpur is the station where one has to get down for Santiniketan. Cycle rickshaw pullers wait for customers. The smarter ones come forward and solicit. Rows of fabric shops and curio shops make one feel that it is a tourist spot. As we go further, the ambience changes. Tagore’s house, the prayer hall, Kalabhavan, central office complex, sprawling bungalows with heritage status etc make you feel that you are in ‘the’ Santiniketan. Then one notices the sculptures of Ram Kinker Baij. You have arrived.
Nandan auditorium. The Ram Kinkar Baij Centenary Seminar takes place here. The scholars come and they deconstruct nation, tradition, time, space, modernity, post modernity and everything. Nandan has seen it all. But none dares to deconstruct the tradition of keeping one’s shoes outside the building. “It is a very sensitive issue. You have to remove your shoes,” a scholar tells me. Why this tradition is not deconstructed, I wonder. And the first day passes above my head. I am a late comer. I just cannot follow the fag end of a panel discussion. Abhishek Hazra, the young artist-writer from Bangalore makes a point. There are interventions and arguments. Every one seems to be charged up with a special spirit.
Day Two
Seminars are like classic plays. There is an opening, then a mounting climax and it goes through a crisis, then falls into a resolution. The opening was smooth, they say. Everyone is enthusiastic. Second day has climatic tendencies. It opens up with the serious voice of Anshuman Dasgupta, the young art historian, who does a wonderful job as a theoretician and organizer. He welcomes all and invites Irit Rogoff of Goldsmiths College, London to make her presentation.
Irit Rogoff, the originator of Visual Theory discipline lectures on the issue of audience participation in exhibitions. She prepares the background by saying how the notions of criticism, critique and criticality fail to deliver in the field of art mediation. Rogoff says how she arrived at the notion of visual theory as an effective alternative to the existing notions of art mediation. There is no methodology for articulating the audience participation, she says. If at all there is a methodology, she would like to call it an ‘ethnographic methodology.’ She watches the viewers in an exhibition hall. Talk to them, observe their behavioral patterns and arrive at certain conclusions. She raises the important question, ‘What does it mean to take part in culture?’ She concludes her speech by saying that we are all implicated as audience, in each other’s criminality/culture. Viewing becomes a zone of implications/charges.
The observations of Irit Rogoff ruffle a lot of feathers. There is a heated argument. Shivji Panicker, art historian of MS University, Baroda, comes up with his pet theory of the ‘minor’. HA Anilkumar comments on viewing and surveillance. Sudhabrata of Raqs Media Collective carries on with the issue of surveillance and says that it is a false forensic evidence and surveillance could be a renewed field of engagement. Veteran art historian, Geeta Kapur criticizes Irit Rogoff by saying that she strayed at her conclusions. Rogoff nonchalantly accepts the criticism.
Geeta Kapur is the next speaker. She presents the works of Navjot Altaf done in collaboration with the tribal artists of Bastar. She delineates the socio-political changes occurred during 1990s and how Navjot Altaf dealt those issues in her works. At the end of the presentation the issue turns out to be ‘who speaks for who?’ There are several hands raised; questions are abundant. Professional debaters all of them are. Shivaji Panicker gets up again to probe the issue of the subaltern represented or collaborated in Navjot’s works. Another debater has a peculiar question: how the artist has used ‘labor’ in her gallery displays?
I remember what Osho Rajneesh has said in one of his discourses. He quotes Murphy: For every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD. So, in a seminar there has to be supporting arguments and opposing arguments. Shivaji Panicker laments on the plight of the ‘minor’. But none cares to ask him why he laments that much on the issue of ‘minor’. He comes from a higher caste and class. He locates himself in an advantageous position as an academician. His self proclaimed status as a gay does not naturally endow him with the right to speak on all who and what has been pushed to the peripheries. But none cares. The show should go on.
Grant Watson, who now heads the curatorial department of the Serpentine Gallery, London is all set for curating a show keeping Ram Kinkar Baij’s ‘Santhal Family’ as the point of departure. Watson has many doubts. The major one comes from his position as an ‘outsider’. He asks: ‘How do you balance the notion of disinvestment of authority?’ He feels that it is an ethical question and several ethical questions like this are involved in curating such a project especially the curator comes from a different geographical and historical momentum. Also he probes into the nuances of displaying such works of art for an audience which is unaware of the socio-cultural milieu from which they hail. He poses a question for himself, “how do you place the information before the public?’ ‘How to engage a work from the past and reflect in the present?’ The questions remain unanswered for a while. And Watson feels that the actual show would be an attempt on answering these questions.
Watson engages with his doubts calmly and he does not slip into the rut of critical jargons. When some question, definitely posed for irritating him comes to him, Watson says, “I am a curator, not a theoretician.” But one can see he is well founded in theories that he needs to hold the position of a curator. But he ducks well with grace.
Then comes Wo-nil Rhee, a Korean curator who takes interest in the new media art from the South East Asian Region. He starts with his personal ideas about curatorial projects. Then goes on to show the samples of new media works. Most of the works generate a smile, awe and a lot of enthusiasm. But many practicing artists do not seem to be impressed. Some one tells me, “It is okay but…” May be when one has seen more than what he has presented, the reaction would be like that.
There is a panel discussion by Tapati Guha Takurta and H.A.Anil Kumar. Takurta speaks about the public spaces of engagement. The day is already too long. I am not able to concentrate much. I decide not to listen at all. Next is Anil Kumar’s turn. I am all ears because he is an interesting art historian with no god fathers. That is a rarity these days. He starts with the condition of art criticism in regional areas. The descriptive narrative mode of art criticism/ review writing has become defunct. But there is no alternative so far. How to tackle this issue, he asks. According to Anil Kumar, the spaces of engagement have been shrinking for a long time. Even the reputed theatre personalities like Girish Kasaravalli do not get a space in reputed auditoriums. Then Anil Kumar tries to position the artists of his state, Karnataka. What are they doing these days? There was a time when all of them repudiated the gallery structure. They could afford to do that because there was nothing to expect from the galleries. The radicalism of the artists came out of economic factors. Hence, there was a mushrooming of Art Povera works. There were a lot of installations and earth art at that point of time. Now, what is the condition, he asks. He does not implicate artists or gallerists. Instead, he leaves the issue open for debate. I don’t want to listen to any more debates. So I leave the hall and just vanish in the darkness of Santiniketan landscape.
Day Three
Today I set out to another part of Santiniketan by a bicycle accompanied by Reji Arackal and Swapna Biswas, two MFA painting students from Santiniketan. Yesterday morning also we had done a cycle expedition. It is early morning. But the villages are already up. We pedal through the narrow but clean lanes of Santhal villages. Reji shows me the wonders called Santhal huts. They are like self contained living units for everything, men and cattle. The finish of the mud walls excels the capacity of any trained mason. The murals and reliefs with simple motifs are exquisite. The villagers are not offended by our curious gaze. They are now used to it, says Reji. He comes to these villages regularly and he has done a series of drawings on Santhal huts. They too are really good works.
We go to River Kopai. Rabindranath Tagore used to come to the shores of this river to write poems. In many of his works River Kopai comes as character. We cross the river. Go to deeper villages. There in some of the villages, drinking water is really a problem. They use water directly from the still pool, when the hand pumps don’t work. I look at the children. The thought of them consuming this water makes me sad. But it is a reality for them. I am just a passerby. No need to take too much of social guilt. Enough is there. Besides, I am not a communist.
In one of the huts I drink Tadi, the fermented juice from palm trees. I am not able to drink more than one glass. Reji thanks the lady who gave me the drink. But he does not give her any money. I ask why. He smiles, at times we are regular here, he says.
Back in Seminar hall. It is 10 am. People look really tired. Shivji Panicker, Abha Seth and Parvez Kabir make a joint presentation on ‘Art and Ideology of Swaminarayan Hinduism: Issues of Modernity, Religion and Gender’. Their agenda is interesting but I am incapable of articulating it. So I quote them: “Analyzing the iconographic schema in the temple, the presentation (will) engage with the accumulation and power of the capital through self sacrifice by the ascetic functionaries within the male homosocial system the sect prescribes. The gender discrimination and control on one hand feeds into the total pool of the symbolic social capital the sect holds over the society at large. On the other hand these cumulatively function in order to oppress and control marginal classes.”
I cannot write anymore than this. I am tired. I have to catch up with a few friends who are going to Kolkata to take a flight back to Mumbai. So good bye. |
