Connecting the Funds and Process
In the general scene of art publication in India, the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) initiated ‘Arts Connect’, a biannual magazine is a novel attempt. Besides giving lead articles on topical issues, the editorial content is mainly designed for elucidating the art projects that the IFA has funded during the last decade. The first issue is quite impressive, easy to handle and easy to read. Unlike the heavy volumes that demand extra calorie spending from the readers this magazine gives direct presentations and is a welcoming change. As it is totally a funded production, one need not waste time in searching for articles amidst a host of glossy advertisements. From a different perspective, that could be the drawback of this magazine. We are by now visually trained to see the real stuff pepped up with eye catching advertisements.
Keeping pace with the contemporary times, the magazine has presented an article on the Baroda issue written by Ashok Chatterjee. In this article titled ‘Censorship and Hate: Learning from Baroda’, the author argues in the very same lines of the secular democrats of the country and demands ‘debates’ that make the democracy possible. I wonder why none of our scholars ever talk about the lack of political will in handling such situations. If we go by the debate line, the solution will be deferred for the umpteenth time.
The second article ‘In search of Aseemun: Sufism and Everyday Life in Awadh’ is partly autobiographical and the author Taran Khan, a recipient of the IFA grant to do a documentary on the woman sufi singer Aseemun, looks at her own birth place like a tourist. She, without hypocrisy accepts her city bred perspective and talks about various sufi traditions and roots in her article. An article by Moushumi Bhowmick, titled ‘I Hear the Drums Roll: Lessons in the Arts of Listening’ also resorts to the autobiographical and travelogue style. Here the author attempts to narrate how she and her sound recordist friend traveled in the Eastern part of India, Bangladesh and Britain to record the Baul singers and their lives.
‘Bees Raniyon ka Bioscope’ presented by the film maker Kamal Swaroop is a collage of narratives by the participants of a workshop conducted at Baroda and Nasik in order to derive an alternative picture of the pioneering Indian film maker Dada Saheb Phalke. The discussion, presented like the pages from an old manual with Remington typewriter fonts, starts in a semi abstract style and becomes concrete lucid narratives when the workshop participants start telling their real life connections with Dada Saheb Phalke’s life and works. Interestingly, one would wonder why K.M.Madhusoodhanan, who is a painter, film maker and a recipient of the IFA grant for doing a grand visual project on Dada Saheb Phalke, is omitted from the discussion. Interestingly, one of the works by K.M.Madhusoodhanan adorns the cover page of this journal.
I would give hundred out of hundred to ‘Political Theatre Today and Yesterday: A Conversation’ between Jagan Shah and Lalit Vachani. Jagan Shah has done extensive research on IPTA and Lalit Vachani has done a documentary on the Jana Natya Manch. With mutual respect and admiration, these two film makers get into the history and the problematic of the Indian political theatre. Jagan, with a lot of verve argues that IPTA lost its steam by 1949 as it started straying away from the founding ideology and commitment. He says that IPTA is an idea, which is co-opted by so many who do not know anything about it. He even makes a sharp critique on the history of IPTA saying that most of the erstwhile IPTA collaborators romanticize their association with the group. He scrutinizes the role of Uday Shankar in the forming of IPTA and says that it was a simple strategy of co-optation. Similarly, Shaukhat Azmi’s (Kaifi Azmi’s wife) association with IPTA was simply her romance with Kaifi Azmi. Lalit Vachani debates the proscenium-izing of street theatre vis-à-vis the case of Jana Natya Manch and also problematizes the capturing of street theatre and the public response in a documentary format. A must read conversation.
‘The Artist in the Time of Crisis’ by Vasudha Thozhur is a personal diary that she maintained while working amongst the Gujarat riot victims in 2002. Vasudha’s commitment towards the cause should be appreciated though her dairy writing does not differ much from those of the activists who have worked amongst the riot victims with more or less same purpose (introducing art, craft, culture, skills, job oriented activities etc). I would say that the line, “There is a light eyed boy of three with her, very active and bright—he had seen his mother on fire and had repeated the story many times, to visitors and reporters, as he would describe a spectacle, a Tamasha.”, written by Vasudha makes this article worth remembering and fills one with love and compassion, if not an inescapable sadness.
‘Peers: The Young Artist’s Residency”, an on the spot critical report by Bhooma Padmanabhan on the Khoj Peers Residency, 2006 is interesting for its naivety. The participating artists Surabhi Sarat, Thara Thomas, Atanu Pramnik, Lalit Bhartiya and Atul Mahajan had worked in different mediums and Bhooma’s work was to assess them critically. In this article, Bhooma makes laudatory comments on these artists’ works and by the end of each section she says that the works have not achieved the desired results. The problem with Bhooma lies in her inability to articulate and incorporate criticism with laudatory comments. May be in due course of time she will achieve it.
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