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Art and the Public Sphere: A Case Study

What is the role of art in a public space? Who do the artists make their art for? Keeping these questions in mind Amrita Gupta Singh revisits a project titled ‘Untitled- A Show on the Boundaries’, initiated by the MPCVA, Mumbai in association with Asiatika and Ashok Kumar Foundation in 2004. Moving out of the gallery space, and critically negotiating the private/public opposition, artists now freely involve themselves in the multiplicity of public systems and develop configurations that relate to patterns of practical activity in the everyday world, says the author.

Variously understood, the theme of art and the public sphere has attracted a great deal of interest over the past decade. Ideas about the relationship have had an impact on art in practice as well as in theory, and the topic has been critically investigated in the sphere of ideology. Today's approaches require new critical parameters, and in recent years the meaning of “public”, as it relates to spaces and physical structures, have been modified through detailed political, sociological and socio-theoretical analyses of the functioning of individual public systems and have been instrumental in determining the strategies of art. The practice of public art is diverse - the term conflates activities that include art, craft and design within the public realm. The spectrum of artistic practice represented by the term encompasses art commissioned as a response to the specifics of the public realm, craft as part of the designed environment and process based practice that does not rely on the production of an art object. The role of the artist here could be creatively engaging with local communities, exploring or articulating issues of significance, or operating as commentators and provocateurs.

The information age and the media society have brought about drastic changes in the essential characteristics and external forms of the public sphere. In a parallel development, an ever clearer understanding by artists of the nature and functioning of various parts of public systems has led to a new approach to the public aspect of  art. Moving out of the gallery space, and critically negotiating the private/public opposition, artists now freely involve themselves in the multiplicity of public systems and develop configurations that relate to patterns of practical activity in the everyday world, leading to a dematerialization and/or expansion of art practices.

While public art and allied practices have been theorized in the West significantly since the 1970’s, there are no substantial readings of such practices in Indian art historical discourses, except as emerging concepts or contemporary institutions, such as Sarai, that theorize and provide support to public art practitioners. Hence, one has to fall back upon Western theories to substantiate these art-forms. Public art practices emerged in England and America in the 1970’s in the form of Earth Art, opposing high modernism's ideals of a singular, autonomous and formally complete art work. As Simon Shiekh says, “We may now consider art works as placed in a heterogeneous field, where the significations and communications of the work shift in relation to space, contexts and publics. Just as there is no complete, ideal work there is no ideal, generalized spectator. We cannot talk of art's spaces as a common, shared space we enter with equal experiences. On the contrary, the idea of the neutral spectator has been dissolved and criticized, and the identity of the viewer have been specified and differentiated by both art practices and theories and this shift also entails, naturally, different notions of communicative possibilities and methods for the artwork, where neither its form, context nor spectator is fixed or stable; such relations must be constantly re-negotiated and conceived in notions of publics or public spheres”.  There is no unitary or absolute aesthetics to speak of in our contemporary context. Hence, one enters a site as “spaces of experience”, fragmented in nature in terms of individual experiences, which may be complementary “normative publics” or conflictual “counter-publics”. In Indian art history, the public art experiments initiated in Santiniketan, specifically by Ram Kinkar Baij as early as the 1930’s, problematized the aspects of studio-practice, localized imagery (here the insertion of Adivasi/tribal imagery in a Brahmanical domain), employing locally available materials, interaction with the organic environment and the community, disrupting hierarchies as well as building dialectical relationships between the artist and society.
Some of the central questions that have been raised by public art interventions and debated over the last few years can be summarized as under:

• What is the role of art?
• How can it affect people's daily lives as they encounter it in public space?
• How should art speak to people outside of the museum/gallery?
• Who do artists make their art for?
• What constitutes a public and what constitutes public space?
• How do we respond to the ever-present crisis of the limited audience for art?

With such a framework in mind, contemporary Indian artists have introduced new material and media into their art practice, thereby altering both the prevailing viewership codes and the conventions of display. Their conceptual art-making practices may be seen as pre-meditated approaches, adopted to combat the commodification of the art-object in the hallowed precincts of the art gallery. Another aspect of site-specific and public artworks is negotiating with specific local, ethnic, gender, class and caste identities, in the context of a variable spectatorship. While there is a growing evidence of support of public art, its impact is limited by narrow definitions and restrictive practice. A vision, policy, strategy and expertise in public art are key strategic success factors, while also extending the parameters of the understanding of what ‘art’ is, the definitions of ‘public art’, how cohesive are the ideas of the ‘collaborating’ partners, understanding ‘spectatorship’ modes which might be both assimilative or reactionary, in its local/regional dimensions, and the physical, social and cultural characteristics of the site.
 
With the above observations in mind, I would like to analyze a particular public art event that took place in Mumbai in March 2004, a collaborative venture between the Mohile Parikh Center, Asiatika and the Ashok Kumar Foundation. As a tentative attempt to activate both intellectually and physically, architectural spaces and urban sites, the project was controversial and provocative as were the contingents of its collaboration. Conceived to be a part of the bi-centennial celebrations of the Asiatic Society, and curated by the noted sociologist, Gita Chadha, ‘Untitled- a show on the boundaries’ included two-site-specific installations in The Asiatic Society of Mumbai, Town Hall in the Fort area. Two hundred years old, the Asiatic Society continues to be a knowledge-making institution, seeking to balance Indological and post-colonial perspectives. A neo-classical building, its design conceived along the lines of the Greek Parthenon, the Society dominates the visual scape of the Fort area. The issue of variable spectatorship becomes crucial to this site, as it functions across three key levels, firstly, as a society for the scholars and intellectuals (read elite) of the city, secondly, as a library for the general public and thirdly, as a repository of rare archeological treasures, and has been classified as a heritage site. The Asiatika (one of the collaborators) conceived a heritage walk in an around the Town Hall to enable the public to engage critically with our colonial past and sensitize the public to heritage and conservation issues. With such a premise, the art intervention sought to interact with the multiple identities of this institution, the insular/exclusive aura of the institution, and the impact of its knowledge generating mechanisms on the public, especially the youth.

Two women artists, Sharmila Samant and Vidya Kamat, both residents of Mumbai and working within the framework of new media, conceptualized art installations that activated both the grand outer façade of the building as well as its inner spaces. Sharmila Samant’s – ‘Inscribed’, conceived in the form of a large journal, included the stories and histories of the employees of the Society, and the artwork was placed in the research room and the vestibule, which enabled different kinds of visitors, from various walks of life to read the narratives, and engage with the lives of people whose contribution to the preservation of this heritage monument goes largely un-noticed. The memoirs that ‘In-scribed’ documents, speak of the subjective experiences of the employees from different designations (‘high/low’), and situates them in the chronicles of history.  On the other hand, Vidya Kamat’s, “Tolerating Intolerance”, a series of banners, installed between the intimidating columns of the main façade, focused on violence on culture and vandalism of cultural institutions and artifacts of historical and intellectual significance, a case example being the vandalism of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune in January 2004 by the youth wing of the Maratha Seva Sangh. Using the language of advertising, the digitally modified images, with profound text and self-portraits in recoiled postures, which represented remorse and vulnerability, sent out significant socio-political messages to the everyday public, bringing in here the concept of a variable spectatorship in the public sphere. Both the works negotiated with the metaphor of ‘thresholds’, the inside and outside of these thresholds and the discourses of that are generated thus.

As part of this art intervention a participatory performance- Bombay Punch-i-karana, for the inaugural evening was conceived, which involved the symbolic washing of the front thirty steps leading into the Society, the steps that bring the outer world into a sheltered space. Professionals from different walks of life and students participated in the event, and cushions with relevant messages inscribed on them were placed on the steps, some in response to the installed artworks, while others were immediate reactions to the participatory performance. As a show whose intent was in traversing boundaries, the performance raised a number of significant questions regarding the dismantling of borders and the perimeters of the historical and the contemporary. As Gita Chadha, the curator of the art intervention project opined, “Incidentally, the municipal water that will be used to clean the steps, goes through its own process of Panchikarna - of mixing together waters from the five lakes around the city of Bombay/Mumbai .Bombay Punch-i-karana is performed as an ode to the city which takes all in her flow- the lives, the stories, the histories- and makes boundaries only to allow transgressions”.

While I will not go into a detailed analysis of the artworks, what interests me more here are the subsidiary events that took place around the event and the debates that it generated. Bombay Punch-i-karana generated extreme reactions from the public who attended the inaugural event. Some found the idea of washing the steps preposterous while others found the act of cleansing a public space communitarian. There were open invitations for the assembled public, and the whole notion of inaugurating the cleansing with a broom by an elite invited member was confusing to many, leading to a critic to say that the act of sweeping has been ‘glamorized’. Most did not participate and finally it was the students and a labourer’s son who enjoyed the playful intervention most, while the intellectuals had ‘intellectual misgivings’. This ‘participatory act’ was not participatory at all, with a clear demarcation of roles/ baggage/ impositions that each participant brought into this site. Was it the case that ‘cleansing’ the steps of a colonial building proved to be a problem for many, is our colonized history/memory still restrictive, or was this act too ephemeral to impact this ‘heritage’ site and its public?  Many curious onlookers gathered to ‘witness’ this act, oblivious to the inner confusions that permeated it. The conceptual arena of this intervention had ‘fringe’ benefits and peripheral presence, its ‘cathartic’ positioning misplaced in the mayhem of variable spectatorship.

Another disruptive act was by the State, the most nebulous realm of this whole event, which still confuses me now. Vidya Kamat’s works was a voice of dissent against cultural vandalism and had a political message, but it was not overtly confrontational, both in terms of imagery and content, to evoke such a violent reaction. Striking as these red/black banners were juxtaposed against the impressive white colonnades of the Asiatic Society, which made many passer-by’s stop and take photographs or inquire about the work, the authorities/police asked intrusive questions regarding the piece. Positioned as it was outside the threshold of the Society and directly into the public realm and diverse spectators, the artwork became naturally vulnerable to conservative directives of the State. After two days of the display, the works abruptly disappeared, torn down violently from their ‘spines’, in the middle of the night, without any notification or reasons by the police. Frantic about its whereabouts, the Asiatic Society finally found the artwork not in the Fort area police-station, but in another area, torn, mutilated and vandalized. The reasons given were vague, firstly, that a formal letter by the Asiatic Society was not given to the authorities to install the artwork in a public space, despite the fact, that the works were displayed within the territorial realms of the Society. Secondly, the red-colour of the banners were judged as ‘saffron’ (the Shiv-Sena) hence considered a threat to the governing party (the Congress), especially since the civic elections were round the corner at that time. Ironically, Kamat’s work was a form of dissent against the very ‘saffronisation’ of culture. We still do not know what exactly the reasons were (they may be both technical and political) but the collaborating institutions were only too glad to recover the works to be re-displayed in the same site, after days of disappearance. Rods (the spines) were re-purchased, the ‘wounds’ stitched and the work was re-installed to be displayed in the last two days of the event, but without it’s earlier impact, the psychological violation clearly visible on “Tolerating Intolerance”.

This case study is a personal reading and an investigation into the public nature of art practices, specific to the city of Mumbai, and similar trajectories may be drawn to the hostilities that cultural interventions, in variable textures, are facing in recent times. What is it that makes cultural artifacts singled out for violation in the public sphere? How could one negotiate with the differentiations and politics of a variable spectatorship? The study of an art form is to explore a sensibility, and such a sensibility is essentially a collective formation; how could this be a relational formation, for once the art-form involves the onlooker, especially in a public site, this onlooker also becomes a protagonist, and nor merely a spectator, of the creative act.

The territorial dimensions of the 'public' sphere can be seen as both locative and imaginary, and the changing possibilities for art production to represent various political stances in the public realm, is of critical significance, given the cultural politics of our times. Where can a public sphere be located today, and how can critical and/or artistic interventions be made in it? How can one perceive a participatory model in relation to a specific public sphere and spectatorship as opposed to (modernist) generalized ones? Or, put in other terms, what can be put in the place of the public sphere? In our multiple belief systems, one now has to approach the public sphere as plural formations, and also institutions are symbolic formations, not fixed as the history of the Asiatic Society exemplifies. With art functioning as reflexive experience and praxis, and the artworld as a “battleground” as Pierre Bourdieu suggests, with opposing subjectivities and economies, constantly reflecting other spheres, mapping such variable spheres and publics/protagonists remains a challenge for public art concepts and practitioners, especially in the Indian context, where such practices are still marginalized in context to the art market system. In retrospect, one could read “Untitled- a show on the boundaries”, as an ideological formation/site that ruptured prematurely, while at the same time offering the possibilities for reflexive analysis.