FEATURE

Random Ramblings

Why do students from local art colleges fear to ask questions in seminars and workshops? Are they self repressive or repressed by the college authorities who curb any kind of vocalizing from students? Amrita Gupta Singh tries to unpack this issue while talking about her experience as a facilitator in a workshop conducted for the students from local art colleges at the MPCVA, Mumbai in August 2007.

‘The University and the Community’, a workshop designed for the local art colleges of Bombay, and organized by the Mohile Parikh Center for the Visual Arts in August 2007, aimed to discuss various issues related to what is the idea of a University in the popular imagination and what would be the ideal site of a University in the 21st century, given the changing ethics of ‘learning’ in a capitalized scenario. With the backdrop of the regional politics and right-wing conservatism in the incidents at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University in Baroda, this workshop also brought in concerns about the role of artists in society, art pedagogy and society, morality and censorship, the debates over merits and differences of works of art and how art institutions have always engaged with such debates, art funding and the market were sought to be addressed. The one-week workshop had noted scholars, writers, artists and sociologists (Annapurna Garimella, H.A. Anilkumar, JohnyML, Parvez Kabir, Abhay Sardesai, Sudhir Patwardhan, Tushar Joag, Nikhil Chopra, Sanchayan Ghosh and George Jose), who spoke on various topics related to the university and the arts, and concluded with film screenings. The audience comprised of students, art teachers, journalists, artists, writers and interested public.

While I will not go into a detailed description of the individual talks, what intrigued me as a facilitator of the workshop was the response of the students who were invited from the JJ School of Arts, the Fine Arts Department of Rachna Sansad, Thane School of Art, and Raheja School of Fine Arts. Repeated calls to inform the Karandikar Kala Academy, Dombivili, about the workshop was met with bored responses from an office clerk, who promised to inform the Dean and probably never did. The facilitator could not get directly to the Dean, despite repeated requests! The other Deans of the participating colleges were very enthusiastic about the project, though the Dean of the JJ School allowed only few students, while the others were not informed at all. Even the interested teachers were not allowed to attend this workshop, given the loaded responsibilities of ‘ART’ classes. Can Art really be taught? It is an old question but still pertinent, given the problems and politics of pedagogy in art institutions. Most of the noted artists who graduated from JJ School of Arts, unlearned what they were taught, finding a language radically different from the academic structures.

The workshop was conceived to be like a Studio or a laboratory where ideas were meant to be freely discussed, but our education system entails that students are either spoon-fed with quantitative rather than qualitative information or plain repressed with the fear of marking and grades. Provocation and rebellion, no way, you are out of the privileged circle and good books of the teachers! Even the teachers who think differently are marginalized in the hierarchy of departments in universities, apprehensive of the conservative backlash & consequently their jobs. The students cannot afford to be rebellious, if they are, they are promptly expelled. Even in this workshop, students were fearful and shy to ask questions, lest they sound stupid or their opinions are crushed, in the hegemony of power. Most were initially quiet, passive, and some of the theoretical issues zoomed over their heads, they rolled their eyes, yawned, smirked or plain bunked some of the sessions! The facilitator was indignant to see such callousness, maybe practical sessions hold more interest levels than theorizing, and was wondering on the second day, whether such an exercise was futile, but clung to hope that somewhere things start ticking, for she knew that what was being discussed in the workshop is shunned in academies. It took a lot of coaxing to actually make the students speak out fearlessly. One student even said that they were not used to ask questions in public forums, most of their discussions remain in closed groups, without significant articulations.

The students of JJ, Raheja and Thane School of Art, diligently attended all the sessions, and by the third day, were asking a lot of questions as well. The Rachna Sansad participants had a lot of fun, attending and bunking at will, while the teacher of this Institute was a part of the entire workshop. English was a problem for some of the students, so both Marathi & Hindi were encouraged. Interactive sessions in vernacular languages made the sessions livelier, which carried into lunch questions as well. There seemed to be some energy buzzing in the group. The group was small but there were conversations happening. A lot of the students spoke after the sessions, individually to the speakers. Why are students not encouraged to speak out in academies, why is there so much of policing? Why is there so much fear? When one talked about the art market, one young artist shunned the idea, saying that it would corrupt the young minds of their innocence, and their art-making would suffer. In fact, students are not only curious about the market, they are also thoroughly confused! Don’t they have the right to know, so that once they step into the field, as most do want to make their living through Art, they can approach the market in a mature way and with some form of critical literacy, consciousness and responsibility towards their work? What could be the strategies of dealing with chaos and confusion, given the differences of backgrounds, language and exposure?

The important question amongst most students is (and they were painfully honest with the facilitator about their confusions), is “What do we do after graduation? How do we approach the galleries, how do we survive, how do we get jobs in the art-world? Why do we have to make female nude-studies, why not male? Will degrees from abroad help? What are the real modules of assessment in art? How do galleries choose artists? In what way does theory have concrete application, every art history class is so boring, only notes and assignments! What is contemporary art? ” Many felt that a lot of knowledge is kept discreet, because teachers/authorities follow only the syllabus.  How does one answer these burning queries, given the myopic and obsolete academic structures that we still follow? Will our established artists and writers do something about this? Even students have to make that extra effort to discover, to emerge as voices of dissent, and to have faith in their opinions. It’s allright to be a cauldron of blunders, one just emerges stronger from the experience. It is important to step out of the narcissistic constructions of Self, to break that barrier, to ask hard questions, to understand the gaps of our own knowing, and create learning moments. Only this will create an arena of discursive practices, and unshackle forms of domination, especially of language. One could initiate newsletters on Indian Contemporary Art in regional languages, and make sure that it reaches the various art colleges in small towns and vernacular communities. Informal lectures and presentations could be arranged, where prominent urban artists and writers travel to these interior districts and talk about their work, their own creative confusions, the state of contemporary Indian Art, and relate art to lived reality, keeping the cultural differences intact, in a form of “multicultural pedagogy” (Bell Hooks).
   
To top it all, except for Sudhir Patwardhan, none of the speakers even made that extra effort to send in their papers, thoughts, questions or feedback about the workshop, nor did the students, for that matter. Both were requested by the facilitator to write down their responses, so that an on-line discussion forum could be initiated, to link the thoughts and ideas flowing out from various local & regional colleges and cities. Only these little movements will create a dialogue, and only then will my proposition for newsletters in regional languages find some platform. There are few books on contemporary Indian Art (all in English), how will the students from vernacular communities understand them and how do we expect them to find some voice? Aren’t there enough reasons to pool in our resources collectively, if we think of ourselves as the ‘intellectual class’ and create more inclusive spaces?