the making of a discipline

two days of a seminar whose content ranged from the esoteric to the popular; where a whos’s who list spoke of cross/multi/post/ disciplinarity, prying apart the buzz words to see what they seem to mean and what they could become. yesterday in the first session kaushik spoke of the sensory self as the subject of film and life, architecture anf film as frames around this self, george spoke of saving the 21^st century through architecture and manifestos, prem chandavarkar the architect on the panel brought into the fray the urge for autonomy (through the tectonic?)later in the day shilpa broke rules of some forms of art while she plugged into another system and anurag kashyap brought the house down with his iconoclastic rebel grandstanding. be truthful to yourself and lie to the rest of the world. akhtar spoke of holistan.

today morning was intense and brilliant. the historical question was brought up by gyan, santosh spoke of the ‘geometry of the instruments of the discipline defining machines’ and their claim to universality and the marginalisations that they create, while kumar shahani in an articulate ramble threw a lot of questions open regarding the idea of the classical, the language of disciplines. in the afternoon madhu chaired and also spoke of challenging conventions within a discipline through her play with represented and real bodies in 7 islands, then himanshu showed his, now predictable, art critiquing the commodification of art, neera spoke of her work within gender and space and we also had ashok ranade with 12 senses and the appreciation of music.

a huge list, too many ideas, lots of smart people saying lots of cryptic things. too much and sometimes too esoteric for the students. but necessary for them to be there. one day something might ring a bell and make sense, and after all it is only through repeated such difficult times does some interest happen.

sometimes i wonder, isn’t the market itself the best multi disciplinarian, mixing everything up until you no longer know where anything begins or ends, while at the same time making perfectly definable objects to consume. i confused myself even more by thinking of the classical and its self consciousness of form as a space for critique and a place for rupture and break within a discipline to the outside. sonal said everything seemed to begin and end with the body, the self. and said that the desire to break the boundary has the erotic thrill of transgression. another complicated thought.