gujarat - art, intolerance and censorship

so, the stories of art censorship and right wing fanaticism about what can be seen and nto seen by the public seem to never end. the latest being the vandalisation of a students work at the m s university in baroda by vhp activists. it seems as if the art students were holding an exhibition of their final work when some self-proclaimed carriers of the moral codes of the country stormed in, took objection to one particular students work and destroyed it. in the process the also beat up the student. when the police were called in, they ended up arresting the student, and let the miscreants go free. the university refuses to file an fir on the students behalf, and instead wants an apology to be delivered for the art work by the student. meanwhile the student is still in jail.

the ridiculously inverted nature of this can perhaps only occur in gujarat- the hotbed for the experiment of right wing reactionary rule. as all intellectual endeavors are repressed, while jingoistic hindutva makes demands on the public realm, when the institutions of democracy and education are prey to the whims and fancies of violent and intolerant forces, there is no place in india where the frightening fascism of reactionary politics is more apparent. in the rarified and gradually isolated spaces we inscribe for the production of resistances and alternative imaginations, the increasingly privatized spaces, we are asked to produce discourse that does not threaten or question the status quo. is the only alternative becoming militant and rigid, mirrors to the forces we are trying to resist?

yesterday there was a meeting held at chemould gallery in town where amid representations of goats and peacocks rising out of construction materials, a group of artists, curators and concerned citizens held a press conference on the event. a petition was drafted, and signed.

please sign too.

thin

there is a strange contradiction about the hbo documentary ‘thin’. the film follows the stories of the inmates of a rehab center for women with eating disorders in florida. it follows them into therapy sessions, group meetings, retching and binging sessions. it seems to know no boundary- or if it does – the lines seem very strange indeed as toilets, bedrooms –nothing is off limits. i found that to be very disturbing.

the stories follow the logic of a struggle overcome or lost with support from the staff. its pretty much a given narrative structure, but what was disturbing was that by focusing on the ‘human interest’ value of the women’s breakdowns and recoveries, the very strange position of the camera’s gaze and the images it produces was itself left unquestioned. after all it is in a very odd place.

if, like so many of the women said, it is the emaciated thin and sexy images of women in newspapers, magazines and advertisements that the patients were trying to emulate, can the camera that created these images be completely blameless? and what happens when that camera seems to crave their stories of self-destruction. the attention of the cameras gaze makes the women perform out what they think it expects, whether that is the tears of a repentant sinner or the helplessness of an addictive retcher. the complicity between the camera and the person to make good footage blurs the boundary between the real and the performed. nothing can be believed. the film makes no acknowledgement of this. it pretends that the gaze of the camera is objective and merely records. yet, while watching it was obvious that the stories were being script written by the unsaid codes that it is assumed make for gripping viewing.

image post - dindoshi 2

usha maushis workshop is in an informal industrial compound inside the slum. it is two storied affair and from the upper floor you can see the changing landscape rushing towards the regeneration of the place.


on the main road amid the low rise furniture repair, wood traders and bars housing complexes are rising for tv actors who would like to live close to their work place- film city.

just off the main road is the tarmac where cement mixers and garbage trucks are parked. they lie looming over older chawl areas where children were playing in the street.

and at the place where the film city road meets the highway - the frosted glass and metallic canopy of a brand new mall, whose name i still dont know.

image post - dindoshi 1

on the ambiguous edge of the national park in dindoshi- almost definitely an encroachment; definitely one of the most insensitive ways to deal with the landscape. a vertical lawn is sliced into the scar left by the dynamite.

sleep

i have been wondering whether i can work on an article on spaces of sleeping and how they inscribe intimate domains in the city- from the boudoir to the divider on the highway. any ideas?

in the sudhir patwardan painting someone sleeps wrapped in the dark waiting for a mattress to finish being stitched.

thesis

thesis day for the fifth year yesterday. i had 6 official students to sit with and one unofficial. needless to say, i was running around the exhibition space from one end to the other trying to get people to pull down and pin up, though this year yogesh and raghu were around to help. i find university thesis juries to be extremely tension inducing, because there is nothing you can about anything- except watch as the jurors tear into the students for all kinds of things. at the most you can interject here and there.

the projects i had guided were dipti’s project on her ancestral home, richa’s mithi river project, shipra’s womens hostel, riddhi’s community center in gorai and punit’s system of steel construction for the making of transit camps in mumbai. a nice varied bunch and they had worked very hard on the projects. i also sat in for anishas inner city redevelopment of khau galli. i was exhausted by the end of the day and for some reson was feeling adamantly theoretical over beer at sea view later with namrata, neha, mayuri and ninad.

some more from the new and improved avon

highway demolitions

at borivili for some more lanes to the western express highway

spiderman 3

i did not ever read comic books for their action sequences. after al they were merely fragmented disjointed frames with “whams” and “booms” littered across. i read them because i loved – and that meant could relate to the characters behind the masks. the usual tropes being the trauma of having another ‘real’ self- this could be the one within or without the mask; the arch villain that you are constantly in danger of becoming the more you try to beat him; the girlfriend in trouble and all the other loved ones you want to protect. with great power comes great responsibility is not about the power after all – computer graphics will give you all yo9u need- it is about ‘responsibility- what you choose to become. oh- and how i loved all the existential crises that the characters went through. so i don’t mind the indulgent moping that everyone else seems to cringe to. without it, for me, this would be just another hollywood action film- with some great cg. the spiderman films always knew this and the new one does too.

in the film power goes to spideys head and is further exaggerated when he is infected by an alien life form. meanwhile sandman and the goblin return as good guys turned bad looking for salvation and revenge. the only really bad guy is ‘venom’ who really might not be a ‘guy’ after all. mary jane is also going through a hard time losing her job and her boyfriend. the characters dance and sing, friends separate and are reunited and thereis a love triangle too. a hindi film like drama of sacrifice, love, jealousy is played out, punctuated by fantastic action sequences. the cg is brilliant- the movement of spiderman in between the skyscrapers has lost its cut out quality of the first film and this time we are in the thick of the action. my favorite scenes are the creation of sandman in a classic comic book fashion, and peter parkers smooth moves when infected by venom.

the fast and the furious . flight plan

there is something s comforting about hollywood action films. alone in the rather fancy hotel room in bangalore with a wooden floor, bedside lamps and air conditioning for company, there was nothing much for me to do but vegetate in front of the tv and watch ‘the fast and the furious’ where paul walker infiltrates a gang of street racers to expose a ring of crime- or something like that. not too difficult to understand why it did well- hot cars and chicks and a plot that needed no brain to watch. car chases galore. but even more fluffier was ‘flight plan’ where jodie fosters daughter vanishes mid-flight and jodie goes all manic mother on the crew and the rest of the passengers. the hi-jacking and extortion plan was so elaborately plotted and unnecessarily complicated that it seemed improbable. give me the brainlessness of ‘the fast and the furious’ over the pretentious ‘flight plan’ gravitas any day of the week.

jury day in bangalore

got back from bangalore yesterday after spending a day and half in that strange soft city. whle bombay feels like shards, bangalore is cotton. all experience is dulled by a cushion of green and clean. i was there for a jury for a group of swiss students who had spent 5 weeks developing 4 projects- to of them looked at the east bangalore railway station and the other two at a crèche / community space on a nallah.

the jury was held at the united theosophy college at benson town whose lush campus is a crime- so pastoral, it feels like being in a forest. the work was so much better than the ones i have often seen foreign students do in india. not completely able to strip themselves of the ‘exotic india’ garb, most managed to do reasonable work in spite of it. like my favorite piece where a strange notion of collective farming and the stages of an “indian” life were superimposed making a truly unusual intervention on the second site. the railway station project that did it for me was the one that proposed a “space for time and place” in front of the building which was colonized constantly by everyday life and the transformations of nature. the edge of this space was blurred by using capsules that made no inside or outside.

the kids had made the most gorgeous starters with pork and egg and mayonnaise and mushroom for the exhibition in the evening. these were the ‘process managers’ in the teams. four very golden blonde boys with exactly the same hair – each wanting to be different ended up looking the same. some things are truly ‘transcultural’ – the key word of the day.

i did not have much time to do anything much in bangalore. the previous day, as they had put me up at a hotel in koramangla, i just had to walk to forum mall there the previous evening for my dose of density and tackiness.

also met jayashree and mihiran yesterday, in the break between the jury and the exhibition.

mumbai to bangalore - flight photos

damn! i wanted to be a surrealist

You Are Pop Art

When it comes to art, you're definitely not a snob. You can appreciate the mainstream aspects of culture, even if you need to twist them a bit to make them your own. Whether you're into comics, retro pinups, or bold colors, you embrace what's eye catching and simple. As far as most other art goes, you consider it a little too elitist and high brow for your tastes!

What Art Movement Are You?

aaji at avon

two alucobond interventions

the first is thakur cinema in kandivili whose red, yellow and blue surfaces make for a technicolor landmark focus for the axis of a side street. the second is at khar subway where the cladding divides a building into two. the lower half twisting one way for a showroom while the upper half stays austerely residential.

image post - brother /sister

image post - rewa / benita

met rewa after 11 years (at least) yesterday at samovar. benita, rewa and me had a sandwich and juices after deepali, rupali and me had seen coomaraswami hall for the exhibition planned for july.

rewa

benita and me

rakhi sawant

i love rakhi sawant- as pretty much everyone whom i spoke to does, who saw her looking hot in a manish malhotra sari with karan johar on sunday. her brazen sexuality and her innocence, her matter-of-factness about her silicone lips, the nips and tucks she has had; and her strange mixture of self-deprecating humor and yet complete self-centeredness seem strange. she talks about herself in the third person as if the persona she has created is not her. as a character study she is incredibly fascinating. a classic rags to riches story, with a deserter father, a conservative mother, a family to look after, casting couches and a supergirl costume. on ‘lola kutty’ she wore the costume on the show and asked the country to admire her thighs before breaking out into rajnikanth and chiranjeevi imitations. for a change lola had no quick one-liners and just had to laugh (‘at’ or ‘with’ her – is a question that we all have to answer whenever we giggle away at rakhi)

twisted into a strange cocktail by the glare of the spotlights of the media, she is great headline material. on ‘big brother’ if we got to see the ‘real’ her- it seemed to be the same persona as the music videos and the interviews. silly, stupid, sexy in an in-your-face way; we tolerate her, and even seem to love her idiocy and her street-smartness. i wonder whether there is something extremely sexist about this. i don’t think we would have tolerated the same traits in a man. somehow we assume to be her ‘patrons’, looking down at her as much as we seem to enjoy her antics. i remember when madonna in the 1980s had just begun her career and was shamelessly using her sexuality to get attention. she seemed to know exactly what to do to make the media dance to her tune. it is another thing that the songs themselves were ridiculously catchy. i wonder whether rakhi is as much in control of her destiny. she does not seem to be. she is merely a media created animal. the media is using her, she is not in charge. her persona is one that attracts us; but might bore us soon, fickle patrons that we are.

'wild reeds'

there is such a thing as art house fluff- or do i, whenever i am watching film in any european language assume it to be art house? whatever.. ‘wild reeds’ was another one of those french countryside / beautiful young people coming of age / sexual awareness dramas; where a group of three young men and one girl grow up. the algerian war of independence in the early 60s is supposed to fomr the background for this story, and the device comes across as forced and facile. very lightweight easy viewing.

elective affinities / the 6th day

'elective affinities' was a film by taviani brothers set in italy. it was a goethe story about how an idyllic marriage falls apart when both individuals in the marriage develop a destructive attraction for other people – the first the husbands childhood friend, the second the wife’s adoptive daughter. for a story whose title refers to a scientific concept the movie does take some strange turns into the mystical, like when a child is born with the hair of one lover and mole of the other to the married couple; or when each character chooses suffering and guilt over a happiness that lies just around the corner; maybe, not everything can be explained by science – especially human behavior.

on the other hand in the 6^th day the arnold action film about cloning, science has finally given humanity the power to make human life eternal- and arnolds too. an arnold clone has taken over his life and arnold 1 is pissed off. he wants his life back and will do anything to get it. robert duvall plays a scientist in a thankless cameo; and arnold adds 'genetically constructed' to his repertoire of 'artificial human' roles. isn’t it strange that it is so rare that he gets cast as a normal human being in his films. in the stories there is always something odd about the way he comes to be. something to do with the accent – or the body- i assume.