The search begins
The ‘search’ begins. It has been a couple of weeks since we, a group of six young practitioners of Art have arrived in the Khojspace. We have been soaking its warmth and energy for some time, before we discovered ourselves right in the middle of all that is happening in the capital city. Away from the serene, peaceful and self congratulatory space of academia…the safe and comfortable cages of marketplace…it has been a fortnight of exchange and dialogue in their most productive sense. It virtually took no time to embrace the newfound community, connected through the strings of a common conviction towards work and a similar approach towards the field of cultural practice. What more, it enabled us to breathe fresh air after a long time, knowing that there is after all a space to go wrong, experiments unmade, if the passion is there to proceed on our own searching lines. As the wise say, the success of a journey is not just in reaching your destination; the walk should worth too!
However, speaking about ‘search’, the word which epitomizes Khoj in the larger context of cultural practice all around the globe, it is important to pause for a moment and see what it is all about. Aren’t we all in search of something? Isn’t it true that we all search in our own different ways, each search worthy enough to be made? Then what is it that makes all these searches less special, with regards to the space they occupy in the field of artistic enquiries? I believe it is a question worth asking, and though it cannot be answered in a simple way, certain perspectives may help us.
Notes on a search
Peers, the Khoj Student Residency Program, is a platform which “provides young art practitioners an opportunity for exchange and dialogue”. As a forum, it “aims to intervene into the field of contemporary cultural practice with active experimentation, research and critical debate”. Now this is also the claim of thousand other ‘workshops’ organized in different parts of the globe with different aims. What then necessitates Peers to ‘search’, while other workshops seem to have found their ways! Perhaps to understand the problem, one has to investigate the idea of search itself at the first place. It is true that we all search, but it is equally true that all searches are not equal in appearance. Usually we search something which is absent, something we is not there where we expect it to be. A search, seen in this way is an act of completion, resurrecting a sign that is lost in our field of vision. The orgy of searches that we encounter everyday in the leading art institutions of our nation is a result of this. How many times have we encountered a student painfully labouring away towards the completion of the task she is expected to fulfil? The prized road or the avenue she takes is admittedly of her own choice, but the destination is always there, etched over the field where she eventually arrives. A search made under obligations is not one you may wish to remember for long.
Then there is also a search which takes place in the introspective and relatively autonomous domain of ‘other spaces’. These attempts can best be understood as ‘meditations on territories’. Here what necessitates a search is a realization of space, or a platform which enables one to see the field from a ‘critical distance’. The much celebrated alternative art institutions usually function with such a bind. What is significant in their cases is the curious fact that the critical distance which separates them from the mainstream and provides an oppositional status, proves to be of no real resistance in the long run. It happens so because these institutions willingly shy away from real interventions which have the potential of reterritorializing the field in an unforseen manner. Instead they nourish and celebrate ‘difference’, serving as ‘flyovers’ which precede the mainstream at the cost of passive collaboration. Thankfully, our experience of khoj and the peers program has been otherwise!
Clearing some of the misconceptions some of us have towards alternative art practices in India, the ‘search’ which began here in Khoj a good ten years ago, is not narrow enough to put in the abovementioned categories. Primarily a workspace, the building resembles a laboratory more than anything that comes in your mind. Yet, unlike a laboratory where a scientist intends to search something only to find it later, here practitioners also came to search with a chilling uncertainty of what they have found so far. This very uncertainty of what is found also leads to the refusal to settle with the obvious, which together marks the character of Khoj. The willingness to lay bare the violent avenues of trials and errors adds to its warmth and energy, and anyone who visits the khojspace for the first time cannot fail to recognize the momentum going for it. We were no exceptions either.
The selection of the five young artists for peers 2008 is a case in point. The practitioners with all similarities and difference make a curious contrast among themselves as far as their [visual] language is concerned. It is significant that some of them have gone much beyond the limitations of their respective disciplines. What is even more interesting is that the rest, though happily settled within the boundaries of their field of enquiry, use newer imaginations to move beyond the conventional language. The ‘searches’, it may be seen, is multilayered in each case, and the fact that khoj decides to initiate a dialogue between them, should stand for the fact that it [khoj] is willing to move ahead of the comfortable status of being alternative.
The [Re] searchers
Prayas Abhinav, arguably the most dynamic of us all, is a researcher in CEMA [Centre for Experimental Media Arts], Sristi College of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore. His work cuts across several disciplines and has the fluidity of a performance in space inherent within. His experiments with the new media can best be understood as attempts to intervene in the public space with creative interactions and dialogue. A prolific writer and a well received documentary filmmaker; Prayas’ intervention in the sphere of public art practice is playful and creative at the same time. One of his current projects, ‘petpuja’, is an attempt to intervene in the food and nutritional system within a community. He initiates the idea of growing vegetables in the unused spaces of a city, followed by creative methods of watering the plants with self-invented tools and objects. The project in process re-draws the cartography of the city, keeping it open for the public who willingly joins the fun. The sense of playfulness is evident in his further initiatives too, where he throws open roadside parties with the accumulated vegetables, sharing and connecting with the community. Partly gestural, partly functional, his project has the elasticity of a performance that is willingly shared by people whom he wants to reach out to.
Sandeep Pisalkar is about to complete his masters’ degree with sculpture as specialization from the M.S.University of Baroda. His sculptures are unique and playful, and from a distance, they appear like curious ‘composite creatures’. The sense of being composite in nature arises from a certain incompatibility among the parts that belong to his sculptural bodies. It happens so because he carefully plays with the signs that we attribute to any object, especially its associations with history. A distant object from the past always carries a set of relations attached to its image, and whenever those relations get disrupted, we feel as if our sense of time and space has collapsed. Sandeep succeeds in creating this feeling of collapse by fusing the parts of two objects with different historical associations [a charkha with a neon thread, a paduka with embossed electronic circuits, a motorbike with the wheels and the seat of a bullock cart etc]. But what absolutely bewilders us in his objects is the fact that they turn out to be functional too [the bike gives a mileage of 40km/hr; the antique looking portable metal water cooler self-regulates its temperature!]!! This very quality of usefulness, along with a stark and simple aesthetic prompted me to state earlier that his works are more like ‘composite creatures’ which have a spirit of their own.
Nisha Nair is a final year student of K.R.V.A, an institute of Architecture, Mumbai. She has been doing architectural projects in the cityscape with an interventional outlook, taking into account the ever changing relations of place and space within a city. Some of her works present us with models of buildings which are imagined and realized in the context of space they occupy in relation to the local inhabitants. Her other works involve a re-drawing of the territories of a given architecture, which suddenly comes to life when seen from a different perspective. Interestingly enough, these experiments on a cityscape have also led her towards an illustrative, part factual- part fictional account of a stranger in a city, whose negotiation in space serves as a bright, experiential account of a citizen-subject in a contemporary urban setting. The very fact that her work belongs to the cross section of so many things that concern us, makes our interaction all the more interesting and productive.
Manmeet Sandhu is about to complete her masters’ degree from the Govt. college of Art, Chandigarh. Though she had painting as specialization in her college, her works extend far beyond the confines of her discipline. She uses several materials and ready made objects [sometimes dead creatures, too] to evoke the desired visual and sensory impact that is so strongly characteristic of her works. Some of her works deal with issues of femininity and the disciplining of a gendered body, with the extreme measures like female circumcision etc. sharp and cutting in appearance, these works nearly halt and disrupt the ‘aesthetic’ expectations with which one looks at the representation of a gendered body. She does so with a poignant invocation of mutation and violence over the bodyscape, sometimes with the very physical act of stitching, tearing and mutating the mass of forms with which she works. The very quality of sensory communication in her work resists any detached enjoyment on part of the viewers, forcing them to come out from the domain of the aesthetic and enter the realm of the political.
Aatiya thakur has finished her bachelors’ degree from Srinagar, with sculpture as her special subject. The city where everyone lives with a perpetual anxiety renders itself transparent in the various signs he uses in her sculptural meditations. The shapes and forms, etched and sometimes engraved with personal symbols and metaphors bring a quality of angst in her works. Some of her installations make use of objects like barbed wires and empty bottles, which we were told later, are used to trace vibrations of footsteps in the military dominated areas. Some of her works are relatively more personal and introspective in nature, and it is significant that she articulates her experience of the political through the personal, using it as a carrier of social sensibilities. Her other works, which include formal enquiries into the shapes and forms of nature, have a distinct simplicity and sereneness which is quite a treat to watch.
The Ongoing Search
The first week was fast, busy and restless for all of us. We all started working right from day one, and I admit that it doesn’t sound romantic since we are supposed to ‘exchange [ideas], debate [views] and experiment [work]’, and do all that in that expected order. But then, human mind is not an empty bucket which is to be filled in order to water plants. Nobody works in that way, for we always form a hypothesis of the possible [and from the available] things that can be done, and then go ahead with our trials and errors until the feedback is satisfactory. So our ‘searches’ began from the day one, and what is really good in that is the fact that our plans have changed radically during the course of interaction and exchange. So the search remained there, but it did not remain the same anymore.
During the first week of our stay, we were accompanied to a couple of exhibitions and studios. Our visit to the Fluxus show in NGMA was memorable. The word Fluxus, as we know, means ‘to flow’ in Latin, and it is this quality of a free flowing experiment which impressed us most in the exhibition. The exhibition showcased works of artists from various fields [art, music, literature, architecture and urban planning…only to name a few] who came together on the same platform around the sixties with a common conviction of doing things outside petty aesthetic and commercial practices. However, their anti-art sensibilities differed from dada, for their aspirations were more towards positive social exchange and communication. I personally found the sound installation with the pieces of John Cage, Nam June Paik and Beuys quite impressive. However, the show was followed by a dismal performance of some of the pieces by a group of artists, where except a couple of pieces, the rest were proved to be hopelessly oscillating between artistic and anti-artistic sensibilities, with a pinch of reluctance and over too casual attitudes which perhaps the originators of the Fluxus group would have disapproved of. However, the experience was worth in its totality.
On the third day we visited Chandni Chowk. We enjoyed losing ourselves in the narrow streets with shapes and smells of every kind seeping into our senses from all directions. We felt like little kids in a candy shop [of course the difference is there, since none of us mistook the electric wires for noodles], and Sandeep bought himself a couple of weird looking electronic objects which god knows of what use. Prayas headed for petpuja, towards the parthawali gali, and we had a small visit to the Jama Mosque. A day later, some of us set out to explore the area around khidkee, where the khoj studio is…and the exploration initiated a number of ideas which are still being debated upon.
Another day, [since everything is happening so fast, please forgive me on losing my sense of time. I simply cannot remember the dates!] We visited the solo show of Ashutosh Bharadwaj in Vadhera, and George Martin in Palette Art gallery. With hyper-real figuration and sleek abstraction becoming the linguistic trend today, these two exhibitions had their bright spots and tiring elements at the same time. On the other hand, a relatively less initiated [into the gloss and finesse of hyper-realism] artist, Sambhavi Singh who had a show in Talwar art gallery touched some of us with the simplicity and sincerity in her works. Besides these shows, we also visited the studio of sculptor [and now a painter too] Ram Bali Chauhan and enjoyed his world of skeletons. Although his display [we only saw photographs though] seemed to have lacked the touch of a coup de grace, as meditations on the body, his works stand on their own. It also feels nice to say that the first week of our stay in khoj was also marked by a pleasant surprise. It rained every now and then, washing away all the anxiety which we had towards Delhi summer. The climate is lovely, the atmosphere pleasant…and all that one has to do is to join in the rhythm. We, the six young minds, are just doing that..
Parvez Kabir
Critic in Residence
Peers 2008
The Process:
“The success of a journey is not just in reaching your destination; the walk should worth too.”
This is what I wrote in the first essay of our project book. Well, now its time to look at the other side of the coin. What good is a journey when you don’t reach anywhere?
Another ten days have passed and it is everything happening in Peers. We are working hard, reaching out, interacting with each other and beyond, unsure about what will come up on the open day, whether the works we are planning and carrying out will come off nicely or all our experiments will go in vain and we will remain where we are and so on so forth…
However, it is also a time to step back and review the journey so far. Since the end products [our works displayed on the open day] in themselves will make little sense taken away from the context of their operation, from the process through which they have emerged, it is important to look at the process which has been carried out so far.
Notes on a Process:
It is worth looking at an artistic process, especially a discursive one, since it opens up a number of entry points to the viewer’s eyes, making participation possible. It is also significant to notice that lately many a number of artists across the globe felt the need to pay attention to the artistic process as much as the product they come up with. In certain cases, it is the process of artistic practice that is given a priority over the end product, where the very act of making visible or even preserving the process registers itself as a kind of ‘gesture’, an artistic statement, away from the sacred world of artistic commodities. However, there is also an exception to this case, especially in India, where it has become a commonplace practice among artists to preserve their ‘researches’ towards their language, often presented along with the ‘finished products’. The relation between the product and the process nearly gets upturned in this case, and very often it gives rise to an uncomfortable feeling among us that the process is but a ‘product a priory’, supplementing and justifying the value of the commodities.
It is this feeling of discomfort which is making me doubly careful while writing about the artistic processes which are being carried out in Khoj. How is it possible to write about an artistic process [which sooner or result will be materialized into tangible pieces of artistic work] without attesting or justifying its value? I believe it is possible to do so if certain misunderstandings are cleared out at the outset. The process which is going on in Peers is not at all a justification, or even a valedictory statement or a valuable fact in itself. Nobody is knocking at the other side of the wall for the sake of knocking, let alone changing histories or saving the world. What is happening here is a simple and free flowing workshop, where interaction physically plays a very important role. Of course there are limits too, for one is neither careful enough to draw one’s own self assuring territory and work away from the rest, and nor is one careless enough to abandon one’s commitment towards work to do anything which one can get away with. This is perhaps why Peers still stands apart from all these ‘art camps’ [profitable picnics in other words] and the randomly thrown feel good workshops in the art institutions all over the country.
Coming back to the question of the role of process in Peers, it is important to sketch the ground first, to see what kind of a space it occupies in the larger context of artistic practices in India. It would be wrong to see peers as a completely autonomous forum for professionals, since it is always marked by the fact of doubt on part of its participants, who seem to value a search much more than the found. It would be equally wrong to see it as a pedagogic project, since it deliberately keeps a distance from any vertical structures of knowledge dissemination. If is relatively easier to accept peers as a fissure, a bridge between these two systems but that too leads to some uneasy questions. Do peers want to project its process as a model for upcoming practices? It hardly seems so. It is rather better, or at least more productive to see Peers as a process in itself. Keeping the basic armature intact, Peers demonstrates the possibility to resist the token-function of any run off the mill institution/workshop in India by constantly being on the move, and in the process. This process, in itself, is not an end to the doubts; neither is it a supplement to the product of the future. A bridge, unlike a road, doesn’t promise a destination. It simply changes your orientation and location when it is needed.
The Processors:
Prayas, the relentless and dynamic creator he is, has been moving from one idea to another with extreme enthusiasm and energy for some time. Starting from where he left his ‘petpuja’ project, he wanted to extend it to the space within and beyond the khoj building. He had also engineered a sound system which spells certain words in different paces and had the plan to use it effectively with his installation. However, this initial plan has been changed to a significant degree and now as far as our knowledge goes, he has dropped the plans of growing vegetables all over the space but instead resolved to concentrate on the closed studio space where the whole project will be carried out with the desired impact. Discussions with other members of Peers also seem to have influenced his work plans, since his plan to do a playful and interactive game with the audience has been modified to an extent where formal and technical considerations are given a proper thought. He has been constantly on the move, going from one idea to another, doing twenty different things at a time and socializing at the same time. Prayas, it seems, is having a roll here.
Manmeet had the idea of extending her meditations on disciplined bodies which got an initial kickstart when she came across some dolls and mannequins displayed inside a shop. She thought of taking these objects out of their context, transforming their looks and to add a twist to our usual ways of looking at these surrogate bodies. She had an additional plan to melt these objects under extreme heat, which would create a strong sensation of disgust and fear among the viewers. However, she has changed her plans due to various considerations and is doing something different now. She has collected plastic junks from all over [and plastic has been coming into her work as a recurring motif for quite some time now] and has plans to transform her studio space into something that is novel and interactive at the same time. However, the idea of interaction in her works is different from that of Prayas’; while Prayas aims to reach out, surprise and embrace the viewer, Manmeet aims for a confrontation which would create a certain tension between the work and the viewer, ultimately leading to an interaction.
Nisha wanted to use ropes and strings to create a free flowing architectural supplement to the khoj building and its spaces, its interiors and exteriors, which has the potential to transform the building into something like a living and breathing entity. Needless to say…she too, dropped the plan for some reason and now is working on something else. She has collected a whole lot of packing boxes, some raw, cardboard ones, some made out of plies with the aim of completely changing the geography of Khojspace with this huge mountain of empty containers. It is also interesting to notice that her deep sense of an architectural space, which has escaped most of us, led her to use spaces which others would hardly seek, the small corridors, the staircase, the sudden turns and corners where one would barely invest an eye, have come alive with her intervention. None of us is sure [including she, herself] what would be the final outcome of this work, and that is exactly what makes it appear even more curious and interesting.
Sandip had the plan to invent an electric gadget which would automatically move and create various gestures, which curiously suited his conception of a ‘spirit’. He planned to create a covered dead body entirely made of electronic tools which would promptly react when a viewer comes close, giving them a sudden taste of the unexpected. He proceeded with this work, and we had long chats on the possibilities of an art-loving heart patient getting a very unpleasant surprise on the open day. Sadly, he too dropped this plan and started working on something else. The day we visited the Jami Mosque, he came across and got fascinated with the practice of cleaning a space with a broom made of cloth. He promptly made his own broom with every possible color and design and started cleaning different religious places all over the city, occasionally handing them over to the enthusiastic believers as well. He has also documented the whole process, and this very idea of exorcising oneself and playing around the grey zone of faith has overpowered him to that extent that he wants to extend it all over the country. We can wait and see how it goes, but for the time being, it seems the open day will witness a very powerful exorcism indeed.
Attiya has been working with a lot of dedication and persistence, and her work has perhaps changed the least since she shared the idea with us. She has been fascinated with her new life in Khoj, with the change of place and with the differences she encountered here. In her own words, away from the life in Srinagar, she finds India interesting, and that has been the primary idea behind her work, which can be seen as an exploration to the idea and experience of India. She has made structures out of bamboo and earthen pots and had plans to pave different roads from outside towards her studio space. However, this is one idea she had to reject because of technical incompatibilities, and now she is transforming her studio space into a cartographic terrain where different locations with different names and titles will present the viewer with a newer idea of space, may it be of a region or a nation, or even beyond.
The ongoing Process:
The last ten days have been full of work, interaction and fun. Some of us decided to visit Agra on the second weekend, and we were joined by sculptor Ram Bali Chauhan on our trip, which made it all the more exciting. The architectural splendor of Fatehpur Sikri was simply beyond praise, and I was particularly fascinated by the severely damaged but still recognizably intact examples of Mughal murals. It is a pity that art historians have neglected the practice of mural painting in the Mughal era and limited themselves only in studying the miniature paintings of the same period. A proper survey and investigation of these murals can very much transform our understanding of Mughal art which remains incomplete till today. We also visited the Taj Mahal but could not spend enough time since it was already dark.
Quite on the same line, two of us went to the Qutb complex, and it is difficult to remember anything that parallels the experience one gets after seeing the fabulous Alai Darwaza. The mixture of marble and red sandstone, which was later to become the hallmark of Mughal architecture has been used here with such brilliancy that one is left to wonder whether modernist architecture in India has lost a bit in its persistence on simple forms and aversion towards adoration.
The end of the month of May was marked by the day of slide presentation where students showed and discussed their works with a handful of interested people. The event was satisfactorily carried out and lots of people liked the works of the present Peers. Some of them came up with their valuable comments and feedbacks as well, which was very warm and welcoming. The presence of Sumakshi Singh, a Chicago based artist and art teacher made a big difference as well, since she put forward certain perceptive observations and comments which were extremely useful to all of us. Her participation, however, did not end there, since she came back on the next day and had a separate session of discussion with all of us, interacting and exchanging views and plans on/for our works. It is also important to mention the visit of the artist/architect Asim Waqif to our studio where he shared his thoughts and views about his own works and some of ours as well. Nisha, who comes from the background of architecture, has largely been benefited by this interaction.
Another bright spot in the last ten days has been the studio visit. We had two studio visits, first with Manisha Parekh followed by that of H.G.Arunkumar. Some of us have already seen Manisha’s works, and once again we appreciated her focused and concentrated discoveries of form. Much like a scientist, one is prompt to say a botanist or at least a biologist, she comes up with a whole world of sprouting forms; organic and always in process, which she sorts out, differentiates, nurtures and preserves with care. Her studio too, appeared like a museum of natural history, with so many little but interesting shapes and forms that one is always left to wonder whether it is ever possible to reckon with everything that one encounters there. We also saw a couple of little pieces of sculpture made with the use of bones and metal, which gave us a feeling that her upcoming works will be drastically different from what one has seen from her so far. Let’s wait and watch what is in store for the viewers in the coming time. As a very sharp contrast to Manisha’s works, Arunkumar’s works are more like plays on the signs that we associate with any cultural motif. Deeply passionate about toy making, his sculptures occupy a very significant space right in the grey zone between detached aesthetics and involved play. His latest works are inscribed with a multilayered system of sign making which seems endless on part of the viewer. He has a certain fascination with the image of Nandi the bull, and many of his newer works try to inscribe associative signs like vegetation, land and nature over the bodies of a similar shape or form of the bull. It was good to see some of his earlier works as well.
Perhaps it is insignificant to mention of the fact that we are also sharing our taste on things like films, music and cuisines too, which I guess is also part of the whole process of bonding and working as a team of equal individuals. Last weekend we saw Oliver Stone’s ‘Natural Born Killers’, once over again, and it made the same strong impact on our mind like it did 6 years ago. We also saw the movie ‘Juno’, a Hollywood movie which deals with the complex issue of teenage pregnancy. We also saw ‘Darjeeling Limited’ and ‘Sarkar Raj’ together and it is better not to elaborate on the experience. Life is full of mistakes anyway.
So, the process is on. It is too early to judge its significance and perhaps I too am attached enough to look at it from the much needed distance. Let’s hope the next week will make everything clearer. Yet, for the time being, it doesn’t take much to admit that it has really been a process so far, a process which is worth enough to be a part of.
Parvez Kabir, critic in residence.