Venue: Bangalore Palace grounds
On the eve of Indian Independence, 2005
The emotional pleading voices, for and against the release of the rapist, bother you at first over the ‘only one’ headphone, only if you lend your ears to them. For others, the life-size image of the rapist in the form of the ‘suggestive image’ of the artist remains ‘frozen’ for a few minutes, in silence, till you get a chance for the headphone. If you are into the creative business, something else bothers you. In other words, you often wish the sequences in which the ‘for’ and ‘against’ voices are recorded, could have been reshuffled, based on the ‘amount’ of information you have about this specific character—Chakraborthy, who was hanged last year (2004) on the eve of Indian independence. By the end, you realize that you have to choose between the two given options, between the options given to you by the artist Umesh Maddanahalli or remain undocumented.
Eitherway the audience remain ‘unanimous’ as if to recall the anonymity of the voters of democracy. You need to choose to release or hang, but cannot suggest a third possibility. Umesh hosted this recorded performance on the eve of the nation’s freedom (2005) in the premise (Bangalore Palace ground) which actually belong to the Mysore kings and is a business establishment, now. A ‘paradox Democratic situation’, that connected the theme of this show with the existence of a kingly property.
The displayed number of votes cast for and against the hanging (as a capital punishment) by the previous viewers, on either side of Umesh’s image might have influenced the next coming onlookers’ judgement. This is where the plot thickens. There was a perceptive jerk evoked, that made one take a decision about (a) ‘hanging’ a human being or (b) ‘hanging as a capital punishment’ instead of, say, a life sentence. The audience was constantly bound to this freedom of perceptive error. A second perceptive slip occurs in Umesh’s very image as the rapist. Ansari, whose tearful eyes and folded hands marked the main media-image of the Gujarat riots, is whom Umesh actually ‘reminds’ in his project self-photo. The audience undoubtedly identify Ansari in Umesh but did not ‘recognise’ the pictorial juxtaposition of Ansari over Chakraborthy!
Ansari as a symbol of communal violence instead of a prey to it and Chakrobarthy as the symbol of capital punishment instead of a rapist is in itself a reassessment of existing media symbols. Umesh begins with Ansari and Chakraborthy but ends with dealing with their ‘representation’ via the media. No pedagogic lessons intended in this review, but to speak in a general tone, the world today doesn’t exist beyond its ‘representation’. A non-represented people and place just does not exist.
Umesh’s main theme of the installation was to question the notion of capital punishment and religious violence, but his work ended up enquiring the way they are represented. Since the world is what is being represented, the difference identified in the previous sentence just doesn’t exist!
The rest of the physical detail of the show contained shots of the protagonist being released or hanged, both technically unclear. This is the third point to confirm that the truth is what is being represented (in the near future Umesh intends to come up with a proper, edited—i.e., well represented—CD version of it) is the truth. The innumerable skulls (with relief noses and skinned naval space between the nose and the upper lip!) with audio recordings operating on sensor basis; and a set of audio-visual of the face melting into a skull adds to the ‘issue’ but not the ‘conclusion’ of the notion of punishment.
It is finally the notion of a group of human beings punishing an individual, in the name of order and discipline that was actually being questioned. The overall display in the subdivided section, the mellow lighting and the recorded voices of the overall installation, together initially persuade the participant towards fear of crime. If Chakraborthy is the object of fear Ansari is the subject who fears. The people are always between them, like the abundance of grey tones in a black and white photograph which suffers from the fear of the presence of pitch white and black tints within.
It is a fear of himself being in that position within which the artist placed himself, at least as an act that engrossed the audience. It was the feel of the fear of imagining the meeting with the end of one’s own self that created an ambience in the show. No man-made rule and order seem to be legitimate (or of relevance) when one is faced with an approaching time-bound, man-made end of him/herself . And for the same reason most voters elected to release the culprit-the artist. How much did the reversal of the intended theme affect the audience’s vote? In other words, what is the possibility of the image of ‘Umesh-as-himself’ influencing the verdict! A life sentence in a prison seemed to be better than being hung. And the idea of the installation got more votes than the actual representation of it! ///