ARTICLE: “Mind the Gap”

(I) 

 A Bird’s Eye-View: 

It was a deceptively simple act. 

The artworks from this renowned museum (Victoria & Albert Museum) were borrowed and displayed (curated) in a gallery (Serpentine Gallery) which was hardly 400 yards away, by an artist/curator (Hans Haacke), recently, in arguably the ‘most multicultural city’ in the world (London).  

It might not be the ‘only’ multicultural city, but the only one that is made known world over–visually and visibly. Interestingly, it is so because of its international broadcast of its own self, in the form of BC1, 2, 3, 4 and 5! In a recent BBC interview, Guruvinder Chadda put this very positively when she meant, “America (can be read as CNN) broadcast keep their channels for themselves like as if they are looking into a mirror. Britain makes a ‘picture’ of its own self, to be telecast world over (in the form of BBC)”. Incidentally Chadda was speaking to ‘one’ of those ‘BBC channels’!  

 I am considering this example to grasp what London, the ‘multi-cultural’ (different from the general meaning the term projects) city has to offer, beyond imitating the country it is a capital of, for the outsiders, through the visual communication media. The way London ‘is’ (ideally speaking) or ‘looks’, that too from within (realistically speaking) has little in similarity with what London is ‘through the media’.I am not speaking about perceiving London from within (because there is nothing like ‘London seen from without’ as an opposite factor, because such a possibility is only a ‘construct’.  

It is a London revealed every day, basically through its visual choices and visible evidences. Visual choices range between museums, galleries to sign boards, historic, nostalgic-documents marked “to be seen”. “Not to be seen” is something that one ‘feels’, while being physically present, and the first question that comes to mind is this: What is the criteria that this city–with 27,000 published documents about itself (ref: book: “London The Biography” by Peter Ackroyd, Vintage publication, 2000, London)–has adopted to mark between what it decides to “be seen” and “not to be seen”? Through this question, I would like to perceive London as an arrangement of specific objects in specific ways, with a powerful will to do so. This is–aesthetically and artistically–close to the notion of the ‘act’ of ‘contemporary curation’. London and visual arts can both be comfortably and contemporarily perceived as ‘visual traditions’ as against ‘art histories’, can be similar in achieving newer meanings with the same old objects (Victoria & Albert Museum of the city and enhanced perceptivity of an artwork, respectively, for example).  

 Thus I would like to perceive London as an artwork that is constantly being curated in its own self, which seems to be an ongoing project without a time and space-boundedness. The para-human scale of its visual and visible ‘texts’ could be the reason for this. Yet, this project, seemingly provoked by its ‘spirit’ rather than its ‘gestures’, can guarantee an experience very different to that of its consciously projected project for the outside world. Though the project is not bound by time and space, it is a site-specific one. Whatever we perceive here and now is what we have about it, with us, perhaps for us, if we do not visit it again, with the same spirit–and same physique. Interestingly this city has officially marked walk-ways and bicycle-ways and most Asians settled here suffer from arthrities, due to their genetic discomfort towards cold! The nature of one’s physical movement decides the structure of visibility in/of the city! 
 

( II )

 A microscopic view into the heart of the city’s visuality: 

People came and looked at Haacke’s ‘temporary display’ with much more intensity than they had done earlier, with such and similar works, at the V & A museum. Earlier they thought it would be there–forever. Now it proved to be ‘almost forever‘. Interestingly, the ones who thought so would not have been the same people who had seen it in the ‘curated show’ or ‘temporary display’ at the Serpentine, owing to how you would like to define that Haacke‘s show as.  

While ‘recalling the act of looking’ at the same works in different light (literally and metaphorically, at Serpentine) they now knew that they were looking at ‘permanent works that are temporarily dis-positioned and dis-arranged’. Or could it be the ‘temporary nature of the sense of permanency’ assigned to museum pieces? Such multiple meanings with subtle differences are possible, if  you would care to make a list of them, but the question here and now is this: Once the core essence that differentiate a museum and a contemporary gallery is dissolved, how far can this act–call it contemporary curation–be stretched?  

It is not a question as difficult as it seems. Carol Duncan in her book “Civilizing Rituals-Inside Public Art Museums” (Routledge publication, London, 1997) calls the museum itself as a place for ritual, terms the viewers as active participants in it and says that this participation is evident even in a performative visual piece of contemporary types. Duncan rejects any difference between museums and galleries as in US and not in London, when she refers to museums, which I am going to follow in this article. Slavery, colonisation and US are not aliens to each other, isnt it? I would generally term a museum as an‘un-settlement’. Could a carricature of this kind be possible? I mean could London be perceived as a ‘curated visual site of paradoxical, fragmentary memory and rituals’ and the people and monuments in it as active participants, never forgetting the weather in it, or at least the never ending talk about the underestimated severity of its weather?  

 The city’s ritual, mostly visual, encircles around its weather. Most bus stop designs, air tight metro-tubes and even bus shelters are designed not for the rain, not for the sun but for the wind. Being from the naturally well lit India, that too from the most moderately weathered and minded people’s city (Bangalore), I am not complaining about an obvious personal issue. It is the way the weather itself cuts across between the sunshine, the cold and the rain as if they are totally unrelated natural elements and the way the city‘s visibility is structured accordingly–call it by whatever name: town planning, landscaping, cityscaping–that is the first amazing factor. There is a sense of fragmentation in the very foundation of this 2000 years old city. 
 

( III ) 

‘Time’ is an illusion ‘Here’ and ‘Now’ 

A sense of permanency attached to a museum collection was dissolved as if it was a construct and not the truth (in Haacke‘s show) ! This is true not only with the works displaced and dislodged from its frozen museum position but also their neighbours that were not! The moment the ‘other’ works lost that permanent touch with those displaced, their permanency was shaken as far as their ethical and political meaning was concerned. The arrow would have pierced a bit more severely inside the miniature deer in the Indian section if a Samurai costume had shivered a bit out of its position in the Japanese section.  

However, for now, we are sure that there is nothing ‘unpredictable’ that is going to happen to these works in the future. Whatever that unpredictable is going to happen–Haacke’s theoretic curation or practical dis-re-placement of the museum pieces have already made it predictable, in a way. 

 

 However, the immediate question is: would there be the possibility of any singular human personality who could do this: predict the absence of the permanently installed museum works, owing to the diverse backgrounds from which the collected works hail from? (in V & A or Imperial War Museum or the London Museum).  

Consider one such configuration: One of those usual Picasso’s work over there might have passed through that ‘High Cultural’ practice, from the studio-to-gallery-to-museum, but not a stone carving of Basavanna, Shiva’s vehicle. The latter would have directly walked from Indian streets, alongside the collector, into a flight thinking it to be the true paradise, to sit next to Picasso in a eloquent indoor setting called as a museum! So if one can mentally work out the possibility of grasping the ‘innumerable dimensions’ (not layers) that these works mutually cut across, the resultant visual-display can be compared with only one thing. It is with Douglas Adam’s ‘satirical improbable dimensions’ adopted in his book “Hitchhickers guide to the galaxy–a trilogy in five parts”. Interestingly, the book by this British writer captures the spirit of London very well with all its improbabilities. The gap between Basavanna and Dali’s exaggerated elephant displayed outside Saatchi gallery is unperceivable. Is it due to the distance, the quick weather change before going from one to the other? If the irresistible visibility of Big-Ben as a monument (than as a structure) is to be passed through, the London Eye is to be filled in. Both the animal-displays–as Oriental and Occidental art–and the monument and leisurely Eye is an ultimate challenge to our modernist notion of a preferred hierarchy between the High and the low, the cultured and the crude-in visuality. The site-specificity connects various time and spaces with such an intensity that the curated-show (London, the space) genuinely questions the trueness of the ‘time’ we live in. 
 

 ( IV)

 City as Cataloguing the Process  

I am hereby attempting to apply some of the newly learnt lessons of curating between two kind of institutions (that of a city and art–of visual kind and mutually unkind) to come to terms with–the improbability of an attempt to perceive/grasp–London’s  fragmentary and paradoxical visual connotations. 

In the beginning of the new millenium, in London, there is something else that the term ‘curation‘, as a verb, had done to itself, whose own scope it is yet to come in terms with. London is also a city that is always ‘happening’. This is the similarity between curating and the city. Haacke’s show serves–as a reflection of what the city itself is going through–only a sample of this ‘new tradition’ (curating contemporary art) or an ‘ancient buerocratic act’ (the definition assigned to curators as managers, in, say Lords Cricket Stadium or V & A Museum, two places mutually nearby and within the city).  
 

The practise of Curation (always read it as CCVC or curating contemporary visual culture) not only has drawn us out of the ‘frame’ of a given product of creative activity–which were earlier, historically, generalised as ‘artworks’–but has also refused to accept that it has ‘expanded’ the overall width or the meaning of that frame! In other words, curation need not necessarily treat painting as ‘a child of a man’ called installation. The very notion of ‘framing’ is, to put it simply, challenged without converting this challenge into another kind of a frame. Curatorial catalogues have been promoted from being a ‘means’ to an ‘end’ in itself (owing to the site-specificity of artworks and temporal quality of site-specific works). 
 

( V ) 

It warns you about  surveillance and the reality of Illusion!  

Interestingly London presents itself mainly through periodic catalogues about itself. The popular daily ‘Metro’ is free and a monthly TNT book listing of events is also free and are in everyone-can-read English. Other European cities block news to the foreign visitors due to their un-Englishness. Interestingly, (and ironically, as usual with London) they speak about 120 languages on the streets of this city apart from English which indicates–like the museum works indicating something totally different in a private gallery–a totally different ‘body language’ from every one you meet and still might find it difficult to find one of ‘your own gesture‘. The curated city’s catalogues, in the form of walking guides, bicycle guides etc., not only leads you in width but also in depth. The deepest metro is 18 floor below and you literally feel that you are in the heart of a land mine. Trams might be literally travelling two feet above your head, if you are not shorter than five feet. Yet, the question here is not what you watch (which is in plenty) or who watches you (obviously, the omnipresent CCTV) but the ‘purpose’ of watching and being watched.  

CCTV video recordings are basically consumed and modified only into ‘evidences’ and ‘pleas‘. They warn you about their surveillance! If a video, in art, is more of suggesting something more than itself, a video about London, shot round the clock, is more about ‘impersonal watching‘ as an end in itself. The city is always under surveillance of the eyes-literally. CCTV camera recently failed to identify not only the woman-suicide-bomber who entered into London but also failed to identify which of its own officer dealt with her. The images from the surveillance camera were of such poor quality (the severity of the ironic absurdity is equivalent to the claim that one has “written an extempore speech”).   

This is where the city i.e., London, projected as arguably the most multi-cultural city anywhere, acts as an ever curated, constantly re-curated ’site’ that refutes a defined character as if it was the sole purpose. But, the fact that most of it happens visually speaks about the power of a possibly ‘conscious curation‘ of itself, as itself, in itself and by itself!  
 

( VI ) 

Sum of its Fragments?

 The map of the city, given the fact that web camera gives a updated version of the plan of the city every three seconds, is, more than anything, ‘spectacularly disturbing’. Except for the Tate Modern and London Eye which are on the Southern part of historically pleasure seeking, second graded part of the city, everything else visually prominent is on to the north of Thames: Tate Britain, Dockland Museum (history of the city), to name two of them. The most visually happening place is where the London Eye is because people who dont get into it get into the couple of buildings just next to it (the famous Hayward and Saatchi galleries). And given the fact that most art establishments are individual ventures, there is an external pop-display of the ‘high art’ displayed inside! Tate, Saatchi, Victor Miro, Haywards, Madam Tussad–are a few examples for the respectively galleries named after their owners. 

About a dozen of sculptures by Dali or based on Dali’s images are being exhibited outside, along side a few aqurium pieces (‘aquarium inside a car‘), next to Saatchi and ‘London Eye‘, where the crowd and the displayer were compelled to treat the whole set up as ‘one unit’ or a collection of fragments rather than a package of self-complete units arranged fragmentarily. Those who came for fun could not care for individual aesthetic contemplation in front of individual pieces ‘inside’ and those who went in were unable to do the same ‘outside‘, in the ‘multifaceted functional definition’ assigned to the crowd in that particular spot. If Umberto Eco explains that Disney World is a reality of “illusion of the real”, this part of London is real in its shifting realities which amounts to nothing but an illusion between the aesthetic, functional and the existential struggle. 

In the above sense the ‘art houses within the city’ and ‘London as the city’ can be said to have something in common: Both the institution of museum and urban space is the result of a particular history–connected to colonisation. Is this a city which has collected art treasures or is it the one formed out of collections from elsewhere? A classic case is that of the Elgin Marbles. Do they need to be returned to the Greeks is an ongoing debate. Indians are yet to even realise that they might have a question to pose regarding our treasures. It is not a practical but a moral question that I am suggesting, that too in a different context:  

Is the visuality of the city a collection of fragmented/fragmentary visual-physical objects from varying places in which London had a mutually interactive role to play in its (the ’others’) power formation? Or has London, being a city of political centre of England, played a visible role in the fragmentation of those visuals that it has in its collection, now.  
 

( VII )

 Memory always comes with Knowledge 

First of all, a clarity. An entry into this project depends on where you stay. London has normal community set up with various ‘ethnic settlements’ in ghettos. Could it ever be the other way round, in the future? According to realistic, real-estate estimation, most proper-English want to move out of the city border to avoid living with those whose customs they cannot perceptually digest! 

This is the ‘memory’ aspect that plays a lot, owing to from where the audience, enacting in this space-within-space labyrinthian project, hail from, and with what identity i.e.,, as a migrant/immigrant/expatriat or a tourist or a permanent dweller. Peter Ackroyd’s (in his book, “London-The Biography”) claim that there are 27000 publications (read it as ’versions’) about this city. Without knowing one might be walking next to one of the four Temple law schools where Gandhi studied in 1889, or be staying in a hotel next to Thames at a point where Gericault caught his deadly virus that killed him prematurely or those spots that Monet popularised (as Turner did with Venice–he placed those monuments closer than they were, to fit into the artistic frame!) or might be staying in a place wherein Charlie Chaplin lived.  

The question here is regarding the ‘guilt’ about the chance of having possibly missed one such occassion, site, for there is no single source, community, personality that can turn ‘all’ those relevant London spots into worthy experiences. Right now London might be curating a show called  ‘the difficulty of self-portrayal in contemporary times’! Now, consider this visual experience between this and a visit to a contemporary gallery like Saatchi. It was the unofficial gallery of British art, till 2000, till Tate Modern officially took over the task. The one remarkable sample of artwork visible from the reception desk of the gallery, even before purchasing the ticket, is that of Damien Hirst’s Whale. It rather explains the prodigious, “self-promotional” talent’s (a Tate publication’s quote) contribution to visual perception, that of “life of the dead” philosophy. The dead and the living live together in London.  

Travelling from V&A to Saatchi is like travelling from experiencing the “permanency of the permanent doubtful” to the “liveliness of the dead“ in the warmest cold month of February 2005. By now you must be familiar with the fact that London as a curated self-portrayal (or its impossibility) site-specific work is also becoming time-bound. The paradox lies in the subject rather than the argument.  

The reshuffling of the Tate Modern collection into subjects like History, Nature, Nudity and Still Life constantly educates you as to what exactly you should not be doing with the city, if you want to avoid over-simplification. Yet there could be a reassurance about the ‘simulacra’ between the shocks of the London suburban muggings and watching Damien Hirst’s conch shells next to an authentic16th century still life! Digestion is not a easy process after these two similar attacks.  Whoever said that the lifestyle of a city does’nt affect its dwellers who also happen to be there as the Tate management and curators. 

The Dockyard museum that houses the very history of the city in a warehouse, which in itself is a part of the exhibition. Place Carol Duncan’s statement about the museum as a ‘ritual space’ and this space of ‘self-reflexivity’ next to each other. Accordingly, there is a ritual taking place ‘inside’ a container which in turn is a ritual in itself. London houses a museum about itself in a warehouse which is a historically relevant building, turned into a museum. The art historical text in a library and the actual object of reference in a museum are placed in a relation which can be simply called as inside-out thing.  
 
 (VIII)

They were always being watched! 

Let me attempt to conclude this ‘city as an always-unfinished curatorial project’ which has layers (physical and physically horizontal as well), creates ironies (Picasso and Basava; English and other 120 languages*2*), paradoxes (warnings about CCTV and its failure), dimensions (of the reality of illusion and living in various artistic and political time zones). I hope you understand the melancholic irony inevitably prevalent in the previous sentence in which I have attempted to bravely summarise something that is a (proposed) project which follows the rationality of art history/visual culture’s logistics, in the installation of its visual institutions; and negates it through a typical post-modernist emancipatory project of London just being there in the way it is, as is ‘seen’ now. The overall notion of emancipation is to lift up the lesser privileged to be equal with the privileged. But London has a privileged minority and the underprivileged majority–in its population, and in the variety of art and artistic experience that it withholds. This is the simplest as well as the most concrete challenge, which I would call as a unique state-of-being, right now. 

London’s colonial historic past should have made them more surveillant. Indeed they are. But the next step of surveillance, which is “to re-act” is what they find it problematic. Perhaps the way the city of London would curate itself by looking at itself from its own webcam would be like this: those 120 species of people, speaking their own language, trying to create their own dialect in regard to English, each one creating their own world that the other 119 pair of eyes cannot make a sense because their eyes are not historicised. I mean those eyes do not have a history of the power of watching the land on which they are living. They were always watched! Even when historicised, they need to learn the 119 ways of watching and one way of narrating.  Forget about the colonised lot in London, the ex-colonisers themselves find it supra-mundane to watch, survey and guard themselves*3*. The finest job one can have here in the near future would not be about ‘visuals’ but about ‘words’: Functionally, the London council is appointing translators, not for literary purpose but for simple, normal, domestic, mundane functioning of a multi-everything city: London! 

It is like travelling in the ‘London Eye’–you get a panoramic view, but for only once. The second view is just a repetition. It is like travelling in the famous Damien Hirst ferry from Tate Modern to London Eye to Tate Britain back to Tate Modern–you travel so fast (11 minutes) that you definitely are bound to miss the very ‘essence’ of the place you just visited. There are always two choices in front of you: Either measure the time taken to cover the ‘marked constructs’ or mark the ferry journey itself as a construct. London is not ‘what’ you want to see, but ‘how’ you want it. 

—–

Foot Notes: 

*1* One of the four most popular set of English words heard in ‘public premise’ in London, along with that abusive four letter word. The other two are, ‘thank you’ & ‘excuse me’, so much for the tight lipped forebearance of the London-British tradition. “Mind the Gap” is a standard warning announcement when someone gets into or out of the tubes, buses and trains, round the clock. And then outside, as an imitation!   

*2* A synoptic comparision with a city like Bangalore. Bangalore is a city with about 40 languages spoken on its streets. And the main language (Kannada) of the State is not being spoken on its street or at house. and the migrators would not care to learn it. London could be the future of Bangalore–a fragmentary, paradoxical city. Mumbai escapes this, ironically to a strong sense of linguistic belongingness and Marati’s phonetic similarity with Hindi). Even in London people spoke 40 languages at one point. That was in 50 AD when Roman had occupied Londium. English was a language yet to be born then.  

*3* Recent art fairs in London indicated at the increase in Japanese and Chinese artistic talents, pointing the fingers at something else, at the same: the two nations capacity to invest the capital. India, on the other hand seems to invite investors rather than invest in the west. The general question by any British artist is, “So, what’s happening in India”. And the more sensible enlightening questions woudl be, “So why isnt Indian art not shown here?”///  
 
 

MIND THE GAP II—‘Unseen’ Landmark of a ‘Monumental’ Past

 

(I) 

The major ‘landmark’ of London is the Thames. Tomoko Takahashi’s mega art project at the Serpentine gallery deals with the shock of this notion: that a river represents a city whose history is connected so much with the geographical and cultural history of monuments, buildings, people, lifestyles, race, hierarchy and emancipation. The city has innumerable monuments but none of them accept the role of being a landmark. On the other hand, Thames is a landmark leading to nowhere (1). 

Incidentally, its (Thames) beginning and end lies ‘outside’ the geographic frame of London. It has marked itself in such a way that the city dwellers as well as the tourists move ‘around’ it, without consciously acknowledging its presence, like, say, they might not do with its monuments, most of the time. Factually speaking, there is no typically dominant ‘British’ population in London to claim a sense of ‘nationhood’ for this river. Thus there is always a ‘foreign eye’ watching the river, whose space- specific ‘visual representation’ is unattainable, forever. 

Takahashi’s objects at Serpentine do the same to our notion of perception. While it is a river in the case of London, it is the objects collected, 7600 of them, from around Thames, by the artist, that renders a challenge to our perceptual ability. Like Thames, these uncountable and often unaccountable objects are seen, felt, experienced, acknowledged and forgotten immediately!  

In other words, the theme of the show is the ‘difficulty in memorizing’ the probable chain of experiences evoked–not by those objects–but by the ‘interrelation’ built in between them. The best part of this sophisticated artistic experience lies in the multiple ironies it builds up: Any kind of ‘memory’ of the ‘artistic experiences’ refuses to remain a constant. It is so because the ‘experience’ that creates the memory constantly changes because the ‘mutual interrelation’ between the displayed objects that creates these experiences, constantly metamorphose.  

No two perceived experiences of this very show, during two different visits, could leave behind the same experiential memory for us. Generally speaking, once a show is thoroughly perceived, we don’t agree that we have missed any ‘significant physical detail’ of the show, which leads us to a standpoint about the very show. Takahashi topples this accepted norm of a gallery visit. And she uses the ‘methodology-of-memory’ itself as an instrument to achieve it!(2) 
 

(II) 

It is the relationship built up between, say, two objects, that help us ‘register’ the objects themselves. But when the quantity and quality of the objects exceed beyond the boundaries of the frame of our perception, even those within the frames become unfamiliar. The stretch of Thames and the number of Takahashi’s objects attain this ‘sense of unfamiliarity’. But are they mutually connected, other than in their physical relationship? Comparatively, the river Ganges, for instance, is popularly ‘represented’ through its ‘religiosity’, that too in a democratic country (India), as a result of excessive international photojournalism.  

The ‘memory of a landmark’ (as in the case of Thames) is a construct connected with its cultural history. Takahashi’s objects, irrespective of its range, could become ‘mementos’ collected from in and around the Thames and given away to those who live in and around the same Thames (this act was performed on 10^th April 2005). The river and its mementos are those that refute a specific homogeneous cultural affinity. Both specifically don’t belong to a particular race, creed, caste and period. While Thames is always viewed by those who live in ‘homes away from home’, Takahashi’s objects—altogether–reminds one of A metaphoric home away from the real home. We live in a time wherein a home is more of a memory and imagination rather than a reality–in the beginning of the twenty first century, owing to reasons like Diaspora, exiledom and migrations(3). 

None of the City’s ‘monuments’(4) stand in par with this river in the way it flows deep inside us but not in any definitive terms, like one’s subconscious thoughts. It divides the city into two parts: physically as well as attitude-wise. The southern part posses more violent history, though. Comparatively, the northern area is more elitist (5). London doesn’t seem to have high-rise buildings because of the length of the Thames—its own width is ignorable (300 meters at the widest, now. Earlier it was much wider and was differently streamlined according to the documents in the Museum of London) and the width it covers from West to East escapes the city’s imagination.  

This city, which acts as the heart of the global meridian timing (at Greenwich) has clusters of buildings that contemporarily evoke all the three time-spans currently: past churches between contemporary dwelling spaces, everywhere; and futuristic offices as can be seen at Canary Wharf (this particular district’s tube station is the lightest and biggest at the same, designed by architect Norman Foster who designed the defective millennium bridge that initially wobbled and was made to stand still for a price equivalent to 500 crore Indian rupees). In other words the ‘memory’ (churches), ‘current situation’ (contemporary abodes) and ‘hopes’ (futuristic ones) of the buildings co-exist and make it a point neither to reveal themselves to the public nor highlight the river that they engross.  

When the ‘visible form’ of a place doesn’t capture one’s attention, the second option would be to retain the feel of the dominant, homogenous item of the place—Thames, in case of the city and the dominant posters in the first hall of Takahashi’s exhibition. The drastic ‘shift in perception’ that one might undergo while walking through any narrow lane that has historic, contemporary and futuristic constructions adjacent to each other is another factor that gives the feel that the city is more dwarf than it actually is (6). The length (7) of the Thames is more obviously felt, because of this condensed feel (like say, two thousand years history squeezed into a few kilometers) of those dwellings around the river.  
 

(III) 

The ‘memory’ and ‘presence’ of the Thames is felt more than any kind of ‘actual image’ of that river. Even those ‘painted visuals’ by Turner and Monet, incidentally, but not coincidentally, capture the respective artists’ autobiographical mode of perceiving the river rather than a compact, “this-is-how-it-should-be-seen” picture of the river.  

One could not really remember even one tenth of the physical detail of the displayed objects by Takahashi. Making an aesthetic analysis of those that cannot be memorised is an embarrassing situation,for, there can be yet another counter-analysis awaiting, due to lack of human capacity to memorise them holistically (no doubt that this ‘holistic’ sense of grasping the ‘complete’ detail of an artwork, while perceiving it is a ‘construct’). The permutation and combination between objects and perception and between objects themselves was something that exceeded one’s grasping ability. With Takahashi’s show, one had to be satisfied with the headlines, for there was no difference between the headlines and the text. 

The categorization of objects into indoor and outdoor was a teaser to the conventional notion of indoor and outdoor sculptures. The outdoor objects, like those used in gardening, made the irony around them obvious, due to their display within the white cube! 

A condensed understanding of Thames, flowing all through the city, is a collection of two primary categories: (a) the memory of its past through drawings, engravings, paintings (Monet and Turner) necessarily promises a ‘visible angle’ to ‘view’ Thames for those who haven’t been there. (b) While facing it in reality, it is also a compulsive ‘something’, around which famous monuments are located. Similarly, Takahashi’s objects, at least some of them, are already ‘represented imageries’ in the form of post cards, letters and printed matters, re-listed and re-exhibited in a ‘re-interventional’ space. Takahashi’s objects-from-London is a self-ironic thing in this the sense. You realize that the objects, like Thames, evoke a memory even when the attention we pay to each of them is the shortest ever among art objects (for there are too many).  

The question here is whether this ‘act of remembering the loss of memory’ lives longer because it is a set of short-memories of innumerable objects in a network. The counter argument is that how can there be a memory of an object (and hence a set of objects) so briefly perceived?! In a final total recall of the show, the play cards pasted spaciously above the cluster of objects in the ground floor remain more intensely with the audience, with a tinge of ironic truth. We remember what are being ‘marginalized’ and not the main body of Takahashi’s object-network!  

(IV) 

The excess of objects in European domestic houses is due to an external circumstance that is unfriendly—be it the weather or the heterogeneous characteristics (due to Diaspora with people from different origin, living next to each other). It is the desire to possess something as a substitute for ‘people of their own kind’ who have stayed back at home.  

In a third world country objects are collected because they are foreign-made (a prestigious issue). It is the excitement of the unseen foreign, on a higher plane. The so-called orient used to possess the alien objects as a memory of a foreign experience, unfelt. On the contrary, the collections of the foreign, the West (example the collections at Victoria and Albert museum, London) includes a ‘short memory’ of what the West feels as a ‘homogenous foreign of the other’ (read it as non-European). The Indian section at V & A is a ‘memory’ of what the British think it to be a ‘homogenous indigenous memory’ (India, without much Diaspora from without, has more heterogeneous cultural character than, say, today’s immigrants’ England, but is still defined as ‘homogenous’ due to the Orientalist standpoint). 

According to the same Orientalist discourse, non-European objects are artifacts and fall into the Western category of ethnic fetishes. The difference in the range of excitement independently created by the Pre-modern and post-modern non-European objects should be the best mirror to reflect the political standpoint of, say, the Indian section at the V & A museum and absence of such geographic outline at the Tate Modern gallery. Interestingly even the Contemporary Post-Colonial cultural studies propose a case for ‘equality’ of the Orient, only as a marginal argument, courtesy the cultural departments of the Western universities (mainly in the US of A). This is an age where one can create and be choosy about his/her cultural memories. At the same, we are yet to comprehend the idea of considering the ‘authorless’ imageries as artworks. Rodin or/and Henry Moore is said to have danced around one of the Nataraja bronze—as the anecdote goes–after being highly influenced by its formal aspects. This could be an example for the absence of an imbibed, ‘culturally familiar memory’ that has led to this kind of performances. 
 

(V) 

Tomoko Takahashi, a Japanese diasporic artist, short listed for Turner prize in 2000, now settled in London, collected these innumerable objects very numbers are to be believed rather than count. It is a given memory, not a tested one. You can remember many of those but not most. You cannot attempt a formalistic understanding/review of it, without your memory being affected by the neighboring object even while that object lies within your memory frame. The sheer quantity bars you from a qualitative appreciation, more is more in the ‘number’ of the objects and less is the ‘range’ of the objects. The notion of museum-fatigue is engaged as a teaser here, wherein the viewer is swept off the floor, for there is not much space for him/her to step on, in the first place!  

Most objects in the London ‘one-pound-markets’ pledge to differ from each other, for they have deviant origins. Often woo-doo characters and a kind of xenophobia are alleged to them. Yinka Shonibare, short listed for Turner award, used the so-called African bright clothes, which incidentally comes from Dutch market via unknown routes. The memory construed by art objects (and hence experiences) originating from the London culture is ever ambiguous. 

Generally, the West obsessively collects objects, particularly in the cold season, when being confined indoors. Each child has unto 500 objects in its tiny collection, by the time it reaches 5 years in lonely countries like Finland where 16 people live per square mile as against, say, 3000 people in Bangalore, 100000 for the same given space in Mumbai. Perhaps the lack of population leads to the increase in the dummy representatives in the form of dolls. The dolls might substitute someone or something else. Yearning for the sun and people seems to be the basic instinct of humans. Those Europeans who had been to the east can be easily identified—they wear something that is borrowed, bought from the newly visited land, but something that doesn’t fit them! Indian cotton bags with Hindi letterings of ‘Hey Ram’ all over and other kurthas form ‘anomaly’ to their personalities. But the mesmeric compulsion to wear it, inspire, is due to the excitement of the new instead of abandoning it due to the shock of the new. 

On the other hand Tomoko’s objects stand out due to their mutual ‘spacing’, and ‘articulation’ rather than their ‘independent characters’. The objects were picked up from throughout London and given away on April 10^th (2005) to anyone who came to London. There was one thing common with the nationality of the objects and those who got them—they were just ‘untraceable’ because such a project would have been as difficult as an attempt to remember all of Tomoko’s objects at one grasp. 
 
 (VI) 

There exists a big list of political problems unique to the contemporary British. If immigration can be ranked second, the first one would be that of ‘cultural memory’. Unlike the Germans, the British are not too shy or hesitant to erase off their past. Neither is it a matter of urgency. Hence they still feel proud of their Victoria and Albert ‘cultural collection’ (of the orient in particular) which is, in fact, theiruncommonwealth!(8) They don’t even have a choice over that matter: regarding the stretch of the memory that those collections could evoke amongst those who initially belong to the land which produced them, and are now converted to the new-Britishers, due to Diaspora. On the other hand, they have no pure, ethnic British group as such in London to have a homogeneous feel of patriotism about their possession. V & A museum, that was a mark of imperial grandeur just a few decades ago, could become a matter of shameful documentation of the imperialistic ego in the near future. This is what I mean by the ‘problematic memory’ which they don’t know how to forget, alter, erase off or do anything with other than retain it as it is.  

A collage of all major London’s monuments, which in itself is a collection of shattered memory, is an outlook which is not equivalent to the sum total of its fragments. Takahashi’s objects represent this at the best. Though each one of the object—speaking with metaphorical exaggeration—can represent one London monument (from Sherlock Holmes’ imaginary house via Carl Marx’s grave to Sigmund Freud’s table), they perform a job so similar to the current British attitude: The embarrassment of incoherence brought out by the collage of London monuments is also the story of the contemporary situation of its imperial and colonial past.  

In other words, Takahashi’s objects (and the strange “relational aesthetics” built up or absented in between them) or the problem of interrelation between (Takahashi’s) objects, that exceed our perceptual angle of vision, is also a picturisation of the absence of the power in London’s monument-collage in forming a monument of a nation that was once “a land where Sun never set”. If all the countries from where the immigrants (speaking 120 languages on London Street, according to a survey in 2004) originate from were to become cricket-playing nations and if those nations were to play against England at various points, there would be hardly 1% crowd that would be supporting the nation that let them become part of England! The second of the two reasons for this would be that cricket is not that very popular here as much as football is.  
 

(VII) 

Either the London Britishers have given up the notion of a ‘monument-for-a-nation’ as Takahashi’s objects prove, or it is a weird city full of the ‘others’ more than the natives. Trafalgar Square, a monument to Nelson who defeated Napoleon has become a spot to bask in the rare sunlight, a sort of holiday spot. A very sincere Asian-African reason for this would be that it is the “cause and effect” phenomena at work, in the long history of British imperialism, which is erasing off its collective memory of any specific kind! 

The celebration of the ‘memory’ of a grand nation’s heartland, ‘occupied’ by those who were ‘occupied’ over the centuries by this nation, is, to say the least, a contradictory act. The silent mute spectator is the Thames. Yet a sensible tourist—since (s)he is a tourists—insist on a memento, not in the material form. Those are the very kind of people who insist on seeing the “Oil Work” at Saatchi, “Ambassadors” (by Holbein the Younger, Hans, 1497-1543) at National Gallery and Michael Landy’s dislodged and relocated “My Father’s House”(9) inside Tate Britain.  

Even when there are curated shows at Saatchi, even while being spiritually disconnected to any ongoing year-long (2005) shows like “The Triumph of Painting”, the liquid oil work filling up half of a room remains as a memoir than as an artwork. It has become an integral architectural part of Saatchi. The identity of an artwork has been transformed into a ‘visible memento’, just like the way the London monuments have been turned into supportive roles of the invisible landmark called as the Thames! It is to be seen, remembered, felt again and again (because the oil filled room is in contradiction to 7,600 objects of Takahashi. Oil work can be remembered clearly for another 7599 times).  

      Those who watch the “Ambassadors” are particular that they ‘see’ the skull in a proper angle so that the skull is seen as a skull and not a distorted anomaly. They don’t stand longer to watch the rest of the canvas and move away with a satisfaction, as if they have fulfilled a vow. London doesn’t have a true monument and the tourists desperately need one, to carry its ‘memory’ back home. The English want to shatter its ‘monumental construct’ while its visitors want to construe one out of it!! However visitors visiting a land filled with people from everywhere other than its own self—can they be called as ‘visitors’? Can the process of viewing a visual, visible culture, which is an amalgamation of every bit of all continents, be called as a ‘visit’? And would that kind of a memory be called as a recalled sovereign? Where to do they carry from and to where? The notion of a shattered empire doesn’t make a good memento/memoir/memory structure to be taken home, to be taken to a place that the shattered empire had earlier intervened. When the geographic belongingness and the cultural experience of a visual memory are separated (like the Oriental objects in V & A are and like Tomoko’s objects) what we get is not a monument but a landmark. London is the capital of a nation whose monuments encircle a landmark called the Thames. Michael Landy’s “My Father’s Home” was an ‘object’ dislodged piece by piece as a ‘landmark video’ which was reassembled inside Tate Britain as a ‘monument’! 

FOOT NOTES:  

(1) Most British television channels use St. Paul’s cathedral or Westminster Hall as the background for newsreaders. The tourist brochures make a ‘collage’ of major monuments like the London Eye, Westminster, Tower Bridge and a few others to ‘represent’ the city. Interestingly, London Bridge and Trafalgar Square are excluded from it, for, the former is too common place a bridge and the latter is too tall to be contained in a collage which is usually rectangular in its ‘representation format’. Too many monuments in a view refuse the ‘possible memory’ of a monolith imagery of a nation.  

(2) I would like to clarify that this sense of methodology of ‘memory-in-itself’ is an empirical derivative and might or might not be connected to its own definition in a clinical or psychiatric sense. I also believe that, due to the same reason, this derivative implies that the sense of memory ‘outside’ scientific methodologies gives rise to poetry (of visual kind, in this case) that science might not be able to comprehend. Science, that the art community is not so very much aware of, might not acknowledge the presence of the absence of a memory of a river that cannot be represented! On the other hand, as an analogue, the reader might attempt to imagine the amount of darkness felt in the statement, “..It is like searching for a non-existing black cat in the darkness, while being blindfolded” (from a popular Kannada idiom). 

(3) London is the heart of such tendencies. 120 languages spoken by people on the streets and no single linguistic/racial group (including the British) dominate the city. It could be one ideal city for a “no (wo)man’s land” where in a suburb like China Town, English is a second language, a few pure Tamil boards are displayed in front of the grocery shops, the Brits’ favorite food is a South Indian dish, already included in their lexicography (‘curry’). The number of words one is not supposed to mention is on the increase (Nigger, black, Chinaman, fcuk and the kind). The newspapers and maps specifically ‘mark’ the minority settlements within the city, for convenience. Yet it is ironic because all settlements fall into one or the other kind of minority, for the pure British are moving out of the city, according to a survey by the real estate agencies. ‘Minority’ and ‘majority’ are easily interchangeable words in London. Takahashi’s objects, originating from such a background, are bound to ‘render each other’ with an alien relationship as well as retain a fresh option to rebuild up another relationship.   

(4) I have St.Paul’s Cathedral, Tate Modern, London Tower and the Globe Theatre (where Shakespeare himself acted, in his own plays) in mind. They are situated on either side of–and at the very edge, almost few yards from—the Thames. The nature of the monuments is also one of the reasons as to why Thames becomes THE landmark despite the presence of the former kind, in excess. As an example, consider London Eye. It intends you to get ‘inside’ itself to show the ‘outside’ of itself—panoramic view of London. This contradicts with THE French/Paris monument: the Eiffel Tower, which in itself is the right place, to hide (away) from itself. Roland Barthes, in his “Mythologies and other Essays” says that Guy de Maupassant used to get inside the Tower to escape its own omnipresence.   

(5) At certain historical point, London Bridge was the only connection bridge between North and South (now there are a few dozens of them). Anti-social elements were heavily guarded from escaping from one to the other, a matter as serious as today’s illegal international border crossing that incidentally bothers UK in general, today.

(6) The width of the river, now ranging between 300 meters to 3 kilometers, is further narrowing down; and hence adds to its lack of an overwhelming physical presence to the tourists. This factor turns the river into a landmark of mental stream than a physical monument. For more factual account about the history of the river see: the book “Peopling the London” 1983, London Museum, Barbican Center, London. 

(7) In London, within a range of two kilometers, there exists the Roman walls of 1^st century AD (around the Barbican center), the medieval St. Paul’s Cathedral, the 15^th century Globe theatre and the most recent Mary’s Axe Swiss building, as recently as 2004. 

(8) If the Greeks are demanding their Elgin marbles, Indians are yet to even think about asking them. 

(9) Michael Land’s father was a mineworker, who met with an accident and was served dysfunctional for the rest of the lifetime, during and due to a certain Margaret Thatcher’s political policy. As a mark of protest, in a public display, Landy dislodged his father’s house part by part; video recorded it and reassembled the house ‘as-it-is’ in Tate Britain. The absurd daily routine of Landy’s mentally challenged father was video graphed and projected onto one of the walls of the house within a museum. My argument is that London’s monuments–dominated by their landmark (Thames) — are supported by the fact that most of them don’t have a ‘face’, if you look at them in the public media. They are squeezed by squeezed roads just in front of them (St.Paul’s cathedral), are old factories converted into themselves (Tate Modern), lack a decent open space that doesn’t go with their reputation as international museums (Victoria and Albert Museum). And when there exists a spacious road (Tower Bridge) or spacious rooms (London Eye) they serve as ‘containers’ from within which people ‘watch’ the others—they watch topography of London landscape. No single physical space, in the form of, say, a monument, dominates such landscapes (unlike Eiffel Tower) other than the Thames!///