ARTICLE–Urge to Locate an Intriguing Moment within a Theoretic Premise, or, Is It The Other Way Round?:
(Visual Collectives, ‘Others’ & their effect in Bangalore)
(published in the 29th issue of “Art & Deal”, Edited by Siddharth Tagore, New Delhi, 2009)
(I)
The Premise:
“…On the one hand, there is the pull towards discourse analysis. On the other, there is the need to attend to the material, social and economic factors within which any discourse is framed, and which, given the fraught nature of the postcolonial referent in the real world, always require urgent attention. To grasp the mutual inter-dependency and antagonism of these two pulls…..”
-– Ato Quayson*1 *
One of the most intriguing ‘moment’—in and around us, that many would have loved to term, no doubt a cliché, as: (a) ‘a notable moment in Indian art’, if they had wished to (which they did not wish to, for/from a couple of decades) and what, now, would be either termed as: (b) one of the ‘culminative trajectory’ or ‘moment of tangential referentiality’ of South East Asian contemporary visual discourse; or simply, (c) a Subaltern interventionalist moment, (owing to each one’s individual preference of a desired premise for discourse)–that yet cannot be detailed or ontologically performed, is available to us in the form of a dual-question:
(i) Why a bunch of fresh graduate students did (then) took to the so called new media? and more importantly,
(ii) Why and how did they come to position themselves away from the promise/premise of the ‘time-tested artistic practice of painterliness’-–in the earlier years of 1990s–to/in which they were academically initiated into, that too with haste?
Most of the contemporary artists identifying themselves with Bangalore as being from/based/settled here and practicing the non-conventional media–identify themselves less with the city and more with an attitude towards newer media.*2* Being diasporic is the very specific nature of Bangalore, perhaps the first Indian city to have acquired such a position, owing not only its multicultural setting but an deliberate endorsement of such a positioning.*3*
The shift in the nomenclature of the city and the artists ‘new mode’ of expression ‘coincide/correlate’ at a certain point: The shift in the art since 2000, that emerge in Bangalore, from the known to the newer, conventional to innovative, from cliché to avant garde, does not imply a Movement (with a capital ‘M’) that is drastic or, say, radical. Radical is an auspicious and ambitious (more so) simulated Marxist parameter, so much prevalent, by and large, amongst Indian visual art pedagogy. The claim in such cases is more than the achievement.*4*.
In other words, as pointed out by U.R. Ananthamurthy, the renowned Kannada thinker, the change in the name into Bengaluru was an act upon a non-existing issue! To be more specific, it was a ‘re-claim’ rather than an exclusive change. It was—the name Bengaluru–already always there! That’s how the city has been addressed, in the vernacular newspapers of Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Rajasthani, Hindu, since the day one!) and was a no-issue that was evoked as if it was a site of contestation.
Notion of Re-Claim:
The ‘moment’ we are trying to address might also share this point of not being something new but ‘an act of re-claim’: the shift from the conventional to the new media, was it a ‘reclaim’ rather than a call for ‘radical’ act, in the 1990s? Reclaim is to re-endorse something that is given as a tradition, with an alteration. Or, it could be a metamorphosis. It endorses a certain past, or a certain attitude of the past and avails it a re-life in the present and a promise of the future. Interestingly, most of these artists emerged from within the premise of the aura of K.G.Subramanyan’s notion of what it means to ‘reclaim’ a “Living Tradition”. Whereas the term and practice of ‘radical’, in the post-Marxist era, carries the tone of a relatively drastic refusal of the past, proposes that which is derived from within such refusal of the past, which in itself can be contested in the future, while based on its own logistics! Radical movements–that occurred before the emergence of an economic lure (as a product, of the arrival of the gallery system in the future!)—can it be credited from today’s point as a protest of an economic structure, in absentia? Perhaps the formulation of a community for this new media in Bangalore meandered through the radical, owing to a moderatist attitude—an aura—of this specific urban location. On the other hand, the lure of the excitement of an artistic revolutionary attitude might blind historicist positivism to a great length.
Hence the defined and received terminological ‘gap’ between their ‘moderatist’ attitude and the general expectation of ‘radical’ plays a major role in the formulation of a ‘loosely structured’ (note the irony) community of these artists–into the notion of the re-claim, in Bangalore–in the 1990s. Most of them who dealt with this paradox, now either associated with the residencies—as owners, initiators, in and around Bangalore or outside it refute the notion of in and out of the collectives.*5*
Interestingly most of these artists were either sculptors (ex: Umesh Maddanahalli, Suresh Kumar G, Ranjini Shettar, Shreenivas Prasad), painters (Prabhavathi Meppayil, Surekha, Sheela Gowda and the like), or printmakers. Some even continue to pursue those modes of expression, even now (N.S.Harsha, Painting). Interestingly, these three modes were the frames-of-pedagogic-expression, which were also an aspect popularly endorsed.
(II)
I am generally equating between the moment of initiations into the new media, within the pan-Indian situation in general and that of Bangalore in particular. This—the ‘decisive moment’ and its ambiguous beginning, in India and Bangalore—tends to share a common socio-political-economic background, but the differences in such commonality would be more pertinent. This is a dangerous premise—playing the so called ghost’s advocate–that I am venturing into: yet the Indian art economy, due to its undefined autonomous status (or due to the lack of an alternative, within the country) wishes to make a ‘fact’ out of that ‘belief’ that “Indian art as a totality of the deviant, different, unique unity of the regional specification of art is guided by such mono-logic economy”. This claim which in more than one way implies that ‘the sum total of the regional contribution is equal to pan-National art’ is a premise that remains vulnerable for various reasons: endorsing a global, flat, uniform parameter as well as mis-articulation of the regional, vernacular, subaltern and similar phraseological implications. This brings the question of the collectives in Bangalore as a problem of the, now by and large, pan-national writing on art in English. Observe the ‘double paradox’ herein: (i) either the collectives, communities and avant garde ventures of Bangalore becomes ‘a subordinate unit’ of the pan-Indian art or (ii) can claim autonomy on its own term (only) in the future—both can be done only when the institutionalization of Indian art occurs with due respect to the need of the provinces and the notion of elsewhere. By ‘elsewhere’ I mean the kind of authority and autonomies like that Pro-Helvetia, Indian Foundation for Arts, Khoj might hold/impose/expect upon residencies like BAR1, 1Shanthiroad, BACs.
When a bunch of art students, mostly from Bangalore, stayed/studied/interacted with the art situation at Baroda, Santiniketan, for a couple of years, returned back to where they hailed from, very few escaped the lure of the influence of the lack of economic support for artistic ventures.*6* Such biographical/autobiographical anecdotes/ventures might find alternative justification to what is prone to be branded as elitist preoccupation of theorization in the Indian context.*7*
With this in the background, it is pertinent to first reflect, then possibly avail a theoretic premise to the ‘artistic practice’*8* that were enacted in and around Bangalore, since 1990s in general and post-2000 in particular. The current essay, even as it was written down, took a twist in its approach as a reflection to certain opinions/comments/lamentations delivered by Dr. Shivji Panikker at the Maxmueller Bhavan, Bangalore on 19th June 2009. While trying to locate, connect and variedly position the Radical Group of Kerala Artists (popularly known and paraded as ‘Radical Group’), in a mood of lamentation, he delivered his observations, in the form of response to a set of questions regarding any possible genealogical or geo-political (or otherwise) comparison/connectivity between ‘Radical Group’ and the ‘art collectives’ that occurred in and around Bangalore from past two decades.
However, Shivji’s response, was “loud” (as he himself admitted several times), yet he did not mince his words. According to him the Bangalore Collectives seemed to be a sort of marriage-of-convenience, by and large, (‘loud’ though) on the grounds of its lack of a formal, programmed theoretical positioning or a manifesto of sorts. At least I presume it to be so.
While 1990s art in Bangalore was informal, testing and teasing the formal possibility of collective public art projects and projects, ardently sponsored and facilitated by NGOs like Vistaar, Ceads among others, these very projects not only became a testing ground for those desirous of of avant garde art, but also made them produce ‘the’ artworks that they are now duly endorsed for. They were the works which were the ones which as well re-claimed a theoretical/political premise of the gallery circuit, without discarding the latter on a totalitarian basis.
In other words, the sensible Bangalore artists, during their formulative period, were not assisted by the galleries; and now, the latter cannot afford nor comprehend the former’s notion of ideological clarity. Bangalore based galleries delivered a typical bourgeoisie support to these undecipherable network of activity, while their heart, soul and money was elsewhere—mostly within the mediocrity of painterliness, while refuses to die, even now. The good will by such galleries was also an admission of the guilt built within the urban/elitist-operation of the circulation of creative objects. The bourgeoisie preoccupation was to endorse to that to which they are basically skeptical about. They believed these artists in their late twenties and early thirties, believed in their relevance without perceiving as to how exactly those activities were loudly pitched against their own self, in the first place!*9*
Linguistic Rejuvenations:
These very artists–in the first decade of the twenty first century–now in their late thirties and early forties, initiated the artist residencies in an anti-radical, gradual manner, which, arguably correlates with a certain modus operandi that the city is so very well identified with, even in popular imaginations.*10* The ease with which the city owns and disowns, ultimately should be able to jeopardize the very notion of belonging to a particular fragment of a nation.
The specific, slow paced, almost contemplative elemental accumulation, forming and framing Bangalore-based collectives can be thus categorized:
This artists/art community does not consciously constitute any formal groups with any pronounced, specific ideological implications. The reason for this might be because it seems to be a privileged position to stick closer to those who are proximate to Marxist ideology and (which means) away from the elitist. However, my contestation is the endorsement within the art community/art criticism of a contestable populist dialectical presumption of left/Marxist v/s elitist. It is the dialectic nature of the discourse that I find problematic. The case of (a) linguistic re-claim of Bengaluru and (b) the pedagogic institutionalization of folk form, for instance, are two supportive facts that I claim for the advocacy of the thoroughness evident within the informal nature of the Bangalore collectives, which must not amount to lack of ideology. Prefacing ideological stand, via Dadaism, amounts to manifestation of sorts that goes against the attitude of the urban/city—for a non-conclusive one—serves to be defeatist. In this sense the uniqueness of the city art pledges that it has already been sidelined in the pan-national art discourse for what it is actually relevant and can gift a new dimension to national/nationalist art historical investigation, or fall apart “on the grounds of its lack of a formal, programmed theoretical positioning or a manifesto of sorts”.
(III)
Thinking about Bangalore art since last two decades, the way Bangalore art public began treating objects underwent a drastic, yet ironic, change:
The ‘magical moment’ when Indian artists vis-à-vis Bangalore artists drifted from the familiar to the un-essentialised premise, media-wise, for creative expression, begs for a word to properly describe them. Observe that the words are intimately related to specific experience that the city was subject to, either as an independent unit or as part of a larger ‘nationalist’ unity: move (like those diasporic people coming into the city), shift (in jobs: from the middle class expectation of one’s child becoming Engineers, Doctors to working in ITs and BTs and the re-claim of government jobs post recession period), change (in the dress code: specifically with the feminine gender, from within the educational institutional premise—thanks to the first right wing power in South India, in Bangalore—whose personal willful expression was subject to moral policing by the authority and power), metamorphose (diplomatic democratic word: India, after Babri Masjid incident, could no more hold on to status/image as a non-offensive, metaphysical country (thanks to Coomaraswamy’s standpoint, regarding this). Instead there was a second crack in the fragile wall wherein people of deviant religions were already becoming ghetto-ised. Shivajinagar (Muslims), Srirampuram (Tamil migrants) and the likes within Bangalore hold on good as examples for this metamorphosis. The first crack was in 1984, that doesn’t exclude the Sikhs, after which a certain national ‘humor’ was crudely contested: compatible (close to Darwinian terminology—this is how art is supposed to ‘progress’ chronologically: a dear term for the evolutionist academics. In the case of Bangalore, all that was contemporaneous within the institutions were either by chance or by eliticism. The actual evolution of art actually happened outside the institutions, in art communities—which imply that institutions do not evolve communities by choice; but communities are accidentally evolved versions of art schools, like those IT-derived compatible programmes, that can be upgraded from the earlier version. It is a term popularized by advertising the hardwares and softwares in the city), gear up (as if India was waiting in the sidewings, and is now prepared to face the world, as did China, for Biennales, international Documentas and the like). None of these terms: move, shift, change, metamorphose, compatible, evolve, gear up can capture—but are the closest possible terms availed to us, to describe– the ‘modification’ that the artist (mostly) in their 30s went through within their creative parameters, from 1990s onwards, in general and after 2000 in particular.
Thus these very artists, now in their 40s, problematised art terms, hindering lexicographic devices, specifically in English language. In other words, what they did was not a mere ‘change’ (for want of terms and terminologies) in terms (pun intended, for lack of cultural terminologies) of what they might have thought of as an ‘internal shift’ within their chosen field.
Working between the Institution, Public & the Conceptual:
The artworks created in the 1990s and the art that happened since 2000, mutually deviate in their attitude, in concern within a core theme: the Bangalore city. In the first phase, the agenda was a double-address of the city: as a geographical premises that ‘contained’, connected and convinced the kind of art that emerged from within. At the same, the city itself offered itself to be thematically addressed. This dual-addressal multiplies and intensifies since 2000, but with a drastic change: the city’s geography was no more, mere physical within that creative addressal. There were so many who came from unknown destinations and so many who went to unfamiliar places, as a result of which the city was rendered fictious: It did not belong to, cater to any farmable, definable conceptual premise. Convincingly speaking, it was a catalyst, a facilitating ambiguous space, whose identity, and the very notion of identity was constantly altered.
The variety of works which represent the overall essence of the Bangalore collectives, can be categorically represented here by three different artists: Rahel Hagneur, the Swiss-based artist photographed, digitalized, articulated and literally initiated a dialogue around the issue of uprooted tree trunks and the arrival of flyovers to this green city. The project gave a virtual, science-fiction ‘appearance’ to it, thus generating problematics of art historical relevance to the lamentation of a changing city, the result of having treated it always in a nationalist-subordination mode.
Ifa, another Swiss artist, made photographs of the city, and used them as three dimensional building-blocks to construe a module of the city, as a colourful building, yet again propagating a possible fetish and temporality evident within the appearance and museumisation of the city. It was a commentary upon the authoritarian rules and regulations that have been circulated ambiguously due to the power-structure’s inevitable helplessness of the larger-Bangalore, for which the power-structure itself was not designed to meet up with, in the first place. It is a question of scale: the authority was not the appropriate measure unit for this particular city, and neither is it prepared to accept its drawback. This finds a strange similarity with the gap between the vanishing local response/critique of the art that emerged herein. The vernacular critique was too small a measure to measure the pan-national art that occurred herein, thus facilitating critics like Shivji to size it down to a preconceived parameter, grafted from elsewhere.
Nanaiah’s “Blue Plus Yellow is not Green” was a simple green poster with the words in title, in capital (Capital’s letters, as well), being pasted all over the city, with an attempt to divide a public image off its essence. Yet there is the provocation of more promise for a better display, without a fulfilling product. As a result, through his work, the public visual display is nevertheless ignored, as a patch on the wall. It made one wonder about itself, and about themselves, for, the subject (say, voter) had forgotten as to the possibility of the existence of images without a propagated, promotional, consumerist massage. The city, the urban alone provokes such visuals. In fact, when the artist had failed to acquire the necessary permission from the corporation authority to display the ‘un-categorisable’ poster, he was fined in the court and the artist ignored/refused to bank upon the stretch to which an art work-city relation could expand.
(IV)
A city, perhaps for the first time in Indian history, (if ‘national’ historicisation is worth a prescription) has yielded—to that it could not resist–not only to the population outburst, loss of greenery, corruption but also to those who wanted to include it, as a thematic personification into their art, as a result of which their art, in turn, metamorphosed (I am using this term due to the lack of an alternative terminology). Even the linguistic problematic to term the city-art connectivity itself, beyond the already used art historical terminologies, was the city’s gift. The very nature of the city held the deviant art crowd’s creation: the urban imposed some of its moderatist attitude on to the art that was created within, endorsed by its own self. And this exactly is the reason for what ‘loud’ thinkers think is the lack of radical approach. What is presumed to be a drawback, lacunae happens to be the strength of the city-based art. The overall introductory remarks of the city and the emergence of new media work in Bangalore/India could be thus summed up into formulations of sorts.
Theoretic Premise:
The art collectives and initiatives of Bangalore can be summarized as follows:
(i) There was a para or meta-radical experience brought into the aesthetics and politics of art object of Bangalore, owing to the ‘reallocation’ of the ‘comfort’ of the institutionalized space through art collectives. Unlike the radicals, these collectives—due to the way they operate(d)—occupy that ‘negotiative premise’ between the pedagogic institutions, institutionalized artistic spaces and even those that which were framed to contest the ‘heroic narratives’. As a result, the operation of the community often resembles that which it contests and complements, simultaneously.
(ii) The ‘moderatist nature’ of the socio-politics of the city—resulting mainly from its verbal language—is reflected upon in the acts and works produced by the collectives. Interestingly the inside and outside of the collective is often indifferentiable, due to the co-existence of artistic acts and works on equal terms. Volunteers and core-members do exchange their multiple roles, beyond that of facilitators.
(iii) The binding and enveloping of the city in the framing of the collective’s outlook (an alternative term for, say, ideologue) delineates the necessity for pan-national identification (or even the coverage of ‘South Asian art’). Instead, it ‘identifies’ itself with the inevitable Diaspora—a typical character of Bangalore.
(iv) The ‘reallocation’ and ‘re-claim’ made the Bangalore-object (and its objective) more ‘compatible’.
(v) This negotiative re-definition was pitched against the grain of theorizing-apparatus which was ambitiously elitist, owing to its linguistic biases and hierarchy, initiated by the predominant Indian English.
(vi) Certain insularity was contained, as an anti, non, meta-radicalism, thus confronting the monopolized definition of theory-practice praxis in a subaltern mode of moderatism.
(vii) Altogether, the art collectives of Bangalore created a meta-radical negotiative apparatus that changed/altered the artist-production-reception circuit and hence the objectivity of art objects. This itself claims for a ‘revisionist perception’ of the notion of theorization, by intervening into the linguistic politics of art historicisation. This was brought about by a certain insularity pitched against heroic narratives, calling for an alterity and autonomy (to certain extent) of the subaltern.///
Footnote:
*1* Ato Quayson, Page.6, Introduction to “Postcolonialism: Theory, Practice or Process?”, published by Polity Press, UK, 2000)
*2* For a brief introduction to the relation between Bangalore as a ‘site’ and ‘content’ and to the art of 1990s urban culture, read: – “Trends, Motifs and Affinities in the Contemporary Art of Karnataka”, Ed: Amit Mukhopadhyay, Central Lalitkala Contemporary, Issue 46, New Delhi, 2000 and “Self, Presence, Ethics and Values in/of Art: Case Study of Two Works towards Defining the Notion of ‘Public Art’ both by H.A.Anil Kumar (the articles are also accessible at www.anilkumarha.com & http://www.artanddealmagazine.com/issue24/essay3.php)
*3* “Akkada (Telugu), yennada (Tamil), beech mey (Hindi) little (English) Kannada (Canarese)” is the famous statement–amongst intellectual–that out rightly positions the city’s attitudinal relation to the language of its own, in its self. (Also see: footnote *7*)
*4* Art collectives in India were basically a rural phenomena, in the absence of a conscious cultural migration to the urban (Santiniketan, Cholamandalam). However, the economic-political structuring of the deliberations of creativity has inevitably and even irreversibly shifted it to being an urban, privileged preoccupation. Though we speak so much about collectives, we are yet to come to terms with the outline and structure of the very informal notion of these collectives.
*5* Swiss artist Rahel Hegnauer’s project of production/display of the over-life-size digitally articulated imageries of the photographs of uprooted trees (to make space for flyovers) of the city was possible due to the interlocking of two different residencies and a few environmental-conscious social scientists. She was an artist-in-residence at BAR1 (Bangalore Art Residency One) while the display and dialogue occurred at 1Shanthiroad. Yellappa Reddy, the popular environmentalist used the exhibition space tangentially connect the factual problems with ideologies to greenery. (See: http://www/rahelhegnauer.ch/ch/treetrunks/de/project & www.1shanthiroad.com)
*6* Johnny M.L read my note at Ramkinker Baij symposium at Santiniketan somewhat as follows: that the lack of economy availed a creative renewal amongst Bangalore-based (settled/belonging/hailing from) artists. His exact words are: “the ‘radicalism’ of the artists came out of economic factors. Hence, there was a mushrooming of art Povera works… (at Bangalore)”
(http://www.artconcerns.net/2007March1/html/shanthinikethanDiary.htm).
*7* The network of art that spread from the rural (read it for instance as Dharwad) to urban (Bangalore) to the capital (Delhi) always is dually positioned: the art circuit of Bangalore seemed urban/elitist to Dharwadites while Delhi, in certain ways, seemed privileged to Bangaloreans till the controlling agencies of art (like the academies, galleries, museums and archives) were recently exposed and their autonomy were re-negotiated, owing to the revived economic opportunities via international curated shows, artist residencies and the like. Kancha Ilaiah is so much a confirmist regarding the publication of such biographical details in the introduction of his “Why I am not a Hindu” book. The origin of the study field of folk art/literature and ballads for instance, is densely based on such anonymously and biographically derived narratives. Herein biographic and autobiographic narratives mainly in the neo-alternative economy driven glossy catalogs, teased at by being inaccessible—it lacks readability. International shows and residencies silently articulated academic theorization of sorts. Even when these artists and their works were subject to theoretic premise, it was to ‘reach out’ wider rather than ‘probe in’ deeper. Kannada folk literature, for instance, finds such a justification to its pedagogic existence as a counterfeit—though distantly–due to the way A.K.Ramanujan, Girish Karnad and Chandrashekara Kambar inculcated the notion of folk (arguably, variably) with Bangalore’s pedagogy. This aspect finds repercussions with the equation of the urban; and its interwoven relation to the new media artists who emerged from within/via/due to such an urban positioning.
*8* A brief history of the way art ‘collectives’ emerged in and around Bangalore, (i) first: as an informal collective in the 1990s, through NGOs; and then (ii) in the first decade of the new century, as a collective networking of a chain of semi-formal residencies: (BAR1 (www.bar1.net), No.1, Shanthiroad (www.no1shanthiroad.com), Bangalore Art Council, Samuha (www.samuha.net), in the first decade of the current century. For an overview of the modernity of visual arts in Karnataka, Read the lead essays in www.anilkumarha.com, (also see: note 2).
*9* Refer to my article in note *2* for an overview and for the possibility of the city—as against a ‘white cube’—yielding itself to be a part, subject and the location of contemporaneous artistic addressal). The same article is also available at www.anilkumarha.com
*10* “Swalpa Adjust Maadi” is that slogan that represents the city’s mood, meaning ‘to adjust a bit’. The once sleepy city adjusted itself to: (i) one of the largest migration into any Indian city, (ii) the lack of infrastructure due to such migration; (iii) the unusual shift of economic-concentration from education to call centers and IT sectors—which, as some argue, is a shift from homogeneity to heterogeneous attitude, which erased the idea of a graph-of-progress (iv) Generally it is an attitude that can half-humorously be called as the middle-path proposed by Buddha, resembling Gandhism, that abhors any extremism. It implies that it is at least other-half-serious. (v) Also, the one casual way in which an artist who wanted to belong to this city had to do was to just make a wish and he was in. On the contrary, the city also has artists, with a different linguistic-geo-political background, who have been staying in the city, but yet fell off as, (and more importantly have been treated as)—outsiders to the contemporaneous happening of the city. This is a city which considers an outsider as its own, in a day, and can discard someone staying for long, as an alien, if he/she wishes to remain as such. (Also see: note *3*) ///