tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47688016014176559212024-03-13T09:02:08.847+05:30The Possibility of Being karishmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14364881284639959244noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4768801601417655921.post-76454770553655004842013-11-06T23:34:00.002+05:302013-11-08T20:11:23.659+05:30Digital Idealism and Feminism <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v14vbUTP-5o/UnqEV40APPI/AAAAAAAABmc/HaKPAUrDywM/s1600/last-feminism.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #999999;"><img border="0" height="178" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v14vbUTP-5o/UnqEV40APPI/AAAAAAAABmc/HaKPAUrDywM/s400/last-feminism.png" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;"> <span style="background-color: #444444;"> <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">To understand the
directions digital feminism one needs to first understand the relationship
between patriarchy and capitalism. Capitalism,
in order to go to the next level of neo-liberal colonization of the world at a
globalised scale, began to spreads culture of doing what we want whenever we
want without thinking about the network of influences those actions have. With
the globalization of consumption, it was important to create an alienated
relationship between the consumer and the source. It was important to create an
atmosphere where you can consume endless amounts of electricity without caring
about the human, ecological damage this hyper consumption causes. When this “I
have the right to do what I want" commonsense afflicted feminism, it lost
its ability to provide an alterna(ra)tive to patriarchy. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #999999; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">What we see in contemporary feminism is a divorce from the
traditional partnership with leftist and other critiques of capitalism. Thus we
see generations of liberated women numbed or unaffected by struggles of class
and cast. Feminist ideas that once formed part of a radical worldview are
increasingly expressed in individualist terms. To the extent that they
fail to recognize the different way some women experience sexism <i>and</i> racism,
sexism and casteism or sexism <i>and</i> economic exploitation, or
sexism <i>and </i>homophobia, and post colonial concerns. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #999999; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">The cosmopolitan liberal utopia can only be kept alive through
our participation in this game of “I can do what I want”. Feminism needs to
re-contest the notion of ethics if we want to have build alternative societies,
not mirror and further existing power structures. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #999999; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"> Thus as levels of gender based violence remain the same (maybe more mass destructive), as comparative wages across all sectors continue to be low, as key decision making choices still stay in the control of men,and the patriarchal family system largely remains unchanged. Somehow there is a celebration of women's liberation. The right to labour, and the right to consume have managed to give an illusion of choice-a culture that says you can buy what you want, 'do' what you want but it will take extreme rebellion or good fortune to not be the handmaidens of patriarchy. </span></div>
Rahul Bhattacharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14701833018286711697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4768801601417655921.post-24574632471087596232013-08-14T15:54:00.002+05:302013-08-14T15:54:42.872+05:30 concept for for 'The Impossibility of Being'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sDrdjZj7kr8/UgtWwCsiwaI/AAAAAAAABe8/cocV1zhgeGg/s1600/FLOOR+PLAN-GALLERY+Exhibit+320.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sDrdjZj7kr8/UgtWwCsiwaI/AAAAAAAABe8/cocV1zhgeGg/s640/FLOOR+PLAN-GALLERY+Exhibit+320.jpg" width="301" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Floor plan of Exhibit 320 at the time me sharing my initial concept note with artists</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">The exhibition concept note that we find for The <a href="http://theposssibilityofbeing.blogspot.in/2013/07/exhibition-note.html" target="_blank">Possibility of Being</a> (<a href="http://theposssibilityofbeing.blogspot.in/2013/07/exhibition-note.html">http://theposssibilityofbeing.blogspot.in/2013/07/exhibition-note.html</a>)</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">, is something that has come up after studio visits, seeing work...discussing with artists getting feedback from everyone and thinking...trying to simplify yet keep the core values intact....feel the need to share the first note i share with my the artists......that time the show was conceived as the Impossibility of Being </span></span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></span><div style="text-align: left;">
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">Concept note :</span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">> The Impossibility of Being</span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"> The Impossibility of Being is dedicated to (re) exploring linkages between the narrative, the social and Painting as we come to the end of an era which was (is being) called Contemporary. As i try to imagine post neoliberal, post contemporary worlds, curatorially i feel the need to revisit the linkages between the narrative, the social and Painting, in collaboration with a group of artists who have given narrative figurative story telling the feel of myth making through inventions and reworkings of the iconic. As the neo liberal was defined and celebrated as the era of new media and the ‘futuristic’ , this exhibition also becomes a project in cultural archaeology or ritual nostalgia. Slowly there is a growing recognition that painting practices continue to hold important contributing agency in shaping new cultural directions. These new directions in taste and cultural archaeological position disturbs the ‘meaning’ of ‘new media’ by placing old media as an vanguard act. That is why the impossibility of being.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"> The Impossibility of Being is (also) proposed as a post digital re visiting of Geeta Kapur's 'Place for People' exhibition and looks at paintings of personal and social histories. However, the idea of the narrative itself has changed over this period of time. The age of digital aesthetics (one can trace a Global mainstream dominance of it from 1995-2005 and in India till about 2011), resulted in the idea of the narrative itself being cleaned and cosmopotianised. This shift from the 'bazar to the mall' shifted our understandings of the local, personal and the political. Capturing these shifts imply trading not only on the medium specificity of a post-conceptual re-visitation of Modernism (the ‘language of the mark, gesture and surface’), but that it should be equally receptive to (and in dialogue with ) motifs taken from contemporary culture and older narrative traditions of image-making.The narrative today is post iconic and post digital (when Geeta Kapur did Place for People the narrative was post abstract and post gestural). Thus, The Impossibility of Being also becomes a collaboration with artists whose studio practice has shown both a resistance to the dominance of the digital and the iconic.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">What separates myths from legends is that myths are more layered and complex. That is why this show is not pitched at the level of ‘urban or contemporary legends’. To be a myth maker, the love for layering has to go beyond the content and have to enter the domain of the the ‘form’. As we look for a post digital aesthetics in this digital world, the analogue’s celebration of labour, gives us an ability to develop a critique of the ‘clean’, cosmopolitan golabism. Post digital aesthetics can only work when dichotomies between concept and craft are not forgotten, but transgressed. This understanding of art making where concept, medium , craftsmanship,and time inform the artistic process.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">The zones between the possible and the impossible are also called upon because there is also personal engagement with the subaltern, and deep contributions in opening our thoughts to new sub alterities. The ‘icon’ and myth making become instruments of this position. Art has an ability to deeply personalize history and future, taking them into the domains of memory and fantasy. Both memory and fantasy have been important tools of subaltern history. The Impossibility of Being is informed by this engagement with subalternity, memory, fantasy; along with the iconic, narrative.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"> This is not a new trend we are looking at. Through the heights of the dominance of digital aesthetics in global taste, there have been artists who have worked within zones that transgress labour, concept and skill. Especially right now it becomes important to bring together a show of work that has taken place in the studio over the last one-two years.</span></div>
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Rahul Bhattacharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14701833018286711697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4768801601417655921.post-20038144048485209942013-08-07T03:52:00.003+05:302013-08-07T04:04:34.052+05:30thinking through the digital -early notes <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<li><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">Why does the digital have such deep relationships with globalization and neo liberal cosmopolitanism terms?- we know that the digital technological revolution layered the technological back bone of globalization; but the linkages i am dwelling on are beyond 'technological' or economic. For example, globalization flattens the world (at least promises to), making it a level field of information exchange (and potentially knowledge production) - the digital camera does not capture 'depth of field', creating a trend of 'flat photography'-what fissures does this metaphoric coincidences open up?</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">Steel and glass, have become the markers of globalization and neo liberal architecture. they characteristically create architecture which has an 'anywhere in the world feeling'...Helsinki, Gurgaon ..anywhere. Optically steel and glass mimic the flatness of the digital camera...in other words...steel and glass architecture is most often uni planer in its design conceptualization. </span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">if digital is not just technology and if it also has aesthetic implications...then what can be digital ethics?</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">is the notion of digital ethics encoded within <a href="http://paranoidbull.com/2009/04/digital-idealism/" target="_blank">digital idealism</a>?</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: large;">the change from a metropolitan city to a cosmopolitan city, is often a change in which labour is made invisible and marginalized. does it have metaphorical parallels in the</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postdigital" style="font-size: x-large;" target="_blank"> invisibility of the brush stroke, the glitch. </a><span style="font-size: large;"> (and is it strange that the core of digital aesthetic discourse can be found in </span></span><span dir="auto" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large; line-height: 1.2em;"><i>Idealism, a </i></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large; line-height: 19.1875px;"> studio album by German </span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">electronic music<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"> duo </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitalism_(band)" style="background-image: none; line-height: 19.1875px; text-decoration: none;" title="Digitalism (band)">Digitalism</a></span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">At the height of the contemporary boom, paintings began to mimic digital prints</span></li>
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Rahul Bhattacharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14701833018286711697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4768801601417655921.post-3394614470316651922013-08-06T03:06:00.001+05:302013-10-21T15:27:33.999+05:30untitled 1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-riL38fpMFDI/UgAYsKywSzI/AAAAAAAAABY/3lxYd96Id1U/s1600/_KK14351.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-riL38fpMFDI/UgAYsKywSzI/AAAAAAAAABY/3lxYd96Id1U/s320/_KK14351.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: 13.0pt;">As a practitioner it has been more than obvious to me that the
judgments passed on painting are too hasty and probably more a result of the
rush in the market to follow what appeared for the moment to be trendier. Some confusion is created trying
to navigate the post modern because people appear to associate post modernism with
new media rather than the related and i feel, quite significant concepts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: 13.0pt;">As an abstract artist and an anthropologist the post modern attitude could not have come at a better time for me. i have been
constructing mixed media abstracts for many years. instead of paint,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>i use materials like
cement, fabric, nails, rope, urdu text and i find a political statement in the
very choice of my material. I try to complicate and layer this further through well thought out
processes like burning, writing , cutting or binding which act like signs. Though my ideas are politically infused, i try to make careful attempts to
develop the abstract language i am using, even as i seem to favour the informal. My work glides across media like relief paintings, installations, drawing, poetry, sound works ...now and then i find
myself visualizing video poems.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: 13.0pt;">Obviously, for us artists, technology has merely opened new pathways to express ourselves but its of little relevance how trendy or new the medium
might be. our preferences are based more on who we are, the subject, access, the idea, the
emotion or a combination of all these. my point is that there never should have
been any doubt about the possibility of being, it is not the medium but the logic behind the
underlying artistic choices and how path breaking they are and of course the
nature of our convictions that will ultimately shift boundaries in both art and
thought. </span><br />
<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: 13.0pt;">That is the way of the untitled.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://www.sabahasan.com/"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: 13.0pt;">www.sabahasan.com</span></a></h3>
<o:p></o:p></div>
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saba hasanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901522973149882658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4768801601417655921.post-63678039210632981742013-08-05T11:16:00.000+05:302013-08-06T22:51:39.717+05:30Troubles Getting Past the Post<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">Rahul’s rejoinder <a href="http://theposssibilityofbeing.blogspot.in/2013/08/what-is-post-in-post-contemporary.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">“what is the 'post' in postcontemporary”</a> raises interesting questions about language, how we use it, and
the importance of defining terms. I am
the first to admit I am a stickler for terminology as I think words have the
ability to shape consciousness and thus we should exercise caution in all
instances of application. In keeping
with Rahul’s mention of Kwame Anthony Appiah’s 1991 article I would like to
throw Anne McClintock’s 1992 article “The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the
Term "Post-Colonialism" into the mix.<a href="file:///C:/Users/kl/Desktop/psot.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
These articles resonate with our current discussion because the both deal with
issues of language at the moment in which post-colonial <i>theory</i> was being domesticated in the academy by the larger more
general designation of post <i>colonialism. </i> At this critical juncture, McClintock makes an
interesting observation about the omnipresence of the prefix ‘post.’ She opines, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">I
am doubly interested in the term, since the almost ritualistic ubiquity of
"post-" words in current culture (post-colonialism, post-modernism,
post-structuralism, post-cold war, post-marxism, post-apartheid, post-Soviet,
post-Ford, post-feminism, post-national, post-historic, even post-contemporary)
signals, I believe, a widespread, epochal crisis in the idea of linear,
historical “progress.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/kl/Desktop/psot.docx#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[2]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">To be sure my
use of McClintock here is strategic as it enables me to put a finer, more
historical point on my postmodern caveat in “I Feel So Far From Where I am.” Her veritable laundry list of ‘post’ words suggest
that even as early as 1992 the term ‘post’ was slippery. While post-colonial, post-cold war, post-marxism(lower
case m), post-apartheid, post-soviet, and post-Ford, without a doubt, mark
historic shifts in time and a break with the past -- post-modernism, post
feminism, post national, post historical and arguably post-contemporary mark a <i>reconfiguration</i> of the present. It is my contention that these latter words do
not signal a paradigm shift so much as a critical re-evaluation and, as such,
the word ‘post’ is a misnomer. Rahul
observes in his exhibition note, “[A]mong the many developments that mark the
term contemporary has been the dominating focus on content that prioritize
socially and politically charged subject matters over stylistic experimentation
and investigations over Form and Language” and if I understand correctly, the ‘post’
in post- contemporary (or perhaps more specifically post-contemporary art) signals
a return to stylistic experimentation and seeks to reclaim the social and
political possibilities of form and language.
So then, does artistic form and practice become more deliberately and
self-consciously analogical? But what of
language? Should our language not
parallel the practice? Do we have to
remain strapped to the post? Can we come
up with a new term, or is such a suggestion completely untenable?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></div>
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<br />
<div>
<!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br clear="all" />
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<div id="edn1">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/kl/Desktop/psot.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a> “Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in
Postcolonial?” <i>Critical Inquiry</i>, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Winter, 1991), 336-357.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/kl/Desktop/psot.docx#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[2]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a> “The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls
of the Term "Post-Colonialism" <i>Social
Text</i>, No. 31/32, Third World and Post-Colonial Issues (1992), 84.</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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kathleen wymahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10956547434090090665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4768801601417655921.post-13469668184067250552013-08-04T18:55:00.000+05:302013-08-04T19:20:38.863+05:30The Art of Not Making<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Mi0_QStJoOg/Uf5VTh5CrBI/AAAAAAAAABo/3FpK9sscUZY/s1600/220px-Duchamp_Fountaine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Mi0_QStJoOg/Uf5VTh5CrBI/AAAAAAAAABo/3FpK9sscUZY/s200/220px-Duchamp_Fountaine.jpg" width="179" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-IN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;"><i>As it may be relevant to this discussion, I am re-posting this review of the book </i><b>The Art of Not Making</b><i>, which first appeared in Art & Deal magazine.</i> </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-IN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;"><br /></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: large;">In 1917 an unknown artist named "R. Mutt" exhibited a
perfectly ordinary porcelain urinal at the exhibition of the Society of
Independent Artists in New York City. The actual person who lay behind this act
of aesthetic sabotage was of course Marcel Duchamp. Through his radically
clever mind he managed to transform an object as vulgar as a urinal into not
only a memorable sculpture, but probably the most analysed and written about
object in contemporary art history. Duchamp had simply placed a store-bought
urinal upon a pedestal and titled it <i>Fountain</i>. In doing so he
demonstrated that art became art simply by the artist declaring it to be.
Duchamp also argued that it was the placement of an object within a relevant
context that caused it to be raised from mundane existence to that intellectual
pinnacle reserved for art. For Duchamp, the primacy of art lay in the realm of
ideas, and whether or not art was the result of laborious work or instantaneous
inspiration was immaterial. The social, aesthetic, and cultural ramifications
of Duchamp's "creation" of <i>Fountain</i> are still very much with
us today. There are few things more sacrosanct in the world of contemporary art
than the premise that idea is superior to craft. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: large;">Of course ideas (concepts) have always been at the heart of art. The
written histories of both Western and Eastern art revolve around how particular
works of art represent the spiritual, cultural, scientific, or social concerns
of their times. Idea has been paramount, though it is interesting to note that
much of the art we admire in history books was actually the manifestation of
ideas formed not by the artist, but by the artist's patron(s). Thus,
Michelangelo worked within the confines of The House of Medici and the Catholic
Church of Rome, and the humanistic values that many find in his art cannot be
divorced from the overriding need of the artist to illustrate his patrons'
ideas. Michelangelo, after all, created such things as the Sistine Chapel on
commission, and his concepts were in large part bound to accepted versions of
Biblical themes that he was paid to illustrate. His famous sculpture of David
was a received commission from the Florentine Guild of Wool which made a clear
directive that the sculpture was to be of the Biblical David and represent
Florentine freedom. Nearly all of Michelangelo's work was contracted and given
initial conceptualization by his patrons. Similarly, in the East, the
miniaturists of the Persian and Moghul courts were bound to various dictates of
Islam, inherited cultural norms, and the whims, commissions and decrees of
princes and caliphs. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: large;">It is sobering to remember that throughout much of the world's history
the artist was not thought of as an independent thinker, much less a visionary.
Artists were judged "good" or "bad" largely upon their use
of finely-tooled craftsmanship to bring into being the concepts of their
patrons. As such, even the most respected artists were seldom given a status
above that of master craftsman. True, many such artist-craftsmen managed to
brilliantly improvise within the parameters of their patronage. But it was not
until much later, with the demise of feudalism, the evolution of freer markets,
and a growing emphasis on individualism, that artists came to be seen as independent
thinkers, visionaries, messengers of truth, and innovators that question
established orders within a liberated social-aesthetic space. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: large;">It is good to remember these things when delving into the new Thames and
Hudson book,<b> </b><i>The Art of Not Making</i>: the New Artist/Artisan
Relationship (written by Michael Petry and released just last January.) Though
this book has seen little attention to date, it is perhaps the most potentially
subversive book dealing with contemporary art this year. <i>The Art of Not
Making</i> is in fact a sort of "coming out" by artists of all
stripes. On one level the book works as a mass-confessional, boldly addressing
an issue that the art world has muttered about for years but seldom addressed
in public: the fact that scores upon scores of contemporary artists do not make
their own work. Author Michel Petry, himself an artist, is to be given credit
for pursuing a very touchy subject with sincerity, candour, and a great deal of
fairness and grace. The artists featured in the book also deserve credit for
their honest admissions and cooperative interviews. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: large;">Petry, of course, begins his discourse with the mandatory reference to
Duchamp. It is then pointed out that artists throughout the ages have employed
other artists as assistants. There is a particularly memorable anecdote of a
patron rejecting a painting he had commissioned from the Venetian artist
Bellini as it was thought to have been painted primarily, if not totally, by
the artist's assistants. But <i>The Art of Not Making</i> quickly catapults into
the present. Michael Petry does as most of us involved in today's art world
do...rather all-too-quickly accepting what has become a somewhat unquestionable
premise: that the artist is primarily a conceptualizer whose true work is first
and foremost in his or her head. The actualization of conceptualized artworks
thus becomes a rather mundane, even routine encounter with craft. Contemporary
acceptance of this premise stems straight from the provocation of Duchamp's
famous urinal and the eventual integration of Duchamp's philosophy into the
mindset of the cultural elite.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: large;"><i>The Art of Not Making</i> is filled with quotes that
perfectly illustrate the prevailing acceptance of Duchamp's declarations. The
Canadian artist Micah Lexier, speaking about his wall installation of 20,000
custom minted coins for the Bank of Montreal, sums up his use of craftsmen by
saying, "I always have gotten other people to make things. I have an
active mind, but haven't always been so good at making things, so I'd get
something made, or printed, by someone else. It was a response to the skills,
or lack of skills that I have." Similarly, the Egyptian-born artist Ghada
Amer states,"I get involved in the craft aspect of the work but, rather
than getting bogged down in making things, I prefer to look for new ideas and
resolve new problems. So although I'm not a conceptualist, I like to teach
other people to do the work for me; even my paintings are done with
assistants". It is interesting to note in this quote that Amer claims
"I'm not a conceptualist" while at the same time confessing that she
does not like "getting bogged down in making things". One is left
wondering just what it is that she does.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: large;">To be fair, most all of the artists interviewed in <i>The Art of Not
Making</i> seem diligent and committed to their work. Some express a deep love
for working with the various artisans they employ. The African-American artist
Fred Wilson, talking about collaborations with glass artisans from the Berengo
Studio in Murano, Italy, states that, "When someone else makes your work,
who they are goes into it as well. If they are connected to it, the fabricator
can develop a wonderful relationship with the artist....Each person brings a
different talent and aspect to it. It can take you in another direction."
Another American artist, Fred Tomaselli, while talking about working with hired
Chinese tapestry weavers, states: "I have never differentiated between the
realms of art and craft. As an artist I am very hands on; everything done by
me, by hand, with only one assistant, so jobbing out to another person whom I
never met and working in another country gave me some pause. But it's
interesting to have the forms articulated by such great craftspeople."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: large;">But there are also voices within the book that sound disconnected and
even downright arrogant. One example is the Italian Maurizio Cattelan, who,
while speaking about his conceptual installation of a replica of the iconic
HOLLYWOOD sign on the hills above Palermo declares: "The idea that the
artist manipulates materials is not something that I agree with. I don't
design. I don't paint. I don't sculpt. I absolutely never touch my works."
It bears repeating: "I absolutely never touch my works." One wonders
why this is spoken with such a degree of pride. One can accept an artist's
desire to exist within the realm of pure ideation...but why the seemingly
disdainful allusion to the process of craft?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: large;">And then, in other artists, there are the unavoidable implications of
exploitation. Jochem Hendricks, a German artist with a reputation for probing
complex moral and ethical issues, is represented in the book by "6,128,374
Grains of Sand", an artwork which is just that: 6,128,374 grains of sand
enclosed in a glass egg. Petry states: "The only way to verify the count is
to crack the egg and destroy the work of art,"...certainly an interesting
enough concept. But Petry goes on to explain that the artist "paid
assistants (often illegal immigrants in Germany) to count the grains of
sand". Moral questions indeed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: large;">Subodh Gupta is, I think, the only Indian represented in the book. It is
a pleasure to find him discussed as just one more among a host of international
art stars (rather than being segregated and categorized as an "Indian
Artist"). Gupta joins the conceptual choir in stating, "I transform.
My job as an artist is to think, to conceive the ideas." And then rather
surprisingly (at least to me) he adds: "My art is made up for me by expert
artisans all over the world: the thali works were made in America." Of
course my surprise stems from having thought his thali works were made by
Indian artisans, not American.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: large;">Perhaps the most disturbing moments in the book are not the many quotes
and interviews with the artists, but rather, the voices of the craftspeople. It
is discomforting to read how seemingly content they have become in their roles
as "makers" for the "conceptualizers". One such
"maker", London-based Anthony Harris, when asked about the question
of authorship replies, "When does an architect build the building? When
does a composer play an orchestra? ....It doesn't matter who made it. Do you
like it, will you buy it, how much do you want to pay for it? That's it. The
creative process is complete: idea, object, sale!"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: large;">As a whole, <i>The Art of Not Making </i>becomes
a fascinating book that conjures more questions than it answers. But we are
left to return to the realization that once upon a time it was craft that was
valued more than idea. Ideas were left primarily to the powerful patrons who
commissioned the work. In that sense, have the new generation of "office
artists" (as I like to call them) who "absolutely never touch"
their work, become the new patrons of talented and unsung artist-craftsmen who
have entered into a newly subservient social position? Have the office artists
who spend their days conceptualizing, networking, and marketing, in fact become
non-artist businesspeople who work as defacto agent-advisors to craftsmen? Is
it the "craftspeople"... who have spent too much time learning the
technique of their art to be able to effectively conceptualize and promote
it...who are, in the old-fashioned sense of the term, artists? Who is advisor,
who is agent, and who is artist? I do not ask these questions with any mean-spiritedness,
as I myself have become, at least partially, an office artist who works with
studio artists and craftsmen to fabricate my ideas. But to avoid these
questions is perilous...not only for artists and craftsmen as individuals, but
to the integrity of the art community as a whole.</span></div>
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waswo x waswohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00086790905136560081noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4768801601417655921.post-56702017350426156902013-08-03T14:54:00.000+05:302013-08-03T15:04:06.649+05:30what is the 'post' in post contemporary<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: georgia, serif; line-height: 18.984375px;"> </span><span style="line-height: 18.984375px;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">"Contemporary art is no unworldly discipline nestled away in some remote ivory tower. On the contrary, it is squarely placed in the neoliberal thick of things. We cannot dissociate the hype around contemporary art from the shock policies used to defibrillate slowing economies. Such hype embodies the affective dimension of global economies tied to ponzi schemes, credit addiction, and bygone bull markets. Contemporary art is a brand name without a brand, ready to be slapped onto almost anything, a quick face-lift touting the new creative imperative for places in need of an extreme makeover, the suspense of gambling combined with the stern pleasures of upper-class boarding school education, a licensed playground for a world confused and collapsed by dizzying deregulation. If contemporary art is the answer, the question is: How can capitalism be made more beautiful?"</span></span></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Hito Steyerl, </span></span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.e-flux.com/journal/politics-of-art-contemporary-art-and-the-transition-to-post-democracy/">Politics of Art: Contemporary Art and the Transition to Post-Democracy</a></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://theposssibilityofbeing.blogspot.in/2013/08/i-feel-so-far-from-where-i-am-by.html" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: #444444;"> </span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #cccccc;">K<span itemprop="name" style="line-height: 20px;">athleen Yma's post</span></span></a><span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: #444444;"><a href="http://theposssibilityofbeing.blogspot.in/2013/08/i-feel-so-far-from-where-i-am-by.html" target="_blank"> '</a></span><span style="line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #444444;"><a href="http://theposssibilityofbeing.blogspot.in/2013/08/i-feel-so-far-from-where-i-am-by.html" target="_blank">It is worth noting here'</a> that I use the designation of “postmodern” with skepticism and suspicion as I remain personally and academically unconvinced that we are presently residing in an era in which the issues of the modern have been successfully resolved." That left me wondering that when i have used 'post contemporary' in the exhibition concept note, did i use it in the context of a complete break? Of course i did not, especially since i completly agree with </span></span><span style="background-color: #444444; line-height: 20px;"> K</span><span class="fn" itemprop="author" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" style="background-color: #444444;"><span itemprop="name"><a class="g-profile" data-gapiattached="true" data-gapiscan="true" data-onload="true" href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/10956547434090090665" id="___hovercard_0" rel="author" style="line-height: 20px;" title="author profile">athleen</a><span style="line-height: 20px;"> that we are not living in a era in which "the issues of the modern have been successfully resolved" . However, the truth is that i have never understood the post in post modernism to signify a complete break or a resolution. The existence of the word 'post' could never do away with the weight of the word 'modernism' within the same word.(One would also want to refer to</span><a href="http://www.academia.edu/2995157/Is_the_Post-_in_Postmodernism_the_Post-_in_Postcolonial" style="line-height: 20px;" target="_blank">'</a></span></span></span></span><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><span style="background-color: #444444; cursor: default; line-height: 26px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.academia.edu/2995157/Is_the_Post-_in_Postmodernism_the_Post-_in_Postcolonial" target="_blank">Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial</a>'.) </span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #cccccc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">So what is the 'post in 'post contemporary'? For me the contemporary period in art was the time of from when the neo liberal was emergent to the point in which the neo liberal was dominant. (<a href="http://www.public.asu.edu/~kheenan/courses/101/fall00/101analysis.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The concepts of dominant, residual, and emergent are drawn from Raymond Williams. These concepts can give us a framework for understanding the complex and dynamic ways in which a culture operates as it continuously attempts to maintain stability and balance in the face of ever-changing views</a>...). With the neo liberal being challenged the dominance of of the cosmopolitian, globalized world view that informed the flat, sleekness of 'contemporary' world view, together with the great faith in the internet is being questioned, together with the questioning of consumerism and the economic growth model; has opened doors for a questioning of the '<a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ProductList.php?viewby=series&id=42&pagenum=7&sort=newest" target="_blank">contemporary</a>'. </span><br />
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Rahul Bhattacharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14701833018286711697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4768801601417655921.post-13042475778785469352013-08-01T19:03:00.000+05:302013-08-03T14:56:34.047+05:30I Feel So Far From Where I Am <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">I found Rahul Bhattacharya's post <a href="http://theposssibilityofbeing.blogspot.in/2013/07/the-visibility-of-labour-in-post.html" target="_blank">"Analogue: The Possibilities of Resistance"</a> very compelling and thought provoking. It
is a given that issues of labour have always been politically problematic—both within
and without the art world. Now-a-days it
seems that we no longer directly speak of labour, but rather, we cloak it in
the rhetoric of time. By this I mean that
we often do not measure work in terms of the intensity of effort but rather in
terms of duration. I find this curious
because time is an abstract concept and physical effort is decidedly concrete
and palpable. I was trying to figure out
when this happened – when was it we began to deny the physicality of labour and
favour the abstract supra-mundane world of the ticking clock? Perhaps it is this sound that is the noise of
which Rahul speaks in the above mentioned post. We
have grown so accustomed to the measured tempo of our labour that we scarcely
notice what it is that we are actually doing.
We are entranced and perform like automatons fulfilling small tasks in a
world that has seductively reconfigured Taylorism as a way of being. How did we get here – is there a way out? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">In
1776, Adam Smith notes if labour is divided or segmented the subsequent output
(and profit) increases. To illustrate this
he uses the example of a pin-maker. A
solitary pin-maker, according to Smith, must go through many steps to produce a
single straight pin: straighten the wire, sharpen one end and apply a small
button on the other, etc.etc. As a
solitary task, the pin-maker can produce no more than 20 pins per day; yet, if this
action is divided into 18 discrete tasks, completed by 18 different people then
the productivity increases. However, when the consumer looks at the pin in the shop there is no implicit residue of the labour required to create
the pins. There is no way to determine
whether the pin was made by one or by many.<a href="file:///C:/Users/kl/Desktop/As%20our%20taste%20became%20increasing%20fascinated%20flat%20polished%20surfaces.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a> The labouring bodies of those who painstakingly
pieced together the humble pin are put under erasure. </span></h2>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">So
if we extrapolate out from Smith’s (now somewhat antediluvian and utopic)
treatise on the possibilities of particularized labour and apply it
to the world of artistic production
are we not faced with the same issue?
Labour is not implicit in artistic practice. It is often difficult to apprehend the amount
of labour required to produce a work of art.
Without a doubt the introduction of digital media into artistic practice
has muddied the already opaque waters. To
be sure, the artist is the proprietor of the idea but the labour involved in
the <i>execution </i>of the idea is often parceled out to others who have the
technological know-how and access to the necessary equipment. I see no issue with this practice as it is a
logical outcome of the medium in the same way that the artist who paints no
longer grinds and produces his/her pigments but instead goes to the shop to buy
ready-made paints. However, what is lacking
is the sufficient means by which to theorize and understand the relationship between
labour and art and what it means in the postmodern world.<a href="file:///C:/Users/kl/Desktop/As%20our%20taste%20became%20increasing%20fascinated%20flat%20polished%20surfaces.docx#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[2]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a> It seems that we have come full circle back
to Smith’s example of the pin-maker – there is no way to tell whether one or
many made a given work of art. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: large;">Without
a doubt, the labour of the contemporary artist is entangled on so many levels
but it seems to me that it always has been.
At least since the ateliers of the Renaissance or the Mughal courts,
artistic production has often been the result of particularized labour. I remain skeptical that a return to the tried
and true analogue methods of artistic practice is the means by which to create
a space of resistance, although the proposal is, in itself, quite radical. I think the problem resides not at the level
of practice but, as I said earlier, at the level of theory. The artist need not change methods or mediums, rather we need to change our thinking. We need to radicalize our understanding
in order to create the mental spaces of resistance. These spaces will lead to conversation and our
conversations will lead to greater awareness and greater awareness will lead to
real social change. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/kl/Desktop/As%20our%20taste%20became%20increasing%20fascinated%20flat%20polished%20surfaces.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Adam Smith, <i>An
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations</i>, 1776 (University
Park: Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series Publication,
2005), 11-12. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/kl/Desktop/As%20our%20taste%20became%20increasing%20fascinated%20flat%20polished%20surfaces.docx#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> It is worth noting here that I
use the designation of “postmodern” with
skepticism and suspicion as I remain personally and academically unconvinced
that we are presently residing in an era in which the issues of the modern have
been successfully resolved.</span><o:p></o:p><br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">*</span><a href="http://theposssibilityofbeing.blogspot.in/2013/07/the-visibility-of-labour-in-post.html">http://theposssibilityofbeing.blogspot.in/2013/07/the-visibility-of-labour-in-post.html</a></div>
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kathleen wymahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10956547434090090665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4768801601417655921.post-89333178694942898412013-07-31T15:41:00.001+05:302013-08-01T13:41:27.439+05:30Amidst the noise and racket about struggle<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.artmalavika.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow" style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: x-large;" target="_blank">Malavika Rajnarayan</a><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">'<span style="color: #eeeeee;">s Guest Post</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: large;">In the course of a
casual conversation the question arose as to why it is often musicians, theatre
artists and writers who are more easily noticed, or are in the news in relation
to political content in their work. One of the most obvious reasons that
initially occurred to me was the location of the art-work/ performance and
thereby its accessibility, or the lack of it. Reading, listening and watching
(though, mostly moving images) have all taken higher preference over looking at
a picture book, for instance.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: large;">Artists choose
different modes to present their work, which then determines its potential to be
received, read and perceived. All through history, there have been communities,
guilds, ateliers, groups, collectives and collaborations that have served
artists significantly by bringing together similar minds to voice their
political concerns through individual and shared spaces of thought and
delivery. These have invariably set the context and tempered the pulse of
reasoning, questioning, dissent, political critique and activism in both overt
and subtle ways. While it may be a generalised assumption that more obvious
activist genres like street-theatre and public performances by artists/
political activists do tend to draw larger and wider viewership, the attention
span of the audience does not seem to sustain itself for longer periods of
time, despite the increased access to information and media. To examine
further, the disparity in viewership across different sections of society and
varying geographical and cultural territories often diffuses the impact of
sharp political critique in visual art.
Ironically, sensational videos and visuals presented as factual/
illusionary documents, providing little or no scope for sensitive but objective
contemplation, tend to hog more attention than the poignancy of subtle
evocation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: large;">A majority of the
population is deficient in visual art education; the huge lack of awareness
about the potential of visual art has resulted in an inability to include it
extensively within spaces of political, social, popular or even casual
discourse. It is equally a matter of concern that a country that boasts of
millennia of cultural diversity, with art traditions that have evolved over
generations of personal and collective endeavour, is now facing a time when we
haven't the political will or enthusiasm to even preserve objects and artifacts
from our ancestral heritage, let alone carry the art forward. Institutions for
conservation are few and museums often house more neglect than care, but for a
few exceptions. The culture of visiting art galleries and museums is limited to
a very tiny percentage of people, which is often inclusive of the community of
artists.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: large;">The other point that
occurs to my mind is that of art-making and the dialogue an artist has with
oneself, in the process of formulating and using a personalised language. The core
of one's politics- whether it stems from the personal or it extends to the
larger social ambit- contributes to shaping language and expanding its tropes
as philosophies evolve. It is an endless process of regeneration, of refinement
and an effort to optimise articulation. The artist is consistently engaged in
tweaking the language, just a little more at every stage, in the hope of
presenting their ideas with greater clarity and resonance.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: large;">Patua painters and
Kantha embroidery artists used the space of their art for critical commentaries
of their contemporary social and political mechanisms. Subjects ranging from
domestive violence to political scandals were woven into the narratives they
painted and embroidered. And yet, we would find it hard today, to imagine
visuals of their art go viral on social media as did the news of Pussy Riot's
controversial performance of protest in a Russian church in 2012, and the
subsequent arrest of its band members. Does this expose an overall
desensitization towards the nuances of dissent? Or is it in the nature of
performance to capture an audience more effectively? Or is it only when the establishment recognises dissent and chooses to censor creative expression that the rest of the world takes notice. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-size: large;">I am compelled to think of
an oblique but relevant analogy of transistor radios of yesteryears. Listening
to any programme required a good deal of auditory sensitivity and motor skills
in fine-tuning the bandwidth's reception to its precise frequency for achieving
maximum clarity. It didn't end there though,
because the transmission would sometimes
fluctuate; it required us to be
constantly alert lest we miss a second of the broadcast... to noise.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="font-size: large;">- <a href="http://www.artmalavika.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">MalavikaRajnarayan</a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Rahul Bhattacharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14701833018286711697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4768801601417655921.post-75754365973412001262013-07-28T14:51:00.000+05:302013-07-28T23:45:53.145+05:30Analogue; possibilities of resistance <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #f2f2f2; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large; line-height: 115%; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #F2F2F2; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=95000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: background1; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 242;">As our taste became increasing fascinated flat polished
surfaces, the cosmopolitan flatness of glass and
steel; labor and the local became the biggest casualties. The
politics of digital aesthetics was such that 'contemporary' visual culture
witnessed an absolute marginalization of local and labour (paralled
by the dominance of global and mechanical) . Within the conventional
Contemporary Indian Art production, the emphasis on manual/physical labour
comes became a kind of noise, a disturbance which allegedly took away value the
digital/conceptual art itself. This type of art which has come to dictate the
art market for a long time emerged simultaneously with the global capitalism
which swept the world two decades ago. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f2f2f2; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large; line-height: 115%; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #F2F2F2; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=95000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: background1; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 242;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: left;">Labour was sought to be omitted from the art and a clean, sterile,
sophisticated, digitised practice which only projected the concept was
developed. It is to the extent that the old media art practices refer to and
embody forms of temporality, knowledge and subjectivity, which do not easily
enter the concept of abstract labour of new media.</span></div>
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f2f2f2; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large; line-height: 115%; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #F2F2F2; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: lumm=95000; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: background1; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 242;">Contemporary art’s investment in labour, analogue* and old media
assumes various forms and it is symptomatic of changes in the economy rather
than expressive of a broader left consciousness in the arts. In other words,
the rise of labour as a sign-reference in recent art does not amount to a
political project, even if it indicates a departure from the staples of
postmodernism and, in some quarters, the desire to provide an alternative to
capitalist economic relations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;">*please note, in this post and for our our show analouge is not technology, it
is used in terms of taste and aesthetics. </span></div>
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Rahul Bhattacharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14701833018286711697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4768801601417655921.post-79993615636664971482013-07-18T18:37:00.000+05:302013-07-28T22:01:56.144+05:30Excuse me,<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">Excuse me,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">Is it hand-painted ? What is the edition number ?</span></div>
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<i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">Pictured: Hand-painted 20/rs note cards from the Udaipur tourist bazaar featuring camel (love/sex), horse (power) and elephant (luck). Andy Warhol serigraphs and reproductions (signed and unsigned) found offered for sale via the Web. </span></i></div>
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waswo x waswohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00086790905136560081noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4768801601417655921.post-50149131180531102062013-07-17T19:23:00.000+05:302013-08-01T23:38:01.908+05:30The Most Incredible Rise of Blitzvin of Batanrush<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OzAt2nQK1u0/T4cO5PIptsI/AAAAAAAABXo/265ib35UO3k/s1600/Amit%2BBiswas%2B1%2Bblog.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5730565427330397890" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OzAt2nQK1u0/T4cO5PIptsI/AAAAAAAABXo/265ib35UO3k/s320/Amit%2BBiswas%2B1%2Bblog.jpg" style="display: block; height: 320px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 314px;" /></a> </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">Story by <span style="font-weight: bold;">Waswo X. Waswo</span> with illustrations by <span style="font-weight: bold;">Amit Biswas</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">Blitzvin
had been interested in art since her childhood. When young, she had
whiled away hours drawing her native town of Batanrush...its little
houses with smokestacks and its aging, half-dead trees. She hadn't been
the greatest of drawers, but she persisted. Blitzvin was not
particularly good in school; in fact, Blitzvin was not particularly good
at anything. She lagged in science and math, but her teachers
encouraged her with art. It was, after all, one of the few things the
poor girl was mildly proficient at.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">It
took all of Blitzvin's talents of persuasion to convince her aging
mother (a widow on a pension) to send her away to Bolthank
Semi-Accredited University (BSU) in the nearby town of Bolthank. Indeed,
it took a bit of crying, a long talk to her mother by her 10th Standard
teacher Miss Batsvin, and Blitzvin's solemn promise to do her best to
make something out of her fascination with art. "Mother, if nothing else
I will come home with a degree that is easy to get. Do you think I can
do any better? Maybe a degree in art from BSU will allow me to one day
become a window decorator at the Bolthank Mega-Mall. Think of how proud
you will be!" Her mother had eventually relented and young Blitzvin
eagerly packed her bags for the big town of Bolthank.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">At
Bolthank Semi-Accredited University the eager young Blitzvin discovered
a new world. The Department of Applied and Imaginative Arts was
amazingly free thinking. Waves of new ideas rushed into her like the
crisp cool air of the Bolthank breeze. Blitzvin soon discovered a love
for art history. She actually began to read one or two books (she had
never before read books that had not been assigned), and one day she
woke up for the very first time with a dream of becoming a real artist.
Being an artist was no longer just an escape from the rigours of school
trigonometry, physics, and calculus. Being an artist, the young girl
suddenly realized, was a sort of divine calling. She, the humble young
girl from Batanrush, knew she must heed that call.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Blitzvin
applied all of her energy to learning the history of art.
Unfortunately, her own skills did not match the craftsmanship evident in
the works of the "old masters" that she was now coming to know through
books. She worked harder and harder at perfecting her skills of
observation, composition, and draughtsmanship, but it just didn't seem
she had the innate ability. One day when Blitzvin was particularly
depressed about this fact she noticed the ever-so-handsome Blivner
Bochner, an Advanced Student, looking over her shoulder. Blitzvin was
mortified that he was seeing her unfinished sketches! But Blivner just
smiled and put his hand upon her shoulder. "Why do you work so hard at
these sketches Blitzvin?" he had asked. "Do you really think you will
learn to work like the old masters? Even our teachers cannot work like
that. Don't you know what you are doing is completely unnecessary? It is
your ideas that count! Concentrate on your ideas! That is all that is
important!"</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Just
a year later, when Blitzvin entered the Advanced Class, she realized
how true these words were. To her surprise the students in her class
were quite dismissive of what she felt were her best drawings and
paintings. "That work is purely illustrative!" one had declared.
Another, a smart young girl from the cosmopolitan town of Noychnya, had
added, "You are just a craftsman! This is not art! Art must have ideas!"
Thankfully, the handsome Blivner Bochner, who was by now an unofficial
assistant to Professor Blatskya, came to her rescue. He grabbed what
Blitzvin thought was one of her worst drawings. It was a drawing that
was coffee-stained, and crumpled and torn because she had almost thrown
it away! But handsome Blivner held it aloft for the rest of the class to
see. "Look at this work!" Blivner Bochner had declared. "It tells a
story of anguish and heartbreak! Look how shaky and imprecise is the
line! This work speaks of frailty and nervousness in the face of great
tragedy. The tragedy of small-town Blotsvia!" Blitzvin had blushed with
embarrassment, but she also realized her classmates were cooing with
approval. "Yes," chimed in the cosmopolitan girl from Noychnya, "That is
her best work. Perhaps this girl from Batanrush will yet become an
artist!"</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">As
the months proceeded in the Advanced Class at BSU young Blitzvin
learned so very much. She learned that art was concept and not skill,
idea and not work. Students who insisted on trying to paint like the old
masters she once had so diligently studied were derided as derivative,
nostalgic, and obsessed with "mere craft". For her Examination
Exhibition Blitzvin carefully selected the simplest of her drawings, and
the least worked of her paintings. She concocted elaborate stories
about their meanings. She not only passed her final exam, she won a
prize! She graduated with pride.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">It
was at this time that a letter arrived from Blivner Bochner. He had
graduated the year before, and now worked as
Assistant-to-the-Chief-Assistant at the Government Hall of Prestigious
Exhibitions in Noychnya. To Blitzvin's delight the handsome young
Blivner remembered her! In his letter he explained that he had a
"certain relationship" with the Honourable Director of the GHPE, and
that it was within his power to secure her an exhibition at this
venerable Blotsvian institution! Poor Blitzvin shook with delight and
fear! She wiped a tear from her eye. Such opportunities came to few!</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">But
what to show?! She hadn't enough work, and still had lingering doubts
over her own abilities. Then she remembered her photography! She had
rolls and rolls of film, taken with an old Blotsvian MegaFlex camera!
Blitzvin knew photography was becoming a rage in Blotsvian art circles.
She dashed off with a handful of film to the local processing lab and
handed over five rolls. "Blow them up as big as you can!" she had
ordered. She was disappointed to learn that the biggest the local lab
could print was 70 x 100 Blotsvian Inches. But it would have to do.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">When
the colour photographs were delivered to her door a few days later she
eagerly went through them one by one. She carefully discarded those
images that looked too pretty. She had learnt by now that an artist
needed to always avoid the beautiful. "These twenty will be just right",
she thought, "There is nothing illustrative or pretty about a one of
them!" Blitzvin carefully packed the selected photographs and sent them
off via courier to Noychnya. She spent the next few days writing a
lengthy "artist statement" explaining the depth and layers of meaning in
her selected work. Reading all of those art history books and
contemporary art journals was proving helpful after all!</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">But
something happened, as something always does, especially in a place
like Blotsvia. Blitzvin had made the mistake of labelling her parcel
HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE and FRAGILE ART ENCLOSED. It was, of course,
intercepted by the Provincial Inter-Provincial Customs Authority (PIPCA)
at the border of the Province of Noychnya. It was late during the night
shift when the officiating customs regulator opened the parcel. The
word ART had caught his attention, and he dreamed of finding a
magnificent oil painting with which he could adorn his home. "Lost in
Transit" was always such a convenient explanation! In fact he had a
rubber stamp that said just that! But to his dismay he had found
Blitzvin's profoundly unbeautiful photographs.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">That
night the men at the PIPCA of Noychnya made the most rude and
uneducated remarks about poor Blitzvin's art! They handled the
photographs with complete disrespect, grimacing with disbelief at how
dull and lifeless they were, and wrinkling their noses as they asked
each other, "This is what someone calls ART"? As the night wore on the
officers of PIPCA (and their subordinates and sub-subordinates) passed
more and more good Blotsvian Blanko Blanko beer around, swilled good
Blotsvian Fermented Bleacheno, and made more and more fun of Blitzvin's
fuzzy photographs. The more they drank the more amusing they found her
"art". They were by now carelessly throwing the pictures upon the floor,
and peons came by who threw them into dustbins. It was not until late
the next morning that the PIPCA officers sobered up and felt some
remorse. A few of the more dutiful men thought to uncrumple the now
totally destroyed photographs. "Let us pack them again and send them on
their way," suggested one of the sub-subordinates. "No real harm done,"
offered another. When Blivner Bochner opened Blitzvin's parcel the
following afternoon, in the prestigious secondary offices of the
Government Hall of Prestigious Exhibitions (GHPE), he let out a little
gasp and shuddered with disbelief.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">The
opening was of course a gala affair, as only Noychyna knows how to give
gala affairs. Glasses tickled with the best Blotsvian Chenko Chenko
that Blotsvian Bulliwarks can buy. Raw Blotsvian Botuui Fish was served
on dainty skewers. Everyone waited for the entrance of the amazing young
artist from Batanrush. Poor Blitzvin entered this scene with no
knowledge of what had befallen her works in the office of the PIPCA of
Noychnya! When she entered the grand exhibition hall of the GHPE she
stood momentarily aghast. Her works were displayed in ruins! Yes, they
had been properly mounted under glass, but it was obvious that they had
been destroyed! The photographs were bent, torn, fingerprinted,
coffee-stained, and dribbled with what looked like the gravy of
Blotsvian Beanoguk! A scream of horror and outrage was about to escape
her lips when Madame Vlitinknya, Noychyna's most esteemed art critic,
swept up to her side and made a gracious bow. "Your works are superb! I
have never seen an artist so question the sterile 'factuality' of
photography! I know exactly what concerns you and you have addressed the
problem with aplomb! You have mixed the mere image of mundane existence
with the gritty reality of mundane existence! You have captured life as
we suffer it in Blotsvia! My hearty congratulations my dear!"</span></span></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7-fosWf-rtk/T4cPMu_XlOI/AAAAAAAABX0/8ZpC3kS9-Tg/s1600/Amit%2BBiswas%2B2%2Bblog.jpg"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5730565762298909922" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7-fosWf-rtk/T4cPMu_XlOI/AAAAAAAABX0/8ZpC3kS9-Tg/s320/Amit%2BBiswas%2B2%2Bblog.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 305px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 320px;" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">As
Blitzvin was recuperating from both her initial shock, and the
effulgent praise from Noychnya's most respected critic, the handsome
Blivner Blochner strode up smiling confidently. "I knew you had
talent...but I never expected that first crumpled drawing I saw of yours
was the beginning of your style! I am being credited with discovering
you my dear! I have been promoted from Assistant-to-the-Chief-Assistant
to Assistant-in-Chief," and then he muttered in confidence, "I think I
am on my way to the top!"</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">It
was only three months later that Blitzvin was being scheduled for a
solo exhibition at the Galleries Blitin & Blotin in the capital
city of Blotzinkin. Little was it known that one of the proprietors of
Blitin & Blotin was in fact Madame Vlitinkya's half-sister
Mildred. Madame Vlitinkya and Mildred Blotin worked in tandem, so
exhibitions at the Galleries Blitin & Blotin were guaranteed
good reviews. Before the proposed exhibition (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blitzvin: New Work</i>)
the two women had sequestered Blitzvin and given her council. "We want
canvases! Your photographs went over just fine at the GHPE in Noychyna,
but did you sell any? This is Blotzinkin, the very capital of Blotsvia!
The collectors will demand canvases!"</span></span></span></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">"But
I don't know how to paint! At least not well!" protested the stunned
young Blitzvin. "People will see that I have no skill!"</span></span></span></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">"Nonsense!"
Blotin and Vlitinkya had replied. "We will have someone paint them for
you! Blotsvian craftsmen are very cheap! Just give us some more of
those precious and inspired photographs, and we will have them painted
on canvas for you! You are a genius my dear! Real artists are too busy
conceptualizing to paint their own canvases! Everyone knows that!
Well...not everyone." The two gave each other a wink and a laugh. They
were obviously referring to Blitin, who was wealthy enough to be a
partner in the gallery, but took little actual interest in its
day-to-day routine (his main function was to buy a work from each and
every show "Blitin & Blotin" mounted, thus securing the first
"sale"). Bliztvin was confused, but did not want to disappoint. She knew
she was on the way to becoming a real artist! Her mother would be
proud! A day later she returned with the prints derived from five more
rolls of MegaFlex film.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Three
months later twenty large canvases were delivered to her doorstep (the
gallery had provided her with a small studio space in a
not-so-fashionable part of town). She unrolled the glossy new paintings,
signed them, and then set about crumbling them, tearing them, pouring
Blanko Blanko beers upon them, burning them with cigarettes, and, new in
her repertoire, smearing tomato sauce in a few strategic areas.
"There," she said to herself, "They are finished! And my work really is
superb! It really is! After all, these were my ideas! My vision! And it
is I who have made them come into physical form!" Unbeknownst to dear
Blitzvin, the advocates at Galleries Blitin & Blotin were kept
constantly busy threatening the "makers" (as they termed the mere
craftsmen) to uphold the secrecy and non-disclosure clauses in their
contracts.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">It
was not long after Blitzvin's sold-out Blitin & Blotin show
that her career accelerated with breakneck speed. The location of the
gallery in Blotsvia's capital city ensured a steady stream of foreign
visitors. Assorted international collectors, official dignitaries,
ambassadors and cultural attaches were frequent guests, as were curators
from prestigious international museums. The rising young art star of
Blotsvia, always snobbishly referred to as just "Bliztvin" (as if anyone
ought to know that name) or "Blitzvin of Batanrush" (for those deemed
less cognisant), was beginning to exhibit worldwide. And the graph of
her auction sales was zooming off the charts. In fact, the pressures of
the many scheduled shows were so great poor Blitzvin was finding it hard
to keep up. It seemed that each and every gallery expected new work. It
seemed that each and every gallery expected both something "new" but
also something identifiable with her "brand" (she liked to think it a
style!). In spite of the addition of umpteen new assistants, Blitzvin
slaved for hours in her studio (which was actually much more like an
office), making Skype calls to curators, writing ever more convoluted
artist statements, drinking Chinko Chinko straight from the bottle as
she smoked good Blotsvian cigarettes...and struggling to keep up with
the hard work of "ideation" as she now haughtily referred to her primary
talent.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Blitzvin
was no longer the innocent young girl from Batanrush. She had become a
sensation, and she relished it. The day she bumped into Blivner Bochner,
at an opening in the Galleries Bliton & Blotin, she had
actually cold-shouldered him. How could she give a mere
"Assistant-in-Chief" at the GHPE (in lowly Noychnya!) a warm welcome,
especially in front of the likes of the Director of the National Museum
of Periphersthan! Why, it might give the impression that she actually
associated with such common people! Yes, her work might speak of the
mundane lives of common Blotsvians, but she of course had risen above
that! In fact, she had just received an invitation for a solo exhibition
at the Centre Pompusque in Partisthan! It was inconceivable that people
think she was charmed by the likes of a poor, pathetic peon like
Blivner!</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">But
the Pompusque! What an honour and what a responsibility! What was she
to show? This was the most momentous challenge the talented Blotsvian
artist had ever faced. In the dark of the night she took her private car
and her private driver and made the long journey back to BSU in
Bolthank. There she arranged a clandestine meeting with Professor
Blatskya. "I need your help!" She frankly declared. "You are so well
versed in art history and contemporary art practices! But you stay
isolated and don't actually know anyone in the "scene"! I want you to
conceptualize my exhibition at the Pompusque! This is beyond my
capacities for ideation! You will, of course, have to sign a contract of
secrecy and non-disclosure." Professor Blatskya was at first taken
aback. But he slowly grinned and spoke in a meaningful voice, "You have
learned so well my dear. Who would have thought you were to become my
best student? I have admired your progress in the world of art from
afar. Your talents at painting are beyond my own! It would be an honour
to assist you." Blitzvin breathed a silent sigh of relief. She had
feared this encounter, but now she felt comfortable. She wondered if
Professor Blatskya knew that she did not paint her own paintings. Did he
truly admire her work? Later that night, as she turned for the door,
the Professor had thrown out one last question, "How much will I be
getting paid?" Blitzvin turned, unshaken, "You need to negotiate that
with my handlers. Please call the gallery tomorrow, and make sure you
speak only with Blotin."</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Little
did Blitzvin of Batanrush know that her much anticipated exhibition at
the Pompusque had been approved only after great debate. The Grand
Committee of Grand Committees (that decided such things) was not at all
unanimous. There had been voices of objection. It was once shouted,
"This is not the kind of show that brings in the revenues we require!
And you know it!" At another time a voice was heard to exclaim,
"Everyone is interested in Ponksvian art this year! What are we doing
filling our schedule with this Blotsvian?" But wiser voices had
prevailed. "The Centre Pompusque has never in its history presented a
solo exhibition by a Blotsvian artist. What is more, Blitzvin of
Batanrush is a woman! And you know how those damn feminists have been
breathing down our necks!"</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">The evening of the vernissage for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blitzvin: An Ever-Emerging Retrospective</i>
in the hallowed halls of the Centre Pompusque, in the Partisthan
capital of Posh, Blitzvin strolled confidently into the crowd of
socialites wearing a perfectly stunning coffee-and-beer-stained creation
by the Blotsvian designer Bruffecto. Yes, her style and her ideation
were being copied, stolen, counterfeited and commercialized. Blitzvin
t-shirts stacked the shelves of the Pompusque's gift shop. Blitzvin was
being seriously discussed in the art history courses of Partisthan art
academies. And she loved it! She swirled amid the cameras and the
crushing journalists and strode boldly into the thick of the glitterati.
A toast was proposed by the Director of the Pompusque: "To Blitzvin of
Batanrush! Not only does she represent the best that Blotsvian Art has
to offer! She represents the best of art today!"</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Bliztvin
stood with her glass held high in the air. Her head swirled. It seemed
the entire room was beginning to circle around. She was vaguely aware of
the fact that she had not yet seen her own paintings. She had not yet
read her own artist statement! She wanted to! But there were too many
admirers! She felt herself growing faint. She was longing for
something...but she didn't know what. And then she realized just what it
was! She was so thirsty for a good cold Blotsvian Blanko Blanko! And a
heaping bowl of Blotsvian Beanoguk! But the room continued to swirl, and
she knew she couldn't find those things in Partisthan.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">copyright 2012 by Waswo X. Waswo</span></div>
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waswo x waswohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00086790905136560081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4768801601417655921.post-40737577640519440572013-07-15T17:41:00.000+05:302013-07-28T22:04:16.382+05:30The tracings of the hand...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">When Rahul first approached me with the concept for this show, I immediately felt excited about it. Accepting to be part of a show for me is about whether I view the collaboration with the curator and the gallerist as holding a space that engages with dialogues that can thread together common interests, even if with differing perceptions related to these areas of contemplation that we circle to focus upon. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">I love the rough and tumble of discussions on art that throw together passions that come from the raw energies of belief. Relevant critical discourse finds its formation often by the process of evaluating the intentions that come from studio practices; where ideologies and concepts define content, where subject matter decides the medium, and where visual language is arrived at from a conscious attempt to formulate a cohesive articulation - thereby validating the premises/territory of the individual artist.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">The presence of the tracing of the hand with all its imperfections is the element of my own imprint within my work. <i>The presence of being........</i>in many ways.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">Photography was part of my early years of college........extensively used in those initial years and remaining always a language tool crucial to my interests as an artist. However I chose to completely stop using a camera in 1982. I learnt and shared many things through the arguments with photographer friends and my numerous visits to photo galleries in New York in the '90's; and it is here where I made my first departures away from the influences of a genre of photography that I had grown up with : the black and white ethnographic documentary photography. I picked up a professional camera again only in 2010, after a gap of twenty-six years. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">Personal histories of people fascinate me. Flea markets where old photographs of families lie in discarded heaps, hold a haunting space of shared nostalgia for things related to intimacies and loss that are not viewed as significant in the larger schema of hierarchies. My own history defies being comfortably labeled, and it is such territories within a cultural landscape of India which is increasingly rigid in its desire to neatly label and bracket via survey censuses that prompt me to engage in these negotiations with my work. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">I am looking forward to this show engaging us in discussions that hold investigations and enquiries that are pertinent to the curatorial peg that this show is hinged on. </span></div>
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Rekha Rodwittiyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00067780288718685169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4768801601417655921.post-90249349708164059752013-07-15T13:57:00.003+05:302013-07-28T22:03:36.989+05:30Feminism and the Post-Digital<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">The liberal world view and ethics which are integral to Digital aesthetics, has lead to a marginalization of the Radical Feminist Movement. Neo liberal is the soci-cultural voice of the post industrialist (late capitalist) society. In this socio-economic context choice has largely been advertised as consumerist choice. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">This notion of choice (i am free if i am free to buy anything i Desire), has lead to an entire generation of urban educated upper class women who refuse to call them selves feminists. "I am not a feminist" is the catch phase which i find very disturbing. however, it does betray the neo liberal tendency to refute any location, or a particular stance in one's Desire to be a part of a globallised cosmopolitan oneness. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">after long struggles when feminism itself had just come to a point which could understand women across the world as a marginalized class, neo liberalism made the notion of class itself unfashionable. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">The larger system of colonisation of the women's mind and body has continued, yet we see that t<span style="line-height: 19.703125px;">here is little sign of grassroots mobilisation, limited engagement with the changing role of women in and out of work, in society and in the household, hardly any activism on marital rape and so much more.</span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #444444; color: #f3f3f3; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><span style="line-height: 19.703125px;">I am wondering that now that the ethical structure of neo liberalism is being challenged, can we imagine a new feminism in a post-digital age?.</span></span></span><br />
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Rahul Bhattacharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14701833018286711697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4768801601417655921.post-74696325394296339382013-07-14T20:01:00.000+05:302013-07-19T01:30:10.918+05:30exhibition note <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;">The Possibility of Being<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;"><b>Post digital* directions in contemporary image making.<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;">The Possibility of Being</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> is a curatorial
engagement with five artist immersed in image making with a constant dialogue
with Painting and Drawing both in terms of medium and
practice. The curation is dedicated to (re) exploring linkages
between the image, the socio-political and painterly practices as we come to the end of an era
which was (is being) called <b>Contemporary</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;">Among the many developments that marks the term contemporary has
been the dominating focus on content that prioritize socially and
politically charged subject matters over stylistic experimentation and
investigations over Form and Language. It is also marked by its affiliations to
the idea of digital progress. As the digital (r)evolution settles
down, we are in a position to understand that Digital is not just a
technological shift, it is also an aesthetic trend. In an age where we are
surrounded by digital technology, this splitting of the Digital allows us to
explore beyond the aesthetic measures of purity, pristine images, perfect
copies and powerful (spectacular) illusions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;">Since the 1990’s postmodern culture and contemporary art was principally
associated with photography, film, installation and text-based interventions.
Painting lost its culturally privileged status and judged as an intrinsically
conservative or reactionary aesthetic form. Post the onslaught of the
digital (r)evolution, we reached a point where ‘Painting’ was declared dead as
political and cultural agency; and it was only as a commodity that the
relevancy of ‘Painting’ was acknowledged. This seeming fissure in history
allows (forces) us to split Paintings in terms of medium and practice. At
the height of the digital age (As the neo liberal was defined and celebrated as
the era of new media and the ‘futuristic’), we witnessed artists producing
paintings that looked like digital prints (hyper realistic, no trace of
artistic labour, smooth finished cosmopolitian flat surfaces). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;">However, as we </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">p</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;">e</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: large; line-height: 115%;">a</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;">ke</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">d</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> inside the contemporary trend, silently inside
artist studios we see a reassertion of analogue aesthetics. This return
to analogue in a digital age has led to both painting and drawing
have changing in terms of medium, concept, viewership and practice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;">In a sense this curation becomes a project in cultural archaeology or
ritual nostalgia. Slowly there is a growing recognition that painting practices
continue to hold important contributing agency in shaping new cultural
directions. These new directions in taste and cultural archaeological position
disturb the meaning of ‘new media’ by opening doors for old media to stand as
an vanguard act. That is why the <b>Possibility of Being</b>.For a
post-1950s generation, such a ‘reconstruction’ of analogue aesthetics has lead
recognition that painting practices today are contributing to new cultural
directions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;">Through the heights of the dominance of digital aesthetics in global
taste, there have been artists who have worked within zones that transgress
labour, concept and skill. Thus <b>P</b>ainting (not as a medium but as practice) has
emerged as an important platform for post-digital, post-conceptual art.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;">The 'durability' of post-conceptual art through the old media suggests
that its practitioners have been re-fashioning and re-defining the medium with
some of its earlier histories and aspirations in mind. Today, embedded in the
practices of drawing and/or painting, we will find modernist understandings of
medium, style, form and surface being re visited, but through the layers of
post-modern theory and criticism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;">Two concerns that is integral to the curatorial thought.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> Contemporary
art’s investment in labour, analogue and old media assumes various
forms and it is symptomatic of changes in the economy and taste rather
than expressive of a broader left consciousness in the arts. In other
words, the rise of labour as a sign-reference in recent art does not (necessarily)amount
to a political project, even if it indicates a departure from the staples
of postmodernism and, in some quarters, the desire to provide an
alternative to capitalist economic relations.</span><o:p></o:p></span></li>
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<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Within
the conventional Contemporary Indian Art production, the emphasis on
manual/physical labour comes up as a kind of noise, a disturbance which
takes away from the digital/conceptual art itself. This type of art which
has come to dictate the art market for a long time emerged simultaneously
with the global capitalism which swept the world two decades ago. Labour
was sought to be omitted from the art and a clean, sterile, sophisticated,
digitised practice which only projected the concept was developed. It is
to the extent that the old media art practices refer to and embody forms
of temporality, knowledge and subjectivity, which do not easily enter the
concept of abstract labour of new media.</span><o:p></o:p></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;">The curatorial strands will be manifest in a show <b>The
Possibility of Being, </b>bringing together <b>Ashim
Purokayasta, Jaganath Panda, Muktinath Mandal, Nataraj Sharma </b>and<b> Rekha Rodwittiya</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">*Post-digital</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> is a term which has recently come
into use in the discourse of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_art" title="Digital art">digital
artistic</a> practice. This term points significantly to our rapidly
changed and changing relationships with digital technologies and art forms. It
points to an attitude that is more concerned with being human, than with being
digital. If one examines the textual paradigm of consensus, one is faced with a
choice: either the "post-digital" society has intrinsic meaning, or
it is contextualised into a paradigm of consensus that includes art as a
totality. Either way, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Ascott" title="Roy Ascott">Roy Ascott</a> has clearly demonstrated that the
distinction between the digital and the "post-digital" is part of the
economy of reality.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postdigital">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postdigital</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Rahul Bhattacharyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14701833018286711697noreply@blogger.com0