[Reader-list] Documenta XI

[Monica Narula]

Dear Mr Enwezor,

Thank you for your posting. 

I would here like to make some small clarifications.

Firstly, as Rana Dasgupta's posting must have already made clear, a great
deal of what was attributed to me was actually written by Rana Dasgupta,
who is a list member (and not of Sarai). His, along with other postings
constituted digest posting that I did as the list administrator. There was
perhaps a confusion that arose from that.

However, to discuss what I did say :

Spaces do have invisible barriers which are marked by cultural and economic
advantages. To say a place `is not the easiest to enter` is not to say that
the space is discourteous or inhospitable. For many of us our families
provide deeply hospitable habitats that enable us in impressive ways, and
yet we do find ourselves battling - all our lives - the many invisible
barriers engengered by the same habitat.

A few years ago while shooting a film, I was put out when a woman who was
physically challenged quietly said to me, "Your spaces are very
intolerant". Surely I hadn't made those spaces, so I couldn't be held
responsible for them. But it was a statement arising from her experience.
What she did was to point out to me a simple fact about my space which was
invisible to me. Even today, I count the steps leading up to a building, or
auditorium, and notice when the pedestarian paths do not join to the roads
to make a smooth flow.

Whenever documentary filmmakers in Delhi get together to discuss their
screenings, they invariably articulate a discomfort about being caught up
in the few fixed predictable venues for the screenings of their films - it
is a very deep discomfort which arises from the hunger for a wider space, a
wider public, a deeper engagement. The 'parallel cinema' here lost this
discomfort and got a new name : the 'Panorama' films, as they are screened
only in the 'Panorama' section of the Film Festival in India.

The painter J.Swaminathan once narrated an anecdote in an interview. He
recalled meeting Gandhi to show him a newspaper that he and his friends
were bringing out. Gandhi looked at it and asked for whom was the newspaper
meant. When being told that it was meant for working people, Gandhi gently
pointed out that the typeface could be bigger as tired people would then
find it easier to read. Gandhi was not belittling Swami's effort, or
ridiculing him; he was just reminding him of another view, another
possibility. 

When Manthia Diawara shared images of a group of artists and writers
helplessly standing inside a classroom in Rwanda where a student
passionately asks "Where were you before?", he was not ridiculing them or
belittling them either. He was asking for a creation of a public space by
intellectuals that could allow these encounters to take place in a freer
way; a space where intellectuals could breathe normally and address deeper
silences. 

We all have different optics, different vantage points, different truth
claims. A dialogue is possible only when we recognise the incompleteness of
our optics. 

The 19th century poet Ghalib, on being complained to by someone that his
poems were being sung in the brothels and the street, he replied that now
he could rest happy as his poems would definitely live much beyond him.
What matters, truly, is that an idea roam the streets. 

Regarding the Reader-list: We run the reader-list in a non-moderated way.
Anyone can post what they like, and respond to what they wish to from
someone else's posting. We at Sarai do not always choose to respond to
everything, even if the material may be ridiculous or inflammatory. This is
to leave the arena open for all kinds of discussion, and to not be
possessive or prescriptive about the list, especially as this is a new list.

In my initial posting, made on the third day of platform2 of Documenta11, I
was informing people about the event, positioning it regarding space and
attendees ("one of the less attended" - equally a comment perhaps on the
public as the event), and stating that the themes being addressed were
relevant and engaging. But it seems that my posting has become an
unfortunate benchmark regarding the success of the platform in Delhi...

warm regards
Monica