[Reader-list] the dehli platform

[philip pocock]

hello

in a few days documenta flies in with guests from around the globe - very few
dehli-based people, no artists, it appears - to discuss or is it 'disclose'
finishing democracy there.

is there not a fine line between colonizing and globalizing? is 18th century
romantic travel, as the british knew, a way to divide and conquer? isn't it
easy for off-line minds to mistake that for the glocalizing effect of spaces
such as this, where daily i touch base with dehli and appreciate some of my
mail scans very much?

i am curious about sarai's positi0n and plans concerning the india habitat
center and the importation of art and lawyers and other experts to lecture
about democracy. the list of speakers is at the www.documenta.de site. i find
the whole thing rather curious that your initiative was not located by the
expatriot indian cultural community, ironically in london where colonization
reigned in the jet set days of 18th century travel.

aside from the colonizing-globalizing, top-down importing versus emerging
locall cultural production, one must wonder to a documenta visitor one must
spend at least $20000 to fly around from platform one to five. otherwise like
those back home we just have to accept what is said happened. that is not
globalization. it is economics and a base for colonizing and centrally
controlling the image of cultural producers in dehli from abroad.

is this a dehli platform or a platform in dehli? i hope there is some serious
dissent during the event. i would make thess points were i there. rather being
lectured to by imports about truth and justice, the sentiments of melancholy
and frustration, difficulties, and so on (transient emotions in vedic thinking)
as it is billed on-line, would it not be better to hold a town meeting,
conversation being the only way forward, or ar the locals there supposed to sit
quietyl and swallow the words professed at them from the podium by guests flown
in in style and leaving as quickly after they solve or smile about the serious
conditions in the region?

documenta is follwed in europe very closely. what we learn from the platform in
dehli, the persons in charge, become professors here and represent unelected
your general cultural production. don't let that happen without speaking and
acting up. it is in my small view important that initiatives not based as
maharaj's in london or berlin do not become accredited and empowered at the
cost of the initiatives such as sarai in dehli for the future. the documenta
will come and fly out and forget it. the few indian scholar expatriots will
flourish, and the scene in dehli will be thereby only more unfunded. speaking
out, speakers, films ouside the habitat center, perfrmances, alternative
lectures, right outside the event, on the street, are important to stop any
blindness would be fun and have meaning.

this is not a reaction, but a meta-discourse, surrounding the india habitat
center, ironically the space where the colonizers and those who will reap the
benefits of 'being part of documenta' will fly in and fly out.

cu, philip pocock