[Reader-list] ifs-07, first posting

[Abhik Samanta]

Hello everyone this is my first posting, extremely sorry i am so late, hope
its not too late.



The project that i suggested would involve an exploration of the printed
matter of the Gita Press as media. An exploration of an act of
communication, which in this case, is designed as a commodity that is priced
at the range of basic necessities. For instance, when they first came out,
the editions were called 'gutkha' otherwise used for alight intoxicant. In a
world where expressions are demanded, so that their conformity can be had,
the poignant moment when the object of expression is configured becomes very
precious. This is well realized by global agencies who feel the need to
generate demand. What remains is the expression itself with the urgency to
retain its partiality or overcome it with the object it is meant for. This
choice, the realization of which is crucial in resisting demands on
expression, is also the site on which  banality, which must accompany a
claim on expression, can be found. This is because expression is essentially
a choice , but not the absence of it. Understanding being important in such
a situation, one could explore the history of banality itself as found in
the cheap pamphlets of the Gita Press.

 The Gita Press commodities became an expression when Hanumanprasad , on the
advice of Gandhi, declared in the first issue of his journal*
Kalyan*(though not yet a part of the press but later on its chief
organ)
that no advertisements would occur, to which he added his own idea that this
would include books and hence no literary criticism. It was thus exclusively
a part of a language of need as the image of a commodity. An expression of
nationalism. The denial of other commodities belied its banal
character(pricing) while on display with them on bookshelves in stations or
large market areas.

However  the expression, as being that of nationalism, becomes complete only
when it explains itself as being the words of God as articulated by
Hanumanprasad primarily as also by his preceptor Jayadayal Goyandaka and
occasionally his friend Radhababa and later on by Swami Ramsukhdas who died
recently. This is why it is part of the language of need, which remains even
today as a language of nationalism. But, this is the site where the products
become banal. Denial of nationalism or itself is how it becomes national
just as it is a commodity that denies others.

This was how Hanuman thought his commodity would be sold. Meaning how it
would be exchanged. The act of exchange being an expression of nationalism.
The commodity would then be consumed. This separation is another inversion
of the order of demand where the moment of exchange moves closer and closer
to the moment of consumption. Exchange here is rather a disjuncture. For
what is consumed does not relate only to the nation. As a commodity it seeks
the body of the reader located amidst colonial journeys of work and travel.
This was the marketing strategy of Hanuman, better described as a strategy
of distribution for it sought to reach or capture at the moment of fatigue
in course of engagement in the time of work. The word fatigue stumbles into
the way spiritual categories are described in corporeal language.



                      The preoccupations of the world are very bad;
therefore he must deal with them and not leave anything behind… Just as a
man gets ready for a railway journey by buying a ticket and preparing to
board the train, so must a man deal with his commitments, then there will be
nothing to worry about. (*Kalyan* August 1926,p.52.)



Consumption is a corporeal act which can only be described as training for
the real thing. Reading is akin to an act of hearing or an act of seeing.
For the major portion of tracts like *Shriramchintan* are printed in
question answer form where answers are long and made wit reference to a
central text like the Ramcharitmanas or anywhere from the corpus of sacred
words of Hinduism. Hanumanprasad describes what he sees in an act of
elaborated translation. He is merely a guide hwo wirtes short essays on the
historicity of the Ramayana. Excerpts from letters to people asking
questions s also included making the tract a documentary or testimony of the
corporeality that he claims. The reason why he has to make it so is the real
claim that Hanuman makes in his confessed location in the transmission of
the message. The claim which is the source of and solution to fatigue is the
existence or flow of dark or bad times. The colour of the images on the
cover which attract the buyer becomes meaningful only with the darkness
described inside. Considering that Hanuman was the designer and not the
painter blackness can be seen as coeval to blindness. The Gita Press
pictures can perhaps be seen as emerging from the 'blackness of Allah'   to
borrow a picturesque phrase from the otherwise bland Orhan Pamuk novel *My
Name is Red*. Here again the viewer becomes becomes introduced to darkness
only when he or she becomes a buyer. This puts off the earlier denial of
being a commodity into an ironical existence which is another source of
colour.

The aim of this project would be to see how these pictures come into being
or attain colour and light in their location as commodities. Two examples
will be shown in the follow up.

An expression is more of a denial and farthest from a demand for conformity.
Hence when there is an explanation of demand , on its rejection , it is not
an expression but a means of perpetuating conformity. The object of
expression is absent all the same. In which case expression can only seek to
unite the body of the speaker from which the demand was made.

 part of the language
On 3/23/07, inder salim <indersalim at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> I am:
>
>
>
> *This indersalim stuff from Kashmir* .
>
>
>
> I am a  performance artist.  ( please include the 'theater performances'
> here, though I am not strictly in the practice of doing things on stage. )
> The art-in-public- space, yes, I do, but the definition is quite vast, so no
> big claims. I try to conceptualize my action ( performance ) with ongoing
> conflicts (both political and otherwise )  in mind, but as you know, the
> form incorporated changes the dynamics of ' the action' even. So, I believe
> the the unpredictability of doing a performance…
>
>
>
> I enclose three poem pieces, the second one I ended with a little
> performance at Performance poetry thing organized by Vivek Naranyan at Sarai
> some days back.
>
>
>
> My project is to organize performance art, to collaborate and initiate
> performances anywhere in India or abroad.  So I am myself waiting for a
> surprise or so. But meanwhile :
>
>
>
> * *
>
> *YAHAN MOOTNA MANA HAI*
> *
> Men keep on pissing near the wall
> Till a graffiti grows:
> YAHAN MOOTNA MANA HAI
>
> And if men keep on pissing near the wall
> They imagine reading a line
> YEH PADNA MANA HAI**
> Next to the line
> YAHAN MOOTNA MANA HAI.
>
> And if the fermentation of the
> absorbed piss begins to
> emit those nose wrenching fumes,
> the complacent administrator's nose
> comes closer to it
> to arrange
> an alternative in the
> nearby vicinity.
>
> And if a money generating
> toilet structure
> comes up a little away from the disgraced wall,
> The text: YAHAN MOOTNA MANA HAI
> Becomes idle and meaningless
> Till some poorly paid workers of different
> Political parties paste glossy
> Posters of their masters underneath.
>
> And once the colourful posters of
> Politicians and their children politicians
> Appear underneath the line
> YAHAN MOOTNA MANA HAI
> The artist-in-public-space
> Inserts a word *NAHEE****
> In the line
> *YAHAN MOOTNA MANA HAI*
> At an appropriate place.
>
> For some real men
> to impart some real meaning,
> To their age old habit
> Of pissing in the public space.
>
> * Yahan mootna manah hai = pissing is prohibited here.
>
> ** Yeh panda manah hai= reading this is prohibited
>
> *** Nahee= not
>
>
>
> *……………………………………………………………………………….*
>
> * *
>
> * *
>
> *Teri to lal hai   ( yours is red )*
>
> * *
>
> The more you climb the more it will grow;-
>
> On a magical tree,
>
> This particular species of monkeys
>
> in their own jolly great mood,
>
> they simply kept on
>
> Jumping and climbing
>
> Climbing and jumping,
>
> Till they decided to look down
>
> To see the earth from above.
>
>
>
> It was a point, less than the tree,
>
> But quite far from  below.
>
> That a two of the species
>
> Happened to bend on their knees
>
> To see each other as well.
>
>
>
> It just happened that one was above the other,
>
> And had a chance to see the
>
> *Downing Back* of his brother.
>
>
>
> * Aray, teri to lal hai, (yours is red)
>
> Screamed the-one-below-the-above-one.
>
>
>
> Heard by the wind, and by the leaves
>
> And thousands of his own species,
>
> The one-above-the-below-one, without fun,
>
> Felt humiliated, stooped low, first inwardly
>
> then outwardly, to identify…
>
>
>
> But the-one-below-the-above-one
>
> Kept on jumping and climbing,
>
> And climbing and jumping,
>
> Till it was air which supported his feet,
>
> And his belief that he was different,
>
> than the-one-above-the-below-one.
>
>
>
> But, one day a return
>
> Would make him understand
>
> The meaning of
>
>  Laet tulith chi sari gaeb.
>   ( Laet tulith chi sari gaeb mean  in Kashmiri = Lift the tail of any
> sheep, all of them are female.)
>
>
>
> The performance ended with the exposure of my buttocks, painted with red
> through my pant torn from behind.
>
>
>
>
>
> *Cockroach
> *
> Trapped I was,
> Not too exhausted in the toilet sink,
> In which he was about to piss…
>
> Periplaneta Americana Orientalis,
> Perhaps, this is how a Zoologist
> Would define me
> By the length and breadth of my delicate antenna.
>
> I was suffering:
>
> And when he held in his hand
> A melancholy, nozzle like thing
> That was behind the zip,
> I thought of a rescue operation…..
>
> But a shimmering rope like thing,
> Which fell next-near to me
> Was only a mirage,--
> Because the more I tried to catch hold of it
> The more I was on a difficult ground.
>
> Now what I was floating upon,
> Was quite a blow to my hope,
> Otherwise a usual thing to smell and taste:
>
> I was aghast.
>
> The shadow like thing stood there,
> Watched my swimming abilities
> Or perhaps, pitied my fate.
>
> And when suddenly he pulled the chain
> Again and again:
>
> ' O shit , this city is really dry '
> I heard him saying before
> The lights went off
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> please visit:
> http://indersalim.livejournal.com
> to navigate, press  EARLIER at page's bottom.
>
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with
> subscribe in the subject header.
> To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list
> List archive: &lt;https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20070326/1855b4a1/attachment.html