[Reader-list] The Anti TATA art debate Post 1

[Logos Theatre]

Dear Arnab,
        My sincere apologies for the two week delay. I won't hold up work
pressure as an excuse, since I am sure you are much busier than me and yet
took the time out to send that detailed mail. The truth is, I came back to
Bangalore from a trip on the 20th and did (as I promised in reponse to your
personal query) get down to reading your mail carefully that very day.
Unfortunately, i really could make no sense of what you were trying to say.
I am not making fun of you here - I am just a practitioner, and completely
unable to speak academic language. Academic denseness of language always has
me scared, and so I really felt I needed a translation of sorts, of what
you'd written. By then, the virulent debate on the violence unleashed by
India in Kashmir broke out, and I felt it was a little pointless to pursue
this, especially since it had drawn no response from the people I had hoped
to engage - arts practitioners such as Vivek and Inder and others, which
sort of proves my point that contrary to what I believe, practising artists
today do not think the source of funding is an important ethical or moral
issue. However, I finally decided that I should attempt an answer based on
whatever I understood of your post. So here goes:

The first thing that you have said that I think have a response to is about
the DADAs. Before that, I cannot make any sense of your syntax or even begin
to guess what youa re trying to say. About the DADAs, yes of course, they
were 'anti-art', but I daresay they interpreted 'art' to be the
establishment-endorsed, kosher art that existed in their day, much as what I
call 'white elephant art' - presumptuous and full of dishonesty and hot air,
exists today and is endorsed and supported by variour organizations of which
IFA is perhaps that most sickeningly self-validating. I daresay the DADAs
also had their own vision of art. To quote Tzara from the preface to The Gas
Heart, "*Actors are requested to give this play the attention due a
masterpiece such as Macbeth or Chantecler, but to treat the author-who is
not a genius with no respect and to note the levity of the script which
brings no technical innovation to the theatre". *So I am asserting that the
DADAs meant to break down existing hierarchies so that they could start
afresh from a blank slate, to remove malignant tumours, so to say. They
weren't for a moment trying to destroy art. But again, I am a college
drop-out without any pretensions to academic stamps, so you are welcome to
throw  a barrage of theoretical arguments against what I'm saying. I make
theatre, not theories. You go on to say:

*how will the "disclosive, and nonpropositional" truth claim of art's
autonomy ( it has to be art after all bereft of its intention)be safe
guarded? How will you ( or anybody or your genre) safely decide on this ?*
If you reframe that question in English, I may be able to answer it. As it
stands, I really am unable to understand what you are trying to say. The
best sense I could make is that you are asking, if it is expressly created
against the Tatas, how can it be art, retain its artistic integrity. If that
is what it is, I say, 'art' is not some wispy thing that exists in some
place of platonic purity, but is defined by its context which it yet does
transcend. In fact, precisely because it cannot exist independently of a
context, at least at a given point of time, a work of art, say a piece of
performance art which addresses the discourse on gender as a performative,
created with a Ratan Tata Trust grant is a logical impossibility, because it
ignores the fact of the rape and murder of Tapashi Malik, indirectly
facilitated by the same Tatas, and thereby loses its integrity which is a
pre-condition for its existence. I don't know if that made any sense.
Two more things - card trick or nor, it really *is *my money, and therefore,
arbitrary as it is, the choice remains mine. Secondly, and one needs to be a
practitioner to really undertand this - you really *do *know it when you see
it. There's no theoretical definition of why Pina Bausch is divine and
Attakkalari (incidentally also supported by the Tatas, though that's not why
I am saying this) are mediocre pretenders at best. The one has that quiver
of magic that puts on her the stamp of art, the other have in all their work
an aspect of trying to hard, but lacking the vital fire without which it all
becomes mere labour. Think Keats and Robert Southey. Or Kalidaasa and
Bhavabhuti.
Cheers,
Arka



On 15/08/2008, ARNAB CHATTERJEE <apnawritings at yahoo.co.in> wrote:
>
> Dear Arka,
>                      Thank you for your reply and this is going to be a
> very lengthy conversation if you are not going to give up in the middle (
> hope u'll not). And I don't know whether you are aware of your position and
> the consequences that it generates for such a simple thing as resistance and
> my interest in this apparently trivial thing ( compared to Kashmir and
> Singur) is because I hold this moment as paradigmatic of a particular form
> of stylized reaction which is  also,  so  say, symptomatic of our times.
> Despite being bleedingly busy in so many other things, I could not help
> reacting. But that is  a part of my broader topical engagement and you night
> have nothing to do with it; however slowly you'll feel you are being pulled
> into an abyss but only lately you will have  come to know why.
>     To put it briefly, while I can speak for myself, I think others too
> shall recognize why I think that your gesture is the sign and projects a
> peculiar frame of contemporary resistance in which all kinds of abstract
> things are mixed up—while it tries to become effective and practical and
> tries to express itself as sincere and strongly  it can. So while
> my  friends are busy with really big things, I can assure them that even 100
> years hence—if some body asks me to define seduction  and challenge during
> these days of apparent Nandigram, I'll cite the Arka case. All else
> ---Kashmir to Nandigram, methodologically can give us nothing except news.
> The Arka –Arunshati exchange is genuinely new in many ultra unique aspects
> which I shall explore.
>      So I begin by asking you certain simple questions --and how you stitch
> them together in your narrative is a thing which some  will watch and will
> serve my ulterior purpose  for sure. So you might regret that you are being
> used as a means but you'll, I guess, regret that for good. What  I'm  trying
> to say is, finally, irrespective of your intentions, you've opened up a can
> of worms, from which the color of our  contemporary skies flood the floor.
> Finally and fatally then, you are not suggesting a solution ( or responding
> affirmatively)  to a problem as you might wish yourself to have been; you've
> complicated it further; you're a part of it.
>        So let us start :    The essence of your proposal is that a kind of
> grant will be used against the grant owners and the makers through 'true
> art' in the footsteps of Dada. The first technical mess up is, the  DADA's
> were anti-art and not for true art ofcourse. But excusing this,  tell me one
> thing and this is a real variation on the theme of the socialist realist
> logic : firstly, it has to be anti TATA and secondly, it has to
> be  art;  intentional art—that is. So the first question is how will the
> "disclosive, and nonpropositional" truth claim of art's autonomy ( it has to
> be art after all bereft of its intention)be safe guarded? How will you ( or
> anybody or your genre) safely decide on this ? Now, don't short change this
> with the card trick that you have, "it's my money" and so… ( I'll come to
> this also but for the moment limiting myself to one question ) and secondly,
> don't say for your choicest pool of art work  the way it
> was said for pornography, I can't define pornography, but I know when I see
> it. So I cant say now, but when I see them Ill be able to decide etc.
>                              Bye for the moment. More to come.
> warmly
> arnab
>
>
>
> --
> Logos Theatre
>           In the beginning was the word
> No. 126,
> 3rd Main Road,
> Jayamahal Extension,
> Bangalore 560046
> --------------------------------------------------------
> If it be now, 'tis not to come;
> if it be not to come, it will be now;
> if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.
> Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes?
> Let be.