[Reader-list] Is painting a currency note which can not be forged unless you act illegally?

[indersalim]

dear Kshmendra
thanks
my source of information is Times of India newspaper, the way it was
carried out, it looks fake,
but why dont we expect a fake encounter from the State ?
is not custodial death a well known feature in our system of
governance, and it is almost acceptable in our societal discourse.

that is that, but i would really love to hear you reflecting on other
finer points about fake/original

regards and love
is


On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 2:15 PM, Kshmendra Kaul <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dear Inder Salim
>
> You wrote:
>
> """"" Read today's fake encounter which marked two dead bodies as two
> terrorists."""""
>
> Would you please clarify which "encounter" have you written about and on
> what basis you have declared it to be a "fake encounter".
>
> Kshmendra
>
> --- On Tue, 1/27/09, indersalim <indersalim at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> From: indersalim <indersalim at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Is painting a currency note which can not be
> forged unless you act illegally?
> To: "reader-list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
> Date: Tuesday, January 27, 2009, 1:05 AM
>
> Dear Taha,
>
> Your very interesting response is  certainly my essay's second part. I
> will try write its third part. I wish there are many more reflection
> on the subject. The subject ' fake/original' is such that we can
> always safely conclude by saying ' to be concluded…'
>
> Earlier, this little essay-piece was triggered by Raza's serious
> reaction to his own fakes. But obviously I can not simply stop at
> criticizing him for his lack of humour, but we rightly need to march
> ahead and touch the deeper issues of identity etc. Today on 26th of
> Jan. in TOI we have an interview by poet-bureaucrat Ashok Vajpayee who
> also seemed quite bothered by collector's dilemmas, which
> intellectually I again see some sort of short-sightedness.  What
> amuses me most in all this that the victim artists themselves fail to
> realize their own understanding of modern art, which is that art
> changes, even after the brush stops, even after the colours dry on the
> surface, even after the same set of eyes see it again, even after the
> same audience likes and then dislikes it…
>
>  I believe, a time gap of 60 years is enough to make the artists to
> see her/his own works in a changed form. If not, I only see
> stagnation. We have to move ahead of Dada and Duchamp but I guess it
> is futile to continue with a Picasso etc.  What is that which makes
> them dismiss the forgery in the first place: if not the money factor ?
>
> But wait; they are perhaps genuinely worried, because they are still
> on the same old track of creativity, which is creative indeed, but
> something, smog like, has crept into "all the pores" of that
> creativity, explicitly, which  we call : conceptual.
> Radical thought is a perpetual flux of expression in material and Life
> directly.
>
> Unlike in the first part, where I took pains and found Jean
> Baudrillard's quotes sufficiently describing the collectors
> limitations, but  now, I guess, we ought to intuitively enter  the
> word 'conceptualism'.
>
> Meanwhile, can we suggest  to represent ourselves with an image of say
> Dodo, or about to go extinct species such as Tiger, tied around our
> necks in our National Identity Cards? Will that be too heavy a weight
> for the Nationhood to bear? Do we need to realize intensely that
> things have shifted radically ?  The Nation State needs a lie to
> sustain itself. Even legendry post-Kalinga King Ashoka required some
> violence to sustain his hold on power. It is inevitable. Read today's
> fake encounter which marked two dead bodies as two terrorists. Now
> people know why we need 26th of Jan. and so Identity cards as well. I
> am interested in something which takes a departure from that line of
> identity which is too obvious, predictable.
>
> Perhaps, the notions of identities have shifted for the younger
> generation, and do this younger lot blindly let them impose their ways
> of identity on the rest. Do we need to join their anguish against the
> fakes, even when we don't paint.  I do paint, as a true amateur, that
> is entirely different from what Raza and co. are into, but yes,
> 'photography' I believe, was free from this ' faking fear'. So
> I do,
> photographs, and would be amused if they are duplicated into anything
> else. I have no fears on that account, but I have my own fears.
>
> Yes, there are more bigger traps in the photography, but to grapple
> with those, do we need to get rid of those ghosts who are by now
> exposed?  The mystery ghosts of Indian Modern art are on sale, and I
> have not no interest to buy one, even when I had such a huge money to
> invest, but  I do look at them comically, which is not ordinary. They
> amuse me, they entertain me, but  I don't see they are radical enough
> to unnerve the bigger ghosts of our existing times,  which are much
> darker in nature.
>
> If we truly believe "every body is an artist" then we know how
> definitions don't work, and we also need to know why there is some
> sincere desire in people to identify themselves with something where
> money was a minor player, but their inner respective being was ' the
> hero . I am not certainly talking about some 'collective
> consciousness', whatever that means, but something which is
> 'singular'
> in nature.  I usually write ' singular-i-tease' whenever we talk about
> that inner' people's desire', which rips ( Derrida ) anything, both
> sacred and profane. People do it, in their own beautiful ways.
>
> Please have a look at my second version of INDER SALIM poster, which
> has the very name indersalim ( sound )  written in sausages 'of beef
> and pork'.  So, difficult to devour and relish, for those who are hard
> core believers of  their respective identities: Hindu and Muslim.
> http://sheisalivingchild.blogspot.com ( image in the box )
>
> In practice, I believe, the difference between original and fake is
> just a temporary one.  I am talking about  how ' our ways of living'
> are road rolling that earlier difference of identity which we held
> dearly near our hearts. Gizmos and technologies are rendering that
> difference into a mythical one. There is a profound regret, but
> perhaps, we don't have a way to go back to the past, but we have all
> the reason to see faults with modernity. Something else is happening
> right now. I have certainly no big expression to talk about that, but
> see, what a chaos we are in. So what is hidden but there, is perhaps
> vital for our ongoing ways of living.
>
> The style of an artist  has indeed collapsed as something lasting. The
> National identity too has a limited function in that sense. The word '
> conceptual' on the other hand transcends the boarder, and the style at
> the same time.  It outwits the market oriented collector, and
> simultaneously questions the corporate cultured monster's hidden
> sprawl under the national tricolour. Unfortunately, the masses are
> helpless, but they deserve better than Nation merely as style, and a
> situation where artists are a rare commodity, like a Mercedes car
> which they only look at from a distance, for some moon like desire in
> their eyes. ( see, how MF Hussain, openly exhibits his hobby of
> collecting expensive cars in Dubai )
> 	
> At national level, particularly in North India we have a strong
> difference which is based on 1947, and Partition. Both, the post
> colonial identity and Hindu Muslim difference is working towards the
> formation of National Identity.  Here, again ' our ways of living are
> rendering that difference into insignificance.  A time will come when
> we don't need fear  to from this lack, of not being a Nationalist;
> which does not mean we need to be anti-nationalist for that, but
> something which is liberating, truly  for our inner spiritual pursuits
> at the core.
>
> Right now we don't have a duplicate to a Mulla ji or a Brahmin ji who
> performs an  original and obviously devastate millions of Indians with
> his fear mechanism. They even sabotage the strong structures of
> Democracy with their deep psychological reaches into the minds of
> people. They themselves carry a ritual flag in the name of God. They
> rob people and give power to God.   They are intimately seated next to
> nation state which robs people to enrich itself.  They were never
> originals in their original function in our society . But they had a
> style which they sell like our modern masters.  This is where 'the
> Nation', if dependant on that style ' of  partition and post colonial
> identity' then it performs  as collector which is "impoverished and
> inhuman ".
>
> About 'idiocy' of our times:  that we are drowned by the photocopies
> of the photocopies of the photocopies of the photocopies. Where is the
> original Monalisa stands today, if we were burn all millions and
> billions of photocopies of Monalisa ?
>
> Is anybody hearing, Raza  who is too anguished about fakes of his originals.
>
> Nation is on the thorn, Some one is hungry at Seven. Artist is worried
> about originals.
> Muse is in her Heaven. All is right with the world
>
> With love and regards
> Inder salims
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 5:21 PM, Taha Mehmood
> <2tahamehmood at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Inder,
>>
>> Thank you for posting a wonderful essay. I look forward to the second
> part.
>>
>> I think this essay reflects a lot of issues, questions and dilemmas that I
> am grappling for last four years regarding the not so clear notion of
> identity.
>>
>> The similarities of debate in the art world, regarding fake and the
> original, seemingly creative solutions like  Ela Menon's to deposit her
> thumbprint on her work, and the anxiety to identify the-one-as-the-one, are
> not
> that dissimilar, it seems to the current neurosis of many a nation state to
> introduce national identity cards.
>>
>> It was interesting to note how the writer of this essay choose
> Rosset's words to argue,  "The  real is not threatened by its double
> today it is threatened by its very idiocy". I am curious what Rosset's
> take would be on the crucial issue of national citizenship because
> essentially
> it is about identifying the real from the fake.
>>
>> To issue a national identity card, any state would have to act as a
> collector of personal and financial information. Of collectors he states,
> 'collectors, for the part, invariably have something impoverished and
> inhuman about  them'. Will he harbour the same opinoin for a nation state as
> a collector too?
>>
>> I wonder what prompted him to use such a strong language. As a reader one
> does not really understand why he articulates the act of collection as
> impoverished and inhuman.
>>
>> If for a moment we leave the sensitive nature of politics around the
> imagination of a nation state and talk purely in terms of politics around
> the
> art world, I would be happy to know your views in so far as the debate
> around
> the fake and original is concerned.
>>
>> As the essay suggests, one of the reasons for the existence of this
> anxiety seems to be money, the other seems to be ownership or maybe
> authorship.
>>
>> As an artist and a practitioner of an art form, to what extent, you think
> Inder, that one could formulate ideas about fake and original.
>>
>> Warm regards
>>
>> Taha
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
>
> http://indersalim.livejournal.com
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