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

[indersalim]

Dear Kshmendra
yes, one wishes that the Govt. is serious about the procedures laid in
our constitution to protect the interests of each and every citizen of
this counrty. But alas
 theory is different from practice.

You see, 26/11 never looked fake from the word go. but this one begins
with doubt, and the newspapers are openly asking some valid questions.
Do you have answers?

But we know there is really no system to ask the police, even the
judiciary will take a lenient view keeping in view  security
concerns,...
anyway, thanks , but i guess, you are really competent enough to speak
on the subject fake/original. it is open ended subject and not
confined to art only, and above all, you know i am not an academician,

regards love
is

Dear Taha

I am always thankful for a response like yours, primarily because I
get a chance to stretch my imagination. You have indeed opened more
space to look deeper into our structures of identity, both inner and
outer. I am really keen to see more such comments on this subject:
fake/original.

I quote you, "The argument, back then, was simple, that till 19th
century, there was a division between the subject and the object in so
far as the physical sciences were concerned". See, it is only now that
we see it like that, because the complexities of times were not as
heavy on their heads as they are now. This is precisely what will
happen to Raza's worry about fake/original if it lapses into a
status-quo of sorts, which is that a fake is superior than a fake. I
see walls of this difference collapsing, whether good or bad, but
something is changing, which not only affects ' the style' of an
particular painter of Modern era, but also our set of different
identities, such as religion, ethnicities gender etc. But, see how
nation state's interests are taken care of by a contrived thrust to
maintain the difference, otherwise stale.

I don't remember his name, perhaps an Australian Artist, who submitted
a realistic self portrait in Water Colour instead of a simple pass
port size photograph to the pass port Authorities for issuance of Pass
Port. Obviously, the State declined to issue him a pass port since the
water colour is not a photograph but an art work. But he made a point.

A particular practice turns 'the State' into some sort of colour
blindness. i believe so.

I believe, European Wars necessitated the need for a photograph to
represent an individual, which gave shape to a formal pass port with a
regular photograph in it. Yet we know how spies faked them all the
time and perforated each others Nation States walls at will. Almost
all the parties lost the battle. Now with latest terrorist threats the
age old practice of photograph looks primitive. Meanwhile, artists see
it a art form, aesthetic forms. Cindy Sherman faked different iconic
poses by performing a still in front of  Camera, which turned out to
be 'original '  and now Artist Pushpamala N successfully does the same
with Indian system of iconic imagery it can be endless...and why
not...

 Coming back to Fakes in the hands of non-State Actors we need to have
originals. So a simple pass port with visa looks insufficient unless
your eyes are not scanned and finger's impressions duly recorded in
digital formats.  The latest representative of an individual is
her/his image of Cornea. So, why not imagine an Identity Card which
has the system that instantly reveals an individual's design inside
the eye. The state can afford to ignore the huge community of blinds,
but that will be the latest technological grand national achievement.
But what if the data is hacked, or altered at some level. Do we need
to maintain both the systems, and hope to keep the ' faker' at a
distance. To avoid a 'fake', do we need to turn a billion of our
population into some sort of colour blindness. Similarly, do we need
to create a range of systems, as Ashok Vajpayee and his friend Raza
would love all of us to do, which can isolate a fake from the
original. Is that the end and beginning of Art?  Is  National identity
card similarly the beginning and end of ones identity?

If the image of Dodo is hanging like dead Albatross around our necks,
then what image is adequate to represent us in our identity cards?
Again today's newspaper, " world's highest Pharma levels in Andhra
Stream" . Who is responsible? The factories, who supply generics to US
and Europe, and the income it generates obviously pushes the National
Developmental Graph upwards .  That is good for most of privileged us,
but what about the people living in tribal belts of Andhara Pradesh,
who had no choice but to drink the deadly water. So how to explain the
fake v/s original to such an inhabitant living there for millions of
years, but now threatened to die as ' unmarked'.

Another news: Indian Generic sales might be hit by counterfeit charge.
Now it is all about Trade and its bullying tactics of the West. Big
Indian Pharma firms don't have patent on particular combination and so
can not pass their products through European seas for Latin American
demands. Now, see at National Level we have no choice but to oppose
this European Rule, but at the grass root level it is already a
disaster, as we know. Identity wise, we are caught in a paradox. Let
us hope there is no dead end, a frustration.

It is after all not a big issue to separate a fake painting from a
original one, even when we know the painting changes while its surface
is wet,  and keeps on changing endlessly after it is dry even, but the
change is so slow that we can safely say in a gallery that the
painting is a still object. We  need not be caught unwittingly by some
illusion which stifles our simple expression even. We may notice the
difference between a fake Raza and an original Raza.  They are indeed
two, but to what extent the difference changes my aesthetic reasoning.
Am I identifiable more by an original Raza than its forged one ? Is a
Pass Port in my hands the last thing which I want to know about my
self, identity wise and beyond…

The question indeed here is if every other thing in the museums and
galleries is faked and put on sale as originals. Yes, the collector
should bother, not those who are not interested to collect,
particularly if there is a huge price tag attached to it. After all,
both fakes and originals will remain on this earth, in this form or
that form. Let us see how we can go deeply into the actual function of
these art objects which are vulnerable to fakes.

Some times the fake is art, and the original can be disaster.  Again
we have news today: Floating Message.  A 16 feet high polar bear
sculpture sails down the Thames to raise awareness about melting Ice
caps. Imagine, if a real piece of snow with a trapped polar bear
floats on the Thames what a sad news it would be.
But wait, it has already happened, not on Thames but in a distant sea,
and the fake of the real is functioning as vital. It wont be far when
we have the sad original floating in London with no means to push the
polar bear back to ice caps.

Munch's Scream comes to my mind, We hear its scream only when it is
stolen from the gallery, but not when it actually wants to be heard.
Do we need to do a  research whether the painting in the gallery is
original or fake? In any case we don't hear the scream.
That is 'idiocy' of our times.

Love
Inder salim


On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 7:35 PM, Kshmendra Kaul <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dear Inder Salim
>
> The TOI and other news reports certainly have raised doubts but none has
> declared it as a "fake encounter".
>
> Dont you think it is irresponsible for any serious commentator to make a
> declaration of it being a "fake encounter" on the basis of what you have
> described as "the way it was
> carried out, it looks fake".
>
> No I do not expect fake encounter from the State. Nor do I expect or find
> acceptable "custodial deaths". That it happens is another thing
> altogether which needs to be rectified and stopped (in any country). Your
> statement that it is a "part of" the system of governance in India is
> ridiculous. The exceptions cannot be stretched into being called the norm.
>
> In any case, it certainly does does not mean that any such incident is
> automatically declared as being a "fake encounter" or a "custodial death" on
> the basis of the precedence of some examples and without confirmation from
> properly evidenced investigation.
>
> This particular incident may or may not be a "fake encounter" but
> declaring it as being so on the basis of  "loopholes" and "suspicions" from
> news reports seems to be frivolous at the least and of devious intent at
> it's worst.
>
> As regards "reflecting on other finer points about fake/original", I am not
> accomplished enough to participate in such highly intellectual academic
> discussions.
>
> 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, 6:50 PM
>
> 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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>
>
>
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>
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