Sometimes one takes oneself at face value, begins to do something without really explaining why. here is a simple note on why i am doing it.
but yes..this camp is rooted in the Marxist strategies of protest, and a certain Gramsian notion of citizenship.
there are two things that are central to the conception and the method adopted in Reva Diaries.
A close friend of mine has been volunteering with the Narmada Bachao Movement and though her i got to know how a group of volunteers run pillar to post to
save farmlands, and to ensure that government at-least gives adequate and legal
compensation. at the same time i learnt how large multinationals, would spend large sums of money to ensure that farmers . to my aghast i learnt that companies and industrial lobbies spend enormous amounts of money to deny paltry compensation.
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| hapeshwar temple submerged Aug 16 2004 |
the brutality of the colonizing project bit me brutally. and i realized that all this was being done in our name and our silence was being quoted as our consent.
madhya pradesh generates the highest amount of electricity in the country and suffers from the longest ever power-cuts.
we get agitated if there is a power cut during a seminar on environment and ecology...
i thought it's time to draw the line.
there is a cluster of villages that that will be sunk by large reservoir that is built to take away water and resources away from the land and it people.
tradition fishermen are left jobless... cause now there is a centralized tendering of fishing rights.
in the face of this, i want to respond as a curator and also i knew that the human factor in development interested many of my artist friends.
i have always been vocal about contemporary indian art being disconnected to the large hinterlands over which we are now witnessing a war over resources.thats why the idea of a platform where one can come visit see here....the people, culture and landscape set to be destroyed for our benefit and on the back of our silence.
if to give me electricity 50 villages have to be submerged, how am i better than a terrorist.
with all its faults NBA is a voluntary based non violent movement- two values that i think should be central to any public engagement.
i am not going to mention it in my bio or present it as a paper in a seminar till a more serious engagement happens....right now it's just an attempt to say if we want maybe not a single more village needs to be submerged.
And i can only react as a curator. i cant do rallies, or fight court cases ican only put artistic energies together and/or create a platform ...and hope
best
