a show proposed to two galleries last year...a show that did not take place.
:
A
new strand of underground cultural practice can be seen in the contemporary art
movement, which stems from a boredom with the monotonous digital finish, the
mundane cosmopolitanism of contemporary art and the visual language of neo
liberal hegemony. For a long time, it seemed that contemporary Indian art had become
so insulated that it would fail to respond to and evolve with the changing
times. The art of this emerging
underground creates a tension in the realm of aesthetic consumption, causing
discomforts by hacking into the
mainstream taste, which still carries the bias stemming from age, class, gender
and sexuality.
For a post-1950s generation, such a
‘reconstruction’ of analogue art forms is not just an act of random
cultural archaeology or ritual nostalgia and there has been a recognition of
the contemporary, say painting practices which are contributing to new cultural
directions. These new directions in taste and cultural archaeology position old
media as a vanguard act, trading not only on the medium specificity of a
post-conceptual re-visitation of Modernism (the ‘language of the mark, gesture
and surface’), but that it should be equally receptive to motifs
taken from contemporary culture and older narrative traditions of
image-making. The artists selected for New Directions in Old Media have a deep
understanding of the analogous art as experiential attempts to image emotion
and observation in painterly form. In doing so, they suggest that old
media can carry a new vocabulary, which is hybrid, grungy and visceral; often
imprinting within their forms ‘narratives of the personal’.
Within the conventional Contemporary Indian Art production, the emphasis
on manual/physical labour comes up as a kind of noise, a disturbance
which takes away from the digital/conceptual art itself. This type of art,
which has come to dictate the art market for a long time, emerged
simultaneously with the global capitalism that swept the world two decades ago.
Labour was sought to be omitted from the art and a clean,
sterile, sophisticated, digitised practice, which only projected the
concept, was developed. It is to the extent that analogue refers to and embodies
forms of temporality, knowledge and subjectivity, which do not easily enter the
concept of abstract labour of purely conceptual art digital
aesthetics
Contemporary art’s investment in labour, analogue and old media
assumes various forms and it is symptomatic of changes in the economy rather
than expressive of a broader left consciousness in the arts. In other words,
the rise of labour as a sign-reference in recent art does not amount
to a political project, even if it indicates a departure from the staples of postmodernism and,
in some quarters, the desire to provide an alternative to capitalist economic
relations.
:
Aesthetics of
nostalgia, loss, love and the popular
Blues has been defined in the dictionary as melancholic
music of black American folk origin begun primarily in the ‘Deep South’ of the
United States around the end of 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts
and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads, typically in a
twelve-bar musical note sequence. In blues, a blue note is played or sung in a
lower pitch (minor 3rd to major 3rd) than the major scale for expressive
purposes.
Over the years, cultural historians have recognised
Afro-American music as the primary source of chronicling black history. By the
late 60s, blues genre had been thoroughly appropriated by the white elite and
its circulation had become somewhat restricted in the face of rock music, which
was again dominated by the white culture in its taste and sensibilities. By the
'70s, the era of the Civil Rights Movement had definitely ended, but for
African-Americans in many parts of the United States, the struggle for full
civic and economic participation was not finished. Hip-hop culture emerged as a
reaction to this and out of an atmosphere of disappointment and disillusionment
in the cramped ghettos of America, which were a symbol of modern urban
dystopia. Bronx, New York, where it all began, was burning with youthful angst
of the Black community, but was also creating a cultural movement with the help
of the newfound technology made available to them. Rapping and DJ-ing/sampling
was central to the movement but it also was a lifestyle- it was a fashion, it
was art- that aggressive and oppositional and openly challenged the norms set
by the predominantly white male art fraternity. Jazz had refused to be on time,
rock and roll had refused to be quiet, and hip-hop refused to be melodic.
Remixing the blues:
The hip-hop culture and the trend of using samples and
DJ-ing gave rise to the concept of creating remixes-alternate versions of the
original song, generally with a faster beat/tempo. Remixes proved to be a
success, especially in the Indian scenario. The older generation songs which
had become out-of-fashion were revived and fine-tuned and a remix was born.
This remix catered to the older generation (because of the nostalgia that the
song induced in them) and the younger generation (which was happy to dance to a
groovy beat). Thus, a song was repackaged to cater to the needs of the changing
times.
Art in contemporary India also evolved in a similar
fashion. New Trends in Remixing the Blues is an exhibition concept idea, which seeks to
celebrate the stylistic reaction of a post digital aesthetics. There was a
gradual move towards the digital during globalisation and the boom in the art
market but with its collapse the post-digital aesthetics was initiated into
contemporary Indian art and there was a return to the painterly. There was a
growing rejection of the glossy, digitised surface in favour of a more
unfinished/coarse texture of the artwork. The familiar (common) digital tropes
of purity, pristine sound, images and perfect copies are abandoned in favour of
errors, glitches, marks, fissures, and artefacts which have been inspired from
the trend of the almost viral spread of remixes. The disturbance was welcomed
as it broke the surface tension and rendered the artwork tactile.
Deeply committed to social and ecological sustainability, and am a frugal innovation enthusiast. I am an educationist, art historian, and experience designer living between Gandhinagar and Kolkata. Currently Head of the MDes Integrated Programme Department at Unitedworld Institute of Design and Mentoring UX design and research and a design consultant.
I have extensively written about Contemporary Indian Art, Medieval Architecture and Interdisciplinary Design Practice. Mentored social innovation, and community interventions, curated for galley spaces and for large public-based festivals.
Ex Managing Editor of Art&Deal Magazine and the founding Conveyor MATI (Management of Art Treasures of India).
Brick layer+ Co-Founder of Kolkata International Performance Art Festival.
Since 2014 I have also been a part of the NINE Schools of Art collective working towards developing workshop-based teaching methods for art, design and creative theory.
