A reflection on an international exhibition of contemporary art and deliberating on the concept of this year’s biennale’ ‘Possibilities of a non-alienated life’ from a critical perspective. I explore on the basis of my experience at the exhibition, if what I came across was a spectacle in itself or a reality?
When I entered the gates of Aspinwall house, I was welcomed with the concept note for the Biennale on a wall, speaking of Guy Debord’s society of spectacle. Anita Dube writes of ‘Debord’s warnings of a world mediated primarily through images - a society of the spectacle - and that such a society is fascism’s main ally is something we are discovering all over the world today’. I couldn’t stop but think to myself, isn’t that what a biennale is? A spectacle? But then I was also reminded of how in our present age, we are much closer to a representation than its reality, closer to its appearance than the essence. Many of the art festivals in our country have become just that, a spectacle. A stage, where a man is brought closer to the representation of a society but not to its reality. Yet, the desire to explore more of the stories from the margins of “dominant narratives speaking: not as victims, but as futurisms’ cunning and sentient sentinels” forced my ever so critical mind to a rest.
I could begin to see the similar voices, from Tania Bruguera’s letter of protest and her denial to exhibit her work, protesting the legalisation of censorship in Cuba to Sue Williamson’s Message from the Atlantic Passage; from the voice of the sticks banging on the ground together i.e. B.V. Suresh’s Canes of Wrath, to Sunil Gupta and Charan Singh’s Desire and Dissent featuring photographic and video installations of queer life in India; from Martha Rosler’s Body beautiful or Beauty knows no pain, a photographic representation of women and domesticity, deconstructing dominant systems questioning another spectacle of gloss and culture; to Prabhakar Pachpute Resilient Bodies in the Era of Resistance, depicting the plight of farmers and reiterating the image of farmer’s bodies as site of their resistance; through it all, we confront an odd music of oppression and pain.
I recognize the importance of such spaces, where certain artworks, sculptures, images speak to a viewer’s conscience and especially in today’s times when a largely oppressive society and its leaders are ready to censor or ban any or all forms of arts whenever they get an opportunity. Biennale has in one way or the other tried to descend from its mere representational aspect to creating a reality or at least initiated a dialogue within these contradictions. Dube has succeeded in using a spectacle to create a comradeship of misery and oppression, somewhere urging their spectators towards contemplation and reflection, and also dialogue.
Although, I still feel that we have long way to go from creating art as a mere object of contemplation to using it as objects of resistance and collectivization. It is not to suggest that when we look at say Prabhakar Pachpute’s work, Resilient Bodies in the Era of Resistance, one doesn’t feel the plight of the farming communities whose struggles have been time and again ignored by the mainstream. It just reiterates what Deobard said, the fact that everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation, as an object of mere contemplation. The art community in our country has a looming threat upon its head, and as Tania Brugera’s country faces the dangerous times of censorship on one of the most important mediums of expressions, it forces me to think if it is time, we start using our art not as mere forms of contemplation and expression but as forms of collectivization.
I am not saying that, we humans shouldn’t be allowed to contemplate, it is the first stage towards action but on the one hand where we are using art as representation that is allowing its spectators to speak to their conscience, we should descend further and allow the subjects of those representations to use their realities as weapons of resistance. In simple words, subjects of these arts such as the farmers, or the LGBTI communities, who are undergoing the same forms of alienation, same forms of oppression, can unite and be allowed to unite if the distance between them in an image and us as a spectator can be removed. I felt the Biennale’s attempt to blur this distance, was successful to en extent, from introducing the idea of Pavilion, which depicts an idea of a free space of expression and other such different workshops and activities. I could very well see a tool of the fascists, as Dube mentioned, the society of a spectacle, being used to its own advantage of creating a spectacle of the images and representations, oppositions and protests into a dialogue rather than a one-way show.I could finally see the politics of friendship taking place, though it still was a spectacle nevertheless. I do not know if pedagogy and pleasure were sharing a drink, there definitely was pleasure in the orchestra of pain however there was very less of pedagogy around.
I could feel myself drifting further away from reality, for reality happens all around us all the time, to which we are ignorant. The stage is always running, and we are its performers. The othering of oppression and pain, that needs to be minimized. We need to come closer to our own realities, to the gays and the homosexuals around us, to the transgenders around us, to the women around us, to the farmers around us, they are constantly around us, if we haven’t forgotten. In reality, the stage, the spectacle takes us further away from the reality. An image, is just that, an image. The oppression and struggles depicted across artworks were real, yet I as a spectator felt far away from that pain. These subjects are part of our world, we confront them in our everyday life and still we do not realize them.
Biennale is in its fourth year, with this year’s work raising questions on the kind of society we live in and choices we make. While gliding through these works, attending workshops and listening to the conversations around me, I do feel that it was a reflective experience and would recommend for everyone out there to join in the process, even though it might end up being a spectacle,it’s a spectacle that made me think. The representations around Biennale, has the power and energy to create some beautiful reflection and raise important questions in the present context. I think that’s what Biennale did for me, it made me reflect and look more closer to my reality, to find and experience the different forms of pain and oppression, to look more closer to home, for it’s the spectators, us, who eventually take the stage as actors.
And it isn’t long when our identities would be a subject of a spectacle too.
