After nearly eight years of work, there is a need to pause, given the leap of responsibility one is about to take within these coming months. The Osian’s Archive, Documentation & Research Centre (ADRC) for Fine Arts & Cinema should become accessible to the public by June, and the foundation stone for The University of Osian’s will be laid by August 2003. Thus the unique Auction House-Archive-University model will come into existence. It will be the first attempt anywhere in the world to build an Arts Institution on such idealistic and integrated terms, without seeking patronage from any of the three traditional pillars of funding, i.e. governmental, corporate sponsorship or private philanthropy. The question is its sustainability.
This brief note is also probably the first time I am sharing certain thoughts on one’s work in a relatively direct manner. At present I am thinking back to the obsessive innocence which drove me to return home, and how that passionate naiveté came to formulate its idealism, and how the conflict of idealism with practicality came to formulate its implementing strategies, and how these strategies needing to obey clear principles, have now come to clarify a much fuller context within which one’s evolving vision stays true to innocence, passion, idealism, strategy and principle, while serving a purpose far beyond the individual obsession.
Sitting in a distant British garden, India was always seen by myself as a great land, full of the curiosity to know the nature of the human mind and spirit, to pursue that inner voice without fear, to relentlessly search out the freedom of one’s spirit with great love for the process and all experiences, every kind, no qualification. It had that great jigar which could absorb all, respecting the individual stamina to be true to oneself while exciting the spirit to keep on pursuing different paths, enjoying the delights of all value systems, from an awe for nature and a respect for the smallest creatures, to a refined aesthetic which found beauty and subtlety in all things, all forms, all processes, despite a vast vulgarity rooted in pandering to the lowest common denominator. Soon these myriad delights would instinctively merge into a clarity allowing one to quietly smile, detached from all, yet deeply involved, able to inspire any one, yet having no wish to act or achieve. This in a nutshell was my romanticized perception of India, her responsibility to her people. I genuinely felt that she needed help in sustaining this journey, for with new passion and idealism, she best possessed the temerity to inspire the rest of humankind to move with a deeper universalistic vision, beyond themselves, to bring a love and joy into all processes which would instinctively solve many of the human dilemmas and tackle most of our material concerns with greater compassion and insight. Virtually upon these thoughts I returned home, after thirty years, in fits and spurts during 1994-5.
Since then, I have dedicated myself to grasping how such a vision was to be made into a living reality, for everything current seemed in great contradiction to the romance of those motivating thoughts. Also, as with all, there have been moments of disappointment,
and if I am to be blindly honest then at times I feel India has drifted too far into a mediocrity of spirit and action, making my early understanding of her a mockery, so feeling that all is genuinely lost, and at best we can just tend to our little garden, and let the vastness of India fend for herself, for she is out of hand, out of control, beyond the realm of any individual vision and action. But then the moment passes and I return to the reality that everything is indeed possible, that the deepest idealism is very practical, that the most stringent constraints can all be changed. If ever there was a nation of assimilation, though rooted in centuries of civilization and wisdom, it is India, having that limitless spirit to grasp all which was beyond and outside herself, and yet continually capable of returning to that which traditionally she has always tried to become.
And so I chose my little corner to begin battle, knowing full well that the later war zones are far off, and like all good strategies, we must create energy and make fertile the grounds in distant places before entering the heart of the pain. And as with all natural warriors of non-violence, an alternative value system rooted in a genuine creative life, capable of absorbing all with equanimity, with uncertainty always given the freedom to reveal herself on her own terms, seemingly in place, and waiting to be shared with many. Surprisingly, the Indian modern & contemporary arts were chosen as the starting ground. It was a subject I knew nothing about even as late as 1995. Yet, after many random insights and experiences came to coalesce within oneself, it was clearly evident that through this subject all the arts of India could find renewed energy and support, creating new linkages, revealing the unifying threads across culture, seeping into all aspects of society, over the coming decades.
Today, despite much progress in one’s work, the next objective still feels afar. The day India places the arts at the heart of her development policies still seems remote. The belief that within the value system of artistic creativity lies the answer to tackling many of India’s present and future dilemmas is recognized by very few. The deep links between creative introspection, aesthetics, ethics, economics, spirituality and wider developmental concerns, are barely appreciated, at any level, from the educational curricula of schools & colleges to the national polity. Economic and religious forces still have no credible creative counter, which prevents them from riding roughshod over all issues.
Thus the arts need to move even faster and deeper in building its infrastructure, its infrascape, as I termed it, because the contextual atmosphere and the love required is as pivotal to infrastructure building as any material underpinning of the arts. It is only when the arts will build their own infrastructure, on their own terms, without compromising their creative integrity, yet internally generating vast wealth to carry forward all the archiving, research, experimenting and disseminating processes, while not being dependent on the traditional pillars of patronage, that a genuine Indian renaissance of the arts and her aesthetics will be instituted. Without this renaissance no long-term credibility is going to emerge regarding the potential role of the arts in developmental policies.
Obviously, infrastructure building on this scale demands at least a ten to fifteen year horizon for the first phase, before it can be said that change is now irreversible, that a sustainable momentum has been created whereby all obstacles will be overcome. Now, eight years on, I finally do feel we are amid the flow of a genuine momentum.
When one’s work began in earnest during 1996, I had given myself ten years to build a great university for the Indian arts & humanities, from scratch, without the traditional support systems, evolving a new framework for academic research and artistic experimentation in five subjects - the Fine Arts, Cinema, Architecture, Philosophy & Literature – while simultaneously building the required financial self-generating systems, and step by step involving the intelligentsia and the wider public in different aspects of art & education infrastructure building. An Auction House was thus the first vehicle chosen for generating the required wealth; Osian’s was established in 2000, as India’s first Auction House for the Arts.
Yet, the traditional structure of the auction house as made famous by Sotheby’s & Christie’s was never seen to be ideal for the Indian context, especially given the early stage of the learning curve at which the collecting public of Indian art – domestic and international - found themselves. Also, becoming simply an agent was insufficient a role if a significant redistribution of wealth was to be put into place from day one. Hence, Osian’s also decided to tackle the key responsibility of market-making. Through the unique concept of the curated auction, one has been able to significantly restructure and re-prioritize the whole financial spectrum upon which the Indian art world today functions. This essentially became possible given the uncompromising focus one had upon being true to the history of the subject rather than promoting individual artists. Pricing was clearly linked to historical significance. History was laid open for the public to study, analyze and criticize like never before. During the last ten years the public awareness and respect regarding the history of the subject has grown exponentially. This historical objectivity became the bedrock of all market-making activities hence assuring the goodwill and trust essential for any successful auction house, especially one which takes a principal position in the subject. In times of rampant historical manipulation, this focus became all the more critical. In this regard our publications have become pivotal sources of reference & delight across the world, from student to scholar, collector to critic.
My earlier experiments with HEART (The Tuli Foundation for Holistic Education & Art; established 1996) and the belief that a charitable institution and volunteer individual efforts would indeed play a key role in art infrastructure building, though somewhat misplaced, were pivotal to the progression. Idealism was then at its most passionate and raw, to the point of being perceived as arrogant. That it took us nearly four years of running a charity as a self-generating concern, until one recognized the importance of material wealth at the age of thirty-five, and that too after being trained as an economist, is but a reflection of the great delusions idealism carries. That today I nurture one’s delusions as much as reason, is but another twist of the Indian story. However, the change in strategy was essentially triggered by the need to fight against various vested interests, embedded in a complacent and corrupt system. The experience finally made one realize that without the clarity and force of economic respect, no genuine material infrastructure for the arts (or even the gods) can be built. To most it may seem a simple and obvious realization, but for me, it came as a rude shock. Thus after Intuitive-Logic: The Next Step (1999) I decided to widen the approach and adopted a corporate, rather than a charitable structure to take forward one’s vision. It was the correct decision.
However, a sadness lay in the relative loss of innocence, in recognizing the limits of volunteer efforts as against professionalism, in losing a bit of faith in the public sector’s sense of fairness, despite recognizing the genuine idealism in many bureaucrats, even though their hands are tied on many fronts. It was also very clear that it was essentially within government that most of the individuals existed who genuinely perceived and recognized the concept of India as a holistic unit, who were constantly trying to see the larger picture, despite exceptions to the rule.
These early experiences served one well when the structure of Osian’s was being planned. It was to be a new redefined Auction House, which would generate sufficient revenues, which in turn would be redistributed so as to build the knowledge bases by which the arts would grow with increasing the public level of aesthetic discrimination, while simultaneously creating a credible and vast financial asset base by which a whole new re-engineering of the nation-building process could be initiated.
Thus, today both a world-class Archive & the foundations of The University of Osian’s can be seen to have emerged from an auction house, within three years. Thus the unique model of Auction House-Archive-University is now ready to be tested more severely than ever before. After all, it will only be after sustaining this second phase of cross-subsidization, with the bottomless pits called ‘Archive’ & ‘University’, that one will be able to speak of a new model for art institution building. If sustainable, the model will change the attitudes by which we grasp the arts, their potential role in the developmental framework & the processes for transforming individual vision into institutional formats.
In a way, few would believe the scale of risk, obsession and madness employed in building Osian’s. Thus I worry about its ability to become a replicable model to be bettered in a systematic manner. Further, the ferocious integrity, to the point of complete isolation, with which the process has been taken forward is also difficult to replicate. The greatest individual strength can also become the key institutional weakness. The single-mindedness initially isolated all, besides a few loved ones, to the point of forcing the public to believe the very opposite of the truth, for indeed truth is much stranger than fiction, and in India there definitely can be smoke without fire.
The key is never to react to public opinion when convinced of its short-sightedness and ignorance.
Anyway, as Osian’s now waits to be tested, I feel a few important guidelines need to be explained. Maybe it is best to clarify some of the key contradictions embedded within the practice, whose absorption is essential, and in whose reconciliation a fuller answer emerges so as to open out the next phase of growth. These issues have ranged from fusing individual obsessions with institutional discipline, charitable ethics with corporate efficiencies, intellectual & creative integrity with economic and financial due diligence, aesthetic subtleties with wider reach, a myriad fragmented egos with the need for a cohesive collective platform, the imposed scale and pace of India with the ambitions of an individual.
Firstly, having experimented with both the charitable and the corporate legal structures, I recognize benefits and disadvantages in both systems for building an arts infrastructure. Creating a new institutional entity and framework demands taking the best from both structures, but not in some piecemeal fashion.
The arts cannot be assumed to be a normal commercial commodity. It is a public good with very strong positive externalities, and hence normal market mechanisms in allocating scarce resources amid competing market ends is not the most desirable or effective way to deal with the situation. Further, corporate management frameworks, commercial valuation processes and institutional norms regarding the work ethic, especially those dealing with the specialization of labor, delegation of duties, motivation of human resources, sequencing of cross-subsidization policies, and the like, are all fundamentally very different in a corporate set-up as compared to an arts institution, especially on the terms suggested. Further, the lessons to be learnt are not so clear-cut, and can be very misleading.
For example, a very clear process of cross-subsidization and inter-linkages between cultural disciplines is required so as to build infrastructure, with correct sequencing of activities, with each artistic discipline already placed at a different stage of material development, and so each requiring different levels of support and awareness-building. Let us take the case of Indian film memorabilia. The interest and growing artistic recognition being received by the Indian film poster and the visual accessories of film making was initially only possible because of the piggybacking and cross-subsidization the modern and contemporary Indian fine arts provided the subject. Simultaneously, if the film poster receives greater aesthetic attention, it may become easier for the fine arts to reach a wider and more receptive audience throughout small town India. Obviously, this recursive process was only possible after the fine arts reached a certain aesthetic and financial maturity and public credibility. At the same time, the aesthetic and socio-anthropological interest in the film poster can only be sustained if a basic archival and documentation effort, mindset and respectability can be achieved within the film community. This in-turn demands, establishing a credible financial value for the items, without which little genuine effort towards the preservation and restoration of the subject will occur. All previous attempts at making the public fall in love with the art form of the film poster, to respect its rarity, uniqueness and historical significance, to take full advantage of its research possibilities, had minimal impact, simply because certain sequential processes of infrastructure building were not well understood; the aesthetic, intellectual and material priorities had no synergies.
The issue of finding the right balance between incorporating the values of a charitable and corporate institution, finds a parallel problem in the manner by which the intelligentsia has developed its (non) relationship with material wealth. The academia and the artistic community has always possessed reluctance to handling material wealth and its wider responsibilities. It is a norm of our specialized framework that patronage or some form of economic support is required from outside for the academic and artistic sectors, for the latter to survive and thrive. This assumption has led to the slow but sure disintegration of the potential of academic and artistic integrity to nurture a value system of its own, which in turn could act as the key buffer in disciplining the arrogance of economic and religious forces in daily life.
Thus, whatever the intentions of financial support, the point is that it carries a value system, which cannot help but compromise the significance and integrity of artistic creativity and intellectual rigor. The task is not to end all outside support, but to rebuild the terms by which the balance for internal self-sufficiency is established, hand in hand with building new bridges of dialogue and interaction with all sectors of society. Today, the power of knowledge is more than evident. Few can deny its ability to provide itself credible financial value. However, the task is to also build the institutional and legal mechanisms by which it can take on its own internal research and growth requirements from internally generated funds, while sustaining an ever-growing respect for its own values. Thus the intelligentsia needs to first recognize the scale of responsibility upon their shoulders, then they require to come together upon some cohesive platform, capable of absorbing all differences and bringing out a focus on common principles, and thereafter they need to set about rebuilding every facet of the educational curricula so that the learning process is completely re-examined, tackling a myriad issues, from the role of specialization of knowledge to the concept of art as financial investment, an asset from which a whole nation building process can be re-engineered.
By establishing iACEi (The Council for Indian Arts, Culture, Education & its Infrastructure), so as to help unite the creative intelligentsia, upon a common platform, and take forward many of the infrastructure building issues discussed herein, a positive step has been taken. Time will reveal its catalytic effectiveness. Regarding the valuation of the arts into a credible financial asset, so that one day even pension and mutual funds recognise the value and security in art, there still remains a maturing process, for the task is ongoing, but it will be fulfilled in the very near future.
Monday, March 30, 2009
India: Where lies her Genius ? (2002)
I
Underlying Dissensions
Where is the Indian genius rooted? In what form can human creativity mould this genius? How can this creativity be continually nurtured to build a great civilization? For it must be upon the strength & weaknesses of this genius that a nation becomes virtuous and an inspiration to humanity. Any other spring of energy will only take it so far. Only with an intrinsic creative strength at the root is there a chance to stay true to one’s ever-evolving destiny.
For any individual, as with the nation, genius is rooted in the search of knowing oneself, in sustaining this knowledge and experience to new breaking points, until the search becomes an inbuilt discipline; a discipline rooted on an uncompromising wish to be true to the process, beyond the specific, thus creating key facets of one’s character and nature, which change and evolve at any moment but do not bend on principle to any worldly pressure.
Yet, upon every new cycle, both individual & nation must re-personalize the search, totally immersing oneself in the process, if only to grasp the elusive detachment inbuilt into every process. Through the ages India has seemingly honed this virtue, but today the principle seems to be bending. Economic injustice & a re-assertive religious identity are applying unsustainable pressures. However, this is now being felt the world over. Economic developmental models are revealing a stagnancy and bankruptcy of vision to simultaneously tackle the financial inequity, emotional superficiality, environmental degradation, aesthetic vulgarity and spiritual barrenness of daily life. Further, as religious identification comes into conflict with concepts of nationalism and citizenship, many preconceptions of peaceful co-existence are being splintered wide open. More than most, India is vulnerable to these changes.
Of course, these tensions may indeed open new doors for grasping the ingredients of our universal glue. Yet, equally they will cause fear and paranoia as each tries to defend and barricade their preconceived boundaries. Having emotionally tolerated more uncertainty than most, without building the reinforcing material institutions, India is naturally most susceptible as the temper begins to rise within her human pressure-cooker.
The flip side of this steamy background is that India also has the greatest potential to lead and inspire the world in finding new developmental processes and options. More than ever, she needs to clarify and evolve a bold new vision for her civilization building process.
One aspect of this vision demands that she becomes confident and secure about her heritage, allowing it to melt with a deep awareness into the present, serving the future direction with a joy, rather than to be treated like some albatross, desperate to be distorted, denied or censored at every vexing junction. In this context it is imperative to grasp a philosophical perspective regarding history. My recent focus on various kinds of histories has forced me to open out my thinking on the matter.
At times I have thought that, as death is inbuilt into life so is history into the present. Living life (the present) to the full with fearlessness comes from joyously grasping the nature of death (history), its honesty, inherent function and need. Sooner or later this realization dawns upon the individual or nation. Thereafter a surge of activity digs deep into the past, eking out relevance and lessons to mould the future, recognizing no discontinuity with any age or period of time, though clearly aware of the disruptions, continual change and a hopeful evolution. In this process, one needs to bring an instinctive daily grasp of the vast flow of time, revealing how death, timelessness, history and the individual are entwined. In absorbing these forces one must be able to transform the heaviness of heritage into a positive motivating force for daily life, rather than leading to fatalistic retreat or inaction as the past norm has been. This is a very difficult task, but for a spiritually rooted country such as India, it is all the more imperative we seek out various paths to bring tangible relief to the individual, without artificially simplifying or ritualizing some of the most complex questions of daily life.
For example, I had always scoffed at this idea of continuity of the human spirit after death, that is, reincarnation and the like. Yet upon the death of a close loved one most of us instinctively recognize how implicitly we imbibe the best qualities of that person, how we try to be true to at least some part of their dreams and wishes, and how suddenly an essential characteristic of their personality is part of us, becomes us, and we are living some part of the day for them, carrying on what must not be discontinued, tolerating what once our nature may not have accepted. Hence, the human spirit, without premeditation, without any necessary belief in gods or outer-world experiences, suddenly feels eternal, to have at least sustained an extra generation.
I mention this point, because today many recognize that a most superficial dialogue and rapport exists between most humans, especially the youth and the elderly, and yet within the immediate family a great love still abides. This duality of parallel worlds, where the local and specific so overwhelms the universal and abstract, is a dangerous and narrow path. In a way these double standards reflect the lack of understanding and respect the individual has with regard to grasping their role in society, their responsibility to their common heritage, and the very nature and role of love in bridging the specific and abstract, the local and the universal.
It will be in the manner by which we harness love to inspire the participation of others into a coherent movement which will decide whether the Indian arts can indeed build a world class infrastructure and support system. It will be with this institutionalized love that the existing educational framework will sooner or later dissolve to be absorbed by that which a deeper joy of learning, experimentation and participation demands. It is also this love, which will help India find peace with her history, irrespective of the losses or victories. This peace is a precondition of progress. This in turn implies that the possibility of manipulating the histories needs to be minimized, which requires the creation of new and wiser formats and methodologies for the grasping and dissemination of the subject. Creating new formats by which we integrate as much as is feasible and desirable, with coherence and relevance, is a key task of infrastructure building. This catalogue (and the attached processes it carries along) introduces the possibility of one such format.
In a way, to express some of these ideas so briefly will cause natural misunderstandings, and maybe this platform is inappropriate, but that itself becomes a reason for writing herein. Obviously I am convinced that the auction-exhibition catalogue can become a format for much else, and soon even become the basis of a textbook. For at every level of infrastructure-building one is looking to cut away preconceptions which have limited the mind in grasping the nature of artistic creativity, and its inbuilt potential of building its own home, on its own terms, and in that process reaching out to all facets of society, with a new value-system which forces the individual to re-examine deeper today than they would yesterday.
II
Artistic Creativity as a Developmental Force
On the wider civilization-building processes, simple economic growth amid a welfare, semi-socialist system, directed by established concepts of profit-maximization subject to constraints, needs to be deeply re-examined and made more effective to serve wealth generation and its implied redistribution. Restructuring the corporate ethos and mechanisms, at least in the realm of allocating resources towards semi-public goods such as art, becomes a key objective. Simultaneously, the spiritual dimension of organized religion needs to be brought to the fore, transforming blind faith and superstitious superficiality with a new introspective, philosophical & speculative attitude. A process of internalizing our gods will sooner or later become inevitable.
Yet how?
Between these two dominant forces of economics and godliness, lies the fragile and unprepared world of artistic creativity and scholarship. It is the duty of this third force to transform and discipline the other two, and in the process reveal its own potential for generating values by which civilization can proudly progress. However, for such a possibility to even become credible in the eyes of our people, let alone succeed in daily practice, a vast material infrastructure for the arts needs to be created on new terms of reference and idealism.
One key aspect of this process being that the arts must not be dependent on either government patronage, corporate sponsorship nor private philanthrophy as the main sources for achieving their financial self-sufficiency. A new internally self-generating system of wealth generation and redistribution needs to be developed by the arts. The success of this infrastructure building process will to a large extent determine the chances of India emerging with a developmental vision, uniquely rooted in her artistic and philosophical genius and heritage. Merging from inception the Auction House with the Archive, Documentation & Research Centre reflects this principle in practice. Can the Indian intelligentsia and creative community, who have famously shied away from fulfilling any wealth generating responsibilities, so forcing others to implement their idealism, be restructured and re-galvanized into fulfilling this duty? It is a question and process worth pursuing. Taking up this challenge will demand a major restructuring of the traditional role expected of the artist-activist-scholar. Hand in hand, the institutional framework, which will carry and nurture the individual, while being malleable to the madness of great individuality, must also be given a firm platform upon which it can leap out from its traditional support systems and pillars of patronage and constraint.
This demands a new sustainable model, first to complement and then to absorb the existing system. One is occupied in trying to define and create the basis and reach of this framework and its processes. Whether Osian’s and myself or others who follow succeed, will depend on the integration of many forces, which normally would never be magnetized into a sustainable coherence. It is now that the ability of the artistic creative process to absorb contradictory forces, on a scale, which India demands, will be truly tested. Whether artistic creativity has within it the material and spiritual glue, will be best demonstrated if it can create its own infrastructure, on its own terms, reflecting all the introspective, experimental and passionately-detached values which make it uniquely capable of visualizing, let alone implementing such ambitions.
III
She Challenges All
In my mind the creation of such a model and framework demands very few established rules to be followed, yet an unswerving obedience to certain axioms (for lack of a better term) is critical for success. Pivotal in this regard is that each project must possess a certain vast scale if it is to play an infrastructure-building role in India. At least there must be inbuilt the evolutionary logic of scale, perceived by enough to give it the chance and time to grow to the level India respects and demands. One has tried to be true to this rule, in all projects, despite knowing how vulnerable and stretched this requirement would make oneself and the infant institution. Yet one knew this was not an issue open to compromise, irrespective of cost. It is not ambition or a sense of energetic grandeur alone, but a simple need, which dictates scale. This idea demands deeper explanation.
Before returning to India, the ability to absorb all contradictions seemed the nature of the intellect, ever restless and rejoicing in the continual self-criticisms of change. Eventually, this instinct to absorb everything found new relevance & unity of voice as one came to grasp the nature and flow of India. My balance and direction instinctively changed when I decided to fully re-introduce myself to her. After more than twenty-five years of benign western hospitality it was time to discover what was deepest within me. Not a flicker of adjustment was required.
Yet there is no rest for any individual who honestly surrenders to serve her fully. Working for her demands completeness, an integration of spirit, mind and heart so tortuous in daily implementation that most have indeed shied away from taking on her challenge. Today, most do not even dare to work on the quality, scale and pace India demands. To maintain and nurture her integrity and idealism is beyond the endurance of most individuals and institutions. Hence the gradual growth of divisions within our country, where the local and regional emphasis seems not to complement the national ethos but rival it, leading to a daily weakening of the Indian, in its purest sense.
The task of genuinely taking her fully on board, into one’s embrace, has virtually been given up by most. We are now barely holding on with god’s energy, as our whispers wishing to be heard keeps up the motivation and bravado: that all of you will be carried forward, whatever is your nature, with every seeming contradiction which you have tried to fuse into our mass of humanity, with every value you have tried to let live freely within our traditions and anarchic spirit, with all this baggage, I shall fearlessly carry and nurture you; to evolve deeper once again, to try and be true to your heritage, while revealing those great eternal and universal values which you have always kept at your core, which has allowed you to be yourself at all junctures, so allowing the innocence of inner endurance to be instinctively absorbed which few civilisations can claim to still possess let alone harness. Yet the timeless fearlessness, which was at the heart of your day has now been barnacled over with every minor distraction. They have lost their context. Each local, specific, regional, communal, individual, institutional request can no longer find their due place and recognition in your timeless fearlessness which should have become this great ground within which
our children would be playing and rejoicing. Yet no, and so it is time to re-create this fearless ground, giving new space and context to all the little barnacles of life, through a system of merit and dedication; through building the infrastructure by which each knows their accountability is now only to grow, reaching a peak of public interaction whereby standards will have to continually progress.
Yet this can be no ordinary infrastructure. The demands upon her are indeed unnatural. No world civilisation has the daily pressures of so much contradictory power pressing into each fused corner of the day. In a way, that is why many still shout that India has created no great civilisation to inspire humanity, for she is unable to fully feed and cloth herself, she is unable to truly educate and fill pride in her own people, she is unable to give justice and the motivation to excel to her people, so where then is her freedom? Where is the basic ground of timeless fearlessness upon which she is to come out to the world and say: come to me, learn from me, rejoice at this civilisation being itself, come share that great energy which has been in this land for centuries, come and share from my limitless bounty of the finest minds and human creativity; we have preserved it all, we have nurtured it all so that it abounds in every daily act, it is manifest at each corner, that great beam of creative energy, reflecting the greatest ideas and experiences of the intellect and heart.
However, today we cannot really ask anyone to come with great confidence, we cannot give or share, forget giving and sharing with outsiders, we ourselves as a nation do not even know our heritage and its continuum: what we are, who have we been, how is the past to be fused into the present so that it can daily serve every future moment. None of this we are today able to grasp and implement. Instead of our integrity being maintained in its entirety, with that vast idealism motivating each act of national direction, we instead have all the little barnacles eating their parasitic way into the day. We are too close in reaching a fever of anger. This anger we must now transform into a positive momentum and a creative outburst. In less than ten years India can once again become the greatest inspiration for humanity, and it requires nothing but going to our genius. A new confidence is imminent.
Returning to the concept of scale. If seen purely from the commercial or practical perspective, no project of significant Indian scale would be undertaken by a reasonable individual. Hence the government has always had the responsibility and burden of infrastructure building. Yet it is time to share their load and slowly give new energy and freedom to this process. Increasingly one’s work has already forced the art world to re-examine the standards and pace by which they engage with activity. The force of change is slowly becoming irreversible. The essential lower layers of infrastructure building - the ‘dirty work’ of awareness building, documentation and preservation, financial benchmarking, systemizing the interlinking of processes between disciplines, enpowering marginalised players, fulfilling the due diligence procedures against fraud, strengthening the domestic market so as to lead international trends, and the like- which few individuals take on, as rewards are less than zero, are being laid open amid a diversity of thought processes, power groups and platforms.
Further, the work of many, so far gone unrecognized will be further revealed in the years to come. Herein lies an essential cause for the previous lack of growth. Most in the art world have felt neglected and have not been given their just rewards. Even basic courtesy for the years of dedication has not been shown to most. Naturally there is a sadness and frustration. This has led to an insecurity of spirit which in turn leads to a defensive attitude, hence the infamous crab-like behaviour by many, so making a process of nurturing each other so difficult. Yet I feel a significant change is very near. Overnight the insecurity will dissolve once a belief establishes that fairness will enter the system, rewarding merit and integrity. Very shortly, the creative community and intelligentsia will indeed move as a united force before our people, of that I am convinced, revealing the vast potential that artistic creativity possesses as a means for developing society.
IV
Before amber, and still late
Next to scale, the concept of time or pace assumed by the project and vision must be such that it incessantly knocks away at India’s deeply embedded preconception of timelessness and her complacency of allowing things to find their own time, or to fit into the pace of the daily traffic, pandering to the lowest common denominator.
Grasping the flow of traffic and its substratum has always been one of the most genuine and unbiased indicators of the pace and mood of India. For example, in every big town each car is ready to speed off before amber shines, with such hurry, yet few are capable of reaching a meeting on time. At every corner a random bottleneck awaits, one day some lazy cow may decide to sit in the middle of the road, and within two gyrations we transform her squat her into a roundabout, re-disciplining the traffic anew. In some small town a joyously deluded sod erects a marriage tent with municipal connivance, forcing the traffic to accept the road as a dead end, as will the newly wed couple deny their delusions. The scooter driver avoids hitting a pothole with greater dedication and care than hitting a pedestrian. A rickshaw cyclist carries the full body of a broken jeep up a steep incline as the foot of a passing scooter-wallah pushes him from behind. Over the years these stray and seemingly trivial moments have been absorbed with radically different reactions and consequences by passing observers and participants.
Today tolerance has sunk to an all-time low. The slightest excuse triggers rage, forcing any accelerator to run down every stray dog if sure of escaping detection. The value of courtesy has never been grasped let alone its selfless quality appreciated, but today tiredness may ironically invite the possibility.
Whether legal lethargy or human overabundance, the fact remains that in India pace is compromised at every junction, and at times just a simple legally painted yellow-box junction can solve most traffic problems. They must be a handful of countries left in the world, such as India, who have not taken to the systematic use of yellow-box junctions at a crossroads. The time, energy, anger and waste that could be avoided by institutionalizing this no zone box into our roads is astounding and yet it is as if such geometric forms go against Indian modernism. On another tangent, one can barely think of a handful of artists who had any clue or inclination of using the straight line and its geometric potential in their artistic journeys. After all, the concept and demands of Indian space has forced the zigzag to become our instinctive straight line, as with Husain’s line which once cut through space, intuitively reflecting the Indian ethos and its time-space relationship.
I raise these images because today the uniform highways are still far and few between, hence the pace at which any work can proceed is littered with minefields. One is forced to fight too many irrelevant battles, especially if one pioneers or initiates change. The burden to pioneer is very large, to the extent of becoming a significant deterrent. Hence the risk-taking spirit is minimal. This needs to be fundamentally changed. Yet only by showing the way can change be inspired. Today for every criticism the duty must be to create the viable alternative.
Along with scale and pace, it is the unqualified dedication towards the pursuit of excellence, that spirit of resolve towards a sense of detail, an aspiration for perfection in all processes, which cannot be compromised. It is a cliché easily abused today, upon the lips of every mediocrity, but nonetheless an ethos embedded in quality and merit can still become the norm. It is a myth to say the populace will not appreciate a certain refinement, or that economics does not allow them the luxury of subtlety, or that the forces pandering to the lowest common denominator will overwhelm all else… these I am convinced are minor myths, easily destroyed within a few years. The work will speak for itself on this front. The respect for knowledge and aesthetic delights will only increase, our people will indeed once again fall in love with the arts and the world they open up, and through this process of falling in love, will re-energize attitudes and markets, generating wealth on a scale few could have imagined.
In this context my responsibility can extend only so far, and maybe prudence is demanded of me, as I have maintained in the past. Yet, now the process feels credible enough, hence I openly state, that within less than five years, all the areas associated with the arts, will grow exponentially, and just to put a figure amid the hounds, wealth in excess of Rs. 800 – 900 crore will be generated and redistributed, from a base less than one tenth that amount today. For now economics will overwhelm all, until comes its day to be disciplined. Inevitably, from the value systems of artistic creativity will also emerge that counter-discipline to economic abuse. Therein lies the beauty of opening out the pandora’s box of India’s cultural heritage and its aesthetic energy and pride. Success will be judged on how effectively those hundreds of crores will be redistributed so as to build a world-class integrated infrastructure for the Indian arts, culture and her education. The onus, more than ever, is upon the individual creative mind to maintain the integrity of the infrastructure building process. If this rare opportunity is not grasped now, it may become too late for the present generation of Indians to truly inspire the rest of humanity through her arts and culture.
Underlying Dissensions
Where is the Indian genius rooted? In what form can human creativity mould this genius? How can this creativity be continually nurtured to build a great civilization? For it must be upon the strength & weaknesses of this genius that a nation becomes virtuous and an inspiration to humanity. Any other spring of energy will only take it so far. Only with an intrinsic creative strength at the root is there a chance to stay true to one’s ever-evolving destiny.
For any individual, as with the nation, genius is rooted in the search of knowing oneself, in sustaining this knowledge and experience to new breaking points, until the search becomes an inbuilt discipline; a discipline rooted on an uncompromising wish to be true to the process, beyond the specific, thus creating key facets of one’s character and nature, which change and evolve at any moment but do not bend on principle to any worldly pressure.
Yet, upon every new cycle, both individual & nation must re-personalize the search, totally immersing oneself in the process, if only to grasp the elusive detachment inbuilt into every process. Through the ages India has seemingly honed this virtue, but today the principle seems to be bending. Economic injustice & a re-assertive religious identity are applying unsustainable pressures. However, this is now being felt the world over. Economic developmental models are revealing a stagnancy and bankruptcy of vision to simultaneously tackle the financial inequity, emotional superficiality, environmental degradation, aesthetic vulgarity and spiritual barrenness of daily life. Further, as religious identification comes into conflict with concepts of nationalism and citizenship, many preconceptions of peaceful co-existence are being splintered wide open. More than most, India is vulnerable to these changes.
Of course, these tensions may indeed open new doors for grasping the ingredients of our universal glue. Yet, equally they will cause fear and paranoia as each tries to defend and barricade their preconceived boundaries. Having emotionally tolerated more uncertainty than most, without building the reinforcing material institutions, India is naturally most susceptible as the temper begins to rise within her human pressure-cooker.
The flip side of this steamy background is that India also has the greatest potential to lead and inspire the world in finding new developmental processes and options. More than ever, she needs to clarify and evolve a bold new vision for her civilization building process.
One aspect of this vision demands that she becomes confident and secure about her heritage, allowing it to melt with a deep awareness into the present, serving the future direction with a joy, rather than to be treated like some albatross, desperate to be distorted, denied or censored at every vexing junction. In this context it is imperative to grasp a philosophical perspective regarding history. My recent focus on various kinds of histories has forced me to open out my thinking on the matter.
At times I have thought that, as death is inbuilt into life so is history into the present. Living life (the present) to the full with fearlessness comes from joyously grasping the nature of death (history), its honesty, inherent function and need. Sooner or later this realization dawns upon the individual or nation. Thereafter a surge of activity digs deep into the past, eking out relevance and lessons to mould the future, recognizing no discontinuity with any age or period of time, though clearly aware of the disruptions, continual change and a hopeful evolution. In this process, one needs to bring an instinctive daily grasp of the vast flow of time, revealing how death, timelessness, history and the individual are entwined. In absorbing these forces one must be able to transform the heaviness of heritage into a positive motivating force for daily life, rather than leading to fatalistic retreat or inaction as the past norm has been. This is a very difficult task, but for a spiritually rooted country such as India, it is all the more imperative we seek out various paths to bring tangible relief to the individual, without artificially simplifying or ritualizing some of the most complex questions of daily life.
For example, I had always scoffed at this idea of continuity of the human spirit after death, that is, reincarnation and the like. Yet upon the death of a close loved one most of us instinctively recognize how implicitly we imbibe the best qualities of that person, how we try to be true to at least some part of their dreams and wishes, and how suddenly an essential characteristic of their personality is part of us, becomes us, and we are living some part of the day for them, carrying on what must not be discontinued, tolerating what once our nature may not have accepted. Hence, the human spirit, without premeditation, without any necessary belief in gods or outer-world experiences, suddenly feels eternal, to have at least sustained an extra generation.
I mention this point, because today many recognize that a most superficial dialogue and rapport exists between most humans, especially the youth and the elderly, and yet within the immediate family a great love still abides. This duality of parallel worlds, where the local and specific so overwhelms the universal and abstract, is a dangerous and narrow path. In a way these double standards reflect the lack of understanding and respect the individual has with regard to grasping their role in society, their responsibility to their common heritage, and the very nature and role of love in bridging the specific and abstract, the local and the universal.
It will be in the manner by which we harness love to inspire the participation of others into a coherent movement which will decide whether the Indian arts can indeed build a world class infrastructure and support system. It will be with this institutionalized love that the existing educational framework will sooner or later dissolve to be absorbed by that which a deeper joy of learning, experimentation and participation demands. It is also this love, which will help India find peace with her history, irrespective of the losses or victories. This peace is a precondition of progress. This in turn implies that the possibility of manipulating the histories needs to be minimized, which requires the creation of new and wiser formats and methodologies for the grasping and dissemination of the subject. Creating new formats by which we integrate as much as is feasible and desirable, with coherence and relevance, is a key task of infrastructure building. This catalogue (and the attached processes it carries along) introduces the possibility of one such format.
In a way, to express some of these ideas so briefly will cause natural misunderstandings, and maybe this platform is inappropriate, but that itself becomes a reason for writing herein. Obviously I am convinced that the auction-exhibition catalogue can become a format for much else, and soon even become the basis of a textbook. For at every level of infrastructure-building one is looking to cut away preconceptions which have limited the mind in grasping the nature of artistic creativity, and its inbuilt potential of building its own home, on its own terms, and in that process reaching out to all facets of society, with a new value-system which forces the individual to re-examine deeper today than they would yesterday.
II
Artistic Creativity as a Developmental Force
On the wider civilization-building processes, simple economic growth amid a welfare, semi-socialist system, directed by established concepts of profit-maximization subject to constraints, needs to be deeply re-examined and made more effective to serve wealth generation and its implied redistribution. Restructuring the corporate ethos and mechanisms, at least in the realm of allocating resources towards semi-public goods such as art, becomes a key objective. Simultaneously, the spiritual dimension of organized religion needs to be brought to the fore, transforming blind faith and superstitious superficiality with a new introspective, philosophical & speculative attitude. A process of internalizing our gods will sooner or later become inevitable.
Yet how?
Between these two dominant forces of economics and godliness, lies the fragile and unprepared world of artistic creativity and scholarship. It is the duty of this third force to transform and discipline the other two, and in the process reveal its own potential for generating values by which civilization can proudly progress. However, for such a possibility to even become credible in the eyes of our people, let alone succeed in daily practice, a vast material infrastructure for the arts needs to be created on new terms of reference and idealism.
One key aspect of this process being that the arts must not be dependent on either government patronage, corporate sponsorship nor private philanthrophy as the main sources for achieving their financial self-sufficiency. A new internally self-generating system of wealth generation and redistribution needs to be developed by the arts. The success of this infrastructure building process will to a large extent determine the chances of India emerging with a developmental vision, uniquely rooted in her artistic and philosophical genius and heritage. Merging from inception the Auction House with the Archive, Documentation & Research Centre reflects this principle in practice. Can the Indian intelligentsia and creative community, who have famously shied away from fulfilling any wealth generating responsibilities, so forcing others to implement their idealism, be restructured and re-galvanized into fulfilling this duty? It is a question and process worth pursuing. Taking up this challenge will demand a major restructuring of the traditional role expected of the artist-activist-scholar. Hand in hand, the institutional framework, which will carry and nurture the individual, while being malleable to the madness of great individuality, must also be given a firm platform upon which it can leap out from its traditional support systems and pillars of patronage and constraint.
This demands a new sustainable model, first to complement and then to absorb the existing system. One is occupied in trying to define and create the basis and reach of this framework and its processes. Whether Osian’s and myself or others who follow succeed, will depend on the integration of many forces, which normally would never be magnetized into a sustainable coherence. It is now that the ability of the artistic creative process to absorb contradictory forces, on a scale, which India demands, will be truly tested. Whether artistic creativity has within it the material and spiritual glue, will be best demonstrated if it can create its own infrastructure, on its own terms, reflecting all the introspective, experimental and passionately-detached values which make it uniquely capable of visualizing, let alone implementing such ambitions.
III
She Challenges All
In my mind the creation of such a model and framework demands very few established rules to be followed, yet an unswerving obedience to certain axioms (for lack of a better term) is critical for success. Pivotal in this regard is that each project must possess a certain vast scale if it is to play an infrastructure-building role in India. At least there must be inbuilt the evolutionary logic of scale, perceived by enough to give it the chance and time to grow to the level India respects and demands. One has tried to be true to this rule, in all projects, despite knowing how vulnerable and stretched this requirement would make oneself and the infant institution. Yet one knew this was not an issue open to compromise, irrespective of cost. It is not ambition or a sense of energetic grandeur alone, but a simple need, which dictates scale. This idea demands deeper explanation.
Before returning to India, the ability to absorb all contradictions seemed the nature of the intellect, ever restless and rejoicing in the continual self-criticisms of change. Eventually, this instinct to absorb everything found new relevance & unity of voice as one came to grasp the nature and flow of India. My balance and direction instinctively changed when I decided to fully re-introduce myself to her. After more than twenty-five years of benign western hospitality it was time to discover what was deepest within me. Not a flicker of adjustment was required.
Yet there is no rest for any individual who honestly surrenders to serve her fully. Working for her demands completeness, an integration of spirit, mind and heart so tortuous in daily implementation that most have indeed shied away from taking on her challenge. Today, most do not even dare to work on the quality, scale and pace India demands. To maintain and nurture her integrity and idealism is beyond the endurance of most individuals and institutions. Hence the gradual growth of divisions within our country, where the local and regional emphasis seems not to complement the national ethos but rival it, leading to a daily weakening of the Indian, in its purest sense.
The task of genuinely taking her fully on board, into one’s embrace, has virtually been given up by most. We are now barely holding on with god’s energy, as our whispers wishing to be heard keeps up the motivation and bravado: that all of you will be carried forward, whatever is your nature, with every seeming contradiction which you have tried to fuse into our mass of humanity, with every value you have tried to let live freely within our traditions and anarchic spirit, with all this baggage, I shall fearlessly carry and nurture you; to evolve deeper once again, to try and be true to your heritage, while revealing those great eternal and universal values which you have always kept at your core, which has allowed you to be yourself at all junctures, so allowing the innocence of inner endurance to be instinctively absorbed which few civilisations can claim to still possess let alone harness. Yet the timeless fearlessness, which was at the heart of your day has now been barnacled over with every minor distraction. They have lost their context. Each local, specific, regional, communal, individual, institutional request can no longer find their due place and recognition in your timeless fearlessness which should have become this great ground within which
our children would be playing and rejoicing. Yet no, and so it is time to re-create this fearless ground, giving new space and context to all the little barnacles of life, through a system of merit and dedication; through building the infrastructure by which each knows their accountability is now only to grow, reaching a peak of public interaction whereby standards will have to continually progress.
Yet this can be no ordinary infrastructure. The demands upon her are indeed unnatural. No world civilisation has the daily pressures of so much contradictory power pressing into each fused corner of the day. In a way, that is why many still shout that India has created no great civilisation to inspire humanity, for she is unable to fully feed and cloth herself, she is unable to truly educate and fill pride in her own people, she is unable to give justice and the motivation to excel to her people, so where then is her freedom? Where is the basic ground of timeless fearlessness upon which she is to come out to the world and say: come to me, learn from me, rejoice at this civilisation being itself, come share that great energy which has been in this land for centuries, come and share from my limitless bounty of the finest minds and human creativity; we have preserved it all, we have nurtured it all so that it abounds in every daily act, it is manifest at each corner, that great beam of creative energy, reflecting the greatest ideas and experiences of the intellect and heart.
However, today we cannot really ask anyone to come with great confidence, we cannot give or share, forget giving and sharing with outsiders, we ourselves as a nation do not even know our heritage and its continuum: what we are, who have we been, how is the past to be fused into the present so that it can daily serve every future moment. None of this we are today able to grasp and implement. Instead of our integrity being maintained in its entirety, with that vast idealism motivating each act of national direction, we instead have all the little barnacles eating their parasitic way into the day. We are too close in reaching a fever of anger. This anger we must now transform into a positive momentum and a creative outburst. In less than ten years India can once again become the greatest inspiration for humanity, and it requires nothing but going to our genius. A new confidence is imminent.
Returning to the concept of scale. If seen purely from the commercial or practical perspective, no project of significant Indian scale would be undertaken by a reasonable individual. Hence the government has always had the responsibility and burden of infrastructure building. Yet it is time to share their load and slowly give new energy and freedom to this process. Increasingly one’s work has already forced the art world to re-examine the standards and pace by which they engage with activity. The force of change is slowly becoming irreversible. The essential lower layers of infrastructure building - the ‘dirty work’ of awareness building, documentation and preservation, financial benchmarking, systemizing the interlinking of processes between disciplines, enpowering marginalised players, fulfilling the due diligence procedures against fraud, strengthening the domestic market so as to lead international trends, and the like- which few individuals take on, as rewards are less than zero, are being laid open amid a diversity of thought processes, power groups and platforms.
Further, the work of many, so far gone unrecognized will be further revealed in the years to come. Herein lies an essential cause for the previous lack of growth. Most in the art world have felt neglected and have not been given their just rewards. Even basic courtesy for the years of dedication has not been shown to most. Naturally there is a sadness and frustration. This has led to an insecurity of spirit which in turn leads to a defensive attitude, hence the infamous crab-like behaviour by many, so making a process of nurturing each other so difficult. Yet I feel a significant change is very near. Overnight the insecurity will dissolve once a belief establishes that fairness will enter the system, rewarding merit and integrity. Very shortly, the creative community and intelligentsia will indeed move as a united force before our people, of that I am convinced, revealing the vast potential that artistic creativity possesses as a means for developing society.
IV
Before amber, and still late
Next to scale, the concept of time or pace assumed by the project and vision must be such that it incessantly knocks away at India’s deeply embedded preconception of timelessness and her complacency of allowing things to find their own time, or to fit into the pace of the daily traffic, pandering to the lowest common denominator.
Grasping the flow of traffic and its substratum has always been one of the most genuine and unbiased indicators of the pace and mood of India. For example, in every big town each car is ready to speed off before amber shines, with such hurry, yet few are capable of reaching a meeting on time. At every corner a random bottleneck awaits, one day some lazy cow may decide to sit in the middle of the road, and within two gyrations we transform her squat her into a roundabout, re-disciplining the traffic anew. In some small town a joyously deluded sod erects a marriage tent with municipal connivance, forcing the traffic to accept the road as a dead end, as will the newly wed couple deny their delusions. The scooter driver avoids hitting a pothole with greater dedication and care than hitting a pedestrian. A rickshaw cyclist carries the full body of a broken jeep up a steep incline as the foot of a passing scooter-wallah pushes him from behind. Over the years these stray and seemingly trivial moments have been absorbed with radically different reactions and consequences by passing observers and participants.
Today tolerance has sunk to an all-time low. The slightest excuse triggers rage, forcing any accelerator to run down every stray dog if sure of escaping detection. The value of courtesy has never been grasped let alone its selfless quality appreciated, but today tiredness may ironically invite the possibility.
Whether legal lethargy or human overabundance, the fact remains that in India pace is compromised at every junction, and at times just a simple legally painted yellow-box junction can solve most traffic problems. They must be a handful of countries left in the world, such as India, who have not taken to the systematic use of yellow-box junctions at a crossroads. The time, energy, anger and waste that could be avoided by institutionalizing this no zone box into our roads is astounding and yet it is as if such geometric forms go against Indian modernism. On another tangent, one can barely think of a handful of artists who had any clue or inclination of using the straight line and its geometric potential in their artistic journeys. After all, the concept and demands of Indian space has forced the zigzag to become our instinctive straight line, as with Husain’s line which once cut through space, intuitively reflecting the Indian ethos and its time-space relationship.
I raise these images because today the uniform highways are still far and few between, hence the pace at which any work can proceed is littered with minefields. One is forced to fight too many irrelevant battles, especially if one pioneers or initiates change. The burden to pioneer is very large, to the extent of becoming a significant deterrent. Hence the risk-taking spirit is minimal. This needs to be fundamentally changed. Yet only by showing the way can change be inspired. Today for every criticism the duty must be to create the viable alternative.
Along with scale and pace, it is the unqualified dedication towards the pursuit of excellence, that spirit of resolve towards a sense of detail, an aspiration for perfection in all processes, which cannot be compromised. It is a cliché easily abused today, upon the lips of every mediocrity, but nonetheless an ethos embedded in quality and merit can still become the norm. It is a myth to say the populace will not appreciate a certain refinement, or that economics does not allow them the luxury of subtlety, or that the forces pandering to the lowest common denominator will overwhelm all else… these I am convinced are minor myths, easily destroyed within a few years. The work will speak for itself on this front. The respect for knowledge and aesthetic delights will only increase, our people will indeed once again fall in love with the arts and the world they open up, and through this process of falling in love, will re-energize attitudes and markets, generating wealth on a scale few could have imagined.
In this context my responsibility can extend only so far, and maybe prudence is demanded of me, as I have maintained in the past. Yet, now the process feels credible enough, hence I openly state, that within less than five years, all the areas associated with the arts, will grow exponentially, and just to put a figure amid the hounds, wealth in excess of Rs. 800 – 900 crore will be generated and redistributed, from a base less than one tenth that amount today. For now economics will overwhelm all, until comes its day to be disciplined. Inevitably, from the value systems of artistic creativity will also emerge that counter-discipline to economic abuse. Therein lies the beauty of opening out the pandora’s box of India’s cultural heritage and its aesthetic energy and pride. Success will be judged on how effectively those hundreds of crores will be redistributed so as to build a world-class integrated infrastructure for the Indian arts, culture and her education. The onus, more than ever, is upon the individual creative mind to maintain the integrity of the infrastructure building process. If this rare opportunity is not grasped now, it may become too late for the present generation of Indians to truly inspire the rest of humanity through her arts and culture.
Further Notes on Building the Infrascape (2002)
I
If India is to once again take her place as a great nation inspiring others with her values and way of life, she has to place the artistic culture1 and its education at the heart of her developmental policies. This can only be made possible if the intelligentsia and creative community builds the infrascape (ie: the artistic environment and its underlying material infrastructure) on their own terms, while placing the values of artistic creativity and its integrity at the heart of this process. The nature and scale of the change required is radical, yet now increasingly inevitable.
The change demands that various individuals re-institutionalize a vast integrated intellectual framework which builds the platforms upon which the intelligentsia can cohesively come together, nurturing each others efforts while generating and redistributing significant amounts of economic wealth, to forward this exercise of directly transforming creative idealism into its material formats.
This additional responsibility of generating wealth and its simultaneous redistribution is pivotal, demanding a new understanding and approach. It is time to wean away the creative community from all the traditional modes of patronage: government support, corporate sponsorship and private donations, towards a new alternative system of far greater financial independence. This implies restructuring the basis by which artistic culture and its educational institutions are built, which in turn demands a critical reconsideration of the role the artist-scholar-activist is to play in this process.
In the past the duty of generating economic wealth so as to help bring to public awareness their own creativity, let alone any wider display, was always abdicated by the artist. Yet they eagerly sought participation in the process of wealth redistribution. The government has been brought to its financial knees in the area of cultural and educational expenses because of this dependency of the intelligentsia & creative community. In recent years the more savvy artists, seeking middle-players, have run to the corporate houses for patronage, calling it sponsorship and in the process selling their creative wines, barely re-labeling the bottles. Those galleries or genuine patrons who tried to disseminate creative ideals to the public were far and few between, leaving huge lacunae for the more mercurial wheeler-dealer agent system to slowly infiltrate the mindset. To some extent this has natural benefits, but on its own the present system is totally incapable of tackling any wider vision concerning the role of the arts in the developmental policies of India.
II
At the heart of all institution-building efforts is the art of materially transforming individual brilliance and inspiration into a system, for others to specialize, deepen and widen, and there-after delegate and integrate a whole stream of activities, which hopefully move in harmony with the original vision and its inbuilt evolution. However, the process of delegation and dissemination is deeply flawed and inadequate, especially for the arts, and more so for India, given the superficial relationship that exists between the artist-scholar-activist and their responsibilities towards wealth generation and its implied redistribution. Also, numerous contradictory hidden agendas are built into the process of nurturing artistic creativity and of building art institutions. These range from the nature and role of patronage to the limited practical grasp given to integrating cultural disciplines in the holistic manner by which they exist within creativity, to the direct responsibility upon the artist-scholar-activist in building and sustaining the institutions, and then letting go and pasing on responsibility.
Further, it is totally inadequate to only have specialized personnel for the management of artistic culture, especially if they are not first and foremost artistic and creative minds. It is also not enough to have artists who are in their last phase of creative life, and are part of various advisory committees and boards, involved with cultural institution building. Hence, it is paramount that the young and energetic artistic minds who can create the finest works of art, literature, cinema, theatre, philosophy, music and the like, dedicate a part of their day and life to building the material infrastructure which nurtures the creativity of all. Without this input, that overwhelming creative idealism, as a collective force, will not inculcate itself into the system with the new creative attitude so essential to re-mould the priorities and mindsets with which we structure society and allocate scarce resources.
This is not the place to detail the nature of this creative attitude. However, the main human characteristic which sustaining one’s creative urge reveals is the ability to play with uncertainty, to give freedom to uncertainty. All individuals on a daily basis interact with the uncertain, the art is to allow uncertainty to reveal herself. The creative individual learns how to hold back and discipline one’s preconceptions long enough for the tussle between answer and question to open out another unseen perspective. It is always this additional perspective, rooted in a surprise, which takes one closer to a truth, or more importantly, allows one to sustain the search for a truth. It is this exploratory open-mindedness, this confidence and inner security to test the unknown against one’s convictions with a humble wisdom, which is at the heart of the genuine creative impulse. From this play with uncertainty comes the respect for experiment, nurtured by the constant inner dialogue, leading to the joyous giving of freedom to others, which in turn cannot help but make compassion the underlying emotion of all communication. From herein emanates the roots of a possible ethical framework.
It will be from implicitly nurturing the ethical implications of this joyous self-critical attitude, that slowly over time, the process of allocating scarce resources will subtly change, weaning itself away from the overriding economic & its related power compulsions which today dictate the growth of society and its structures. However, the socio-political implications of allowing the above changes will be discussed at a later date.
III
Ironically, despite the deeper respect for financial value, the chances of a counter discipline (to the economic value system) emanating from the values inherent in the artistic creative process seems more likely to occur in Europe than a country such as India. At the same time, given India has not gone through a significant phase of material wealth accumulation, she still possesses a relatively blank set of preconceptions and minimal intruding baggage, on one level.
Thus, with relatively little experience in the pursuit of transforming idealism into material formats, especially within the arts, she has the advantage of being an outsider to the process, so capable of seeing the whole vision, more objectively, hence capable of acting faster and with greater clarity. This potentially allows her greater innovation and experimentation in institution-building, if only the atmosphere nurtures such risk-taking. Yet given mainstream religious motivation has been the most successful examples of institution-building in India, the chances of sustaining a radically different infrascape developmental process will not be easy.
Building a credible infrascape firstly demands forcing and cajoling the economic system into placing the arts and artistic culture at the heart of socio-political developmental policies. For this to be, the artistic community and intelligentsia will have to show the rest of the nation that they are indeed capable of building the basic level infrastructure for the arts, on their own terms. Further, that these terms respect and privilege the artistic creative process and its integrity beyond all else, and that while maintaining this integrity one is capable of generating and simultaneously redistributing vast wealth, better than competing alternatives.
This implies creating new paths away from, yet linked to, the traditional modes of patronage adopted across the world: government support, corporate sponsorship and private philanthropy. It is thus imperative that the creative community, not only generates wealth, but more importantly redistributes this wealth more effectively, than any other mode. In fact one cannot divorce both aspects. From the starting point of earning wealth a significant proportion must be ploughed back into the wider infrastructure-building task. This is the duty of each individual. To pay taxes is just one part of that duty; each individual must get into the habit of taxing themselves, through their own inner discipline, recognising the state of the country, its wider problems, and one’s creative and moral obligation.
It is a desperate need of the times; no more is infrastructure-building the duty of the other, or some paternal state. Each individual must recognize that irrespective of circumstances and position, each has the power to bring about change, not just indirectly by doing one’s work, but more directly by absorbing a wider vision required for infrastructure-building and trying to be true to fulfilling one’s role within that scheme. In this restructuring of duties, where the artistic and clerical overlap, the profound and mundane embrace, we begin to open new dimensions for redefining the role of the intelligentsia, at every level.
For example, by the act of meaningfully positioning (amid a curatorial exhibition space or within the structure of a publication or some virtual reality option) a Deewaar poster, with all its loud colours, seething energy and emotional links, ‘besides’ the tranquil contemplation of a Gaitonde watercolour, many new and unseen inter-relationships will open up, naturally changing the perception of each in the process. Further, the act will cut through various preconceptions if the juxtapositioning reveals a unity which existed, but was denied or suppressed, yet now seems obvious and necessary to explore further. Similarly, the duties before the artist-scholar in the field of putting together the material platforms upon which debate and dialogue, learning and rediscovery, sale and purchase, appreciation and criticism, are nurtured, require a new juxtapositioning and reprioritising.
On another level, many new options of funding cultural projects can arise if the complex nature of intellectual and financial cross-subsidization can be viewed afresh.The nature of this cross-subsidization will in turn depend upon the ability of scholarship to reinterpret and re-express knowledge and the various inter-linkages between all the cultural disciplines, into an effective communicative instrument whereby the links between what has been traditionally associated with the inner & introspective and pure (untainted by outer material obligations) aspects of the creative process and the outer more compromised aspects of the material environment and influences are re-established. For example, who could have imagined that from a handful of curated auctions of modern Indian art one individual would have been able to institutionalize the world’s largest photographic and textual archive on Indian Modern & Contemporary Fine Arts and Cinema, within the span of a few years, without resorting to government support, corporate sponsorship or donations, and at the same time without significantly involving the academic establishment and bureaucracy, while simultaneously evolving the seeds of a new platform which could potentially tackle the corrupt practices which have led to the suppression of one of the world’s greatest cultural heritage’s.
I use this example, not to praise, but just to indicate, that despite the most stubborn of preconceptions on my part, which firmly believed, until the age of thirty-five, that wealth was not an important ingredient in building great educational institutions, and that vision, hard work and the ability to inspire others was enough, India has allowed one to move forward with relative swiftness. This freedom, rarely recognised or given appreciation, especially when compared to western standards, is nonetheless available in few other countries, with the emotional intensity and warmth as in India. This alone is capable of institutionalising love and its family of values into the framework for nurturing the infrastructure for the Indian arts and culture.
Building the Infrascape
October 2001
The task before the intelligentsia and creative community is to build an environment in which the ideal material system can hope to flourish. For this environment to be sustainable and desired by our people, the creative community must have a significant material stake in the system, i.e. in the infrastructure and institutions, which nurtures the environment on a daily basis. This stake in the infrastructure-building process simultaneously demands creative inputs at both the levels of maintaining the integrity of the idealistic vision and taking on the responsibility for the financial self-sufficiency of the process.
Thus creating this infrascape2 is no longer about a division of activity where idealism is the duty of one set of creative minds and the wealth generating and redistributing obligations burdened upon another set of implementing organizations. A fundamental redefinition of the Arts & Cultural Institution is now inevitable, as is the duty demanded from an artistic creative individual and the intelligentsia as a collective force.
One requirement of this new duty is the need to recreate or re-mould the mechanisms and terms by which economic wealth is to be generated and simultaneously redistributed in a more effective manner. This in turn demands a reassessment of all forms of patronage - governmental, corporate and philanthropic, and the possibility of the arts generating wealth for their own infrastructure-building efforts. It also demands a deeper debate, asking: can the creative integrity maintain its obsessive focus, its inspirational force to a wider humanity, when it suddenly places itself amid material obligations and all the distractions of administration and the pursuit of material power?
Another implied responsibility of building the infrascape becomes the task of documenting, preserving and restoring to daily life our artistic and cultural heritage. This in turn opens out a vast educational responsibility. Also, from nurturing and harnessing this heritage and knowledge base emerges the possibility, if undertaken with the integrity of an infrastructure-builder, the possibility of generating and redistributing significant amounts of wealth – aesthetic and economic, and thereby tackling one of the fundamental dilemmas facing the whole task.
This task, ideally to be fulfilled in partnership with government, requires a holistic vision which was once the privilege of government, but now must become the responsibility of the private sector. Recent introspection regarding its role in the cultural arena and a greater recognition of its fiscal imperatives is placing the government in a growingly difficult position. On one level it seeks greater influence in the infrascape, on another all major archives, heritage properties and educational facilities are facing a significant loss of motivation, confidence and resources. In the process the respect for merit and a belief in intellectual integrity and freedom is suffering. Corporate sponsorship will brand the heritage belonging to the public, and in the process persuade that all creative, aesthetic, intellectual and historical efforts are now but another commodity to be purchased. This in turn will negate the potential impact of increasing respect for creativity and its family of values, which in turn lessens the chances of providing the economic value system with a counter-discipline.
Criticising this whole scenario is now easy and pointless, unless a viable alternative is possible and offered. Obviously, the chances of a sustainable alternative exist. On an individual level, one has sowed the seeds of an institutionalizing process which may be able to implement an alternative infrascape-building process, away from the dependence on the usual forms of patronage and their conditions. Of course, the process is still in its infancy, and failure is as likely as success. Osian’s will fulfil its duty. Others will follow and deepen the process. Momentum and progress are inevitable.
1 The arts, artist, artistic, or any similar form is used with the broadest sense of the meaning for the arts, ranging to include the Fine Arts to Cinema, from Philosophy to Music.
2 Infrascape seems an apt word to describe both the environment and its underlying infrastructure for the arts and culture.
If India is to once again take her place as a great nation inspiring others with her values and way of life, she has to place the artistic culture1 and its education at the heart of her developmental policies. This can only be made possible if the intelligentsia and creative community builds the infrascape (ie: the artistic environment and its underlying material infrastructure) on their own terms, while placing the values of artistic creativity and its integrity at the heart of this process. The nature and scale of the change required is radical, yet now increasingly inevitable.
The change demands that various individuals re-institutionalize a vast integrated intellectual framework which builds the platforms upon which the intelligentsia can cohesively come together, nurturing each others efforts while generating and redistributing significant amounts of economic wealth, to forward this exercise of directly transforming creative idealism into its material formats.
This additional responsibility of generating wealth and its simultaneous redistribution is pivotal, demanding a new understanding and approach. It is time to wean away the creative community from all the traditional modes of patronage: government support, corporate sponsorship and private donations, towards a new alternative system of far greater financial independence. This implies restructuring the basis by which artistic culture and its educational institutions are built, which in turn demands a critical reconsideration of the role the artist-scholar-activist is to play in this process.
In the past the duty of generating economic wealth so as to help bring to public awareness their own creativity, let alone any wider display, was always abdicated by the artist. Yet they eagerly sought participation in the process of wealth redistribution. The government has been brought to its financial knees in the area of cultural and educational expenses because of this dependency of the intelligentsia & creative community. In recent years the more savvy artists, seeking middle-players, have run to the corporate houses for patronage, calling it sponsorship and in the process selling their creative wines, barely re-labeling the bottles. Those galleries or genuine patrons who tried to disseminate creative ideals to the public were far and few between, leaving huge lacunae for the more mercurial wheeler-dealer agent system to slowly infiltrate the mindset. To some extent this has natural benefits, but on its own the present system is totally incapable of tackling any wider vision concerning the role of the arts in the developmental policies of India.
II
At the heart of all institution-building efforts is the art of materially transforming individual brilliance and inspiration into a system, for others to specialize, deepen and widen, and there-after delegate and integrate a whole stream of activities, which hopefully move in harmony with the original vision and its inbuilt evolution. However, the process of delegation and dissemination is deeply flawed and inadequate, especially for the arts, and more so for India, given the superficial relationship that exists between the artist-scholar-activist and their responsibilities towards wealth generation and its implied redistribution. Also, numerous contradictory hidden agendas are built into the process of nurturing artistic creativity and of building art institutions. These range from the nature and role of patronage to the limited practical grasp given to integrating cultural disciplines in the holistic manner by which they exist within creativity, to the direct responsibility upon the artist-scholar-activist in building and sustaining the institutions, and then letting go and pasing on responsibility.
Further, it is totally inadequate to only have specialized personnel for the management of artistic culture, especially if they are not first and foremost artistic and creative minds. It is also not enough to have artists who are in their last phase of creative life, and are part of various advisory committees and boards, involved with cultural institution building. Hence, it is paramount that the young and energetic artistic minds who can create the finest works of art, literature, cinema, theatre, philosophy, music and the like, dedicate a part of their day and life to building the material infrastructure which nurtures the creativity of all. Without this input, that overwhelming creative idealism, as a collective force, will not inculcate itself into the system with the new creative attitude so essential to re-mould the priorities and mindsets with which we structure society and allocate scarce resources.
This is not the place to detail the nature of this creative attitude. However, the main human characteristic which sustaining one’s creative urge reveals is the ability to play with uncertainty, to give freedom to uncertainty. All individuals on a daily basis interact with the uncertain, the art is to allow uncertainty to reveal herself. The creative individual learns how to hold back and discipline one’s preconceptions long enough for the tussle between answer and question to open out another unseen perspective. It is always this additional perspective, rooted in a surprise, which takes one closer to a truth, or more importantly, allows one to sustain the search for a truth. It is this exploratory open-mindedness, this confidence and inner security to test the unknown against one’s convictions with a humble wisdom, which is at the heart of the genuine creative impulse. From this play with uncertainty comes the respect for experiment, nurtured by the constant inner dialogue, leading to the joyous giving of freedom to others, which in turn cannot help but make compassion the underlying emotion of all communication. From herein emanates the roots of a possible ethical framework.
It will be from implicitly nurturing the ethical implications of this joyous self-critical attitude, that slowly over time, the process of allocating scarce resources will subtly change, weaning itself away from the overriding economic & its related power compulsions which today dictate the growth of society and its structures. However, the socio-political implications of allowing the above changes will be discussed at a later date.
III
Ironically, despite the deeper respect for financial value, the chances of a counter discipline (to the economic value system) emanating from the values inherent in the artistic creative process seems more likely to occur in Europe than a country such as India. At the same time, given India has not gone through a significant phase of material wealth accumulation, she still possesses a relatively blank set of preconceptions and minimal intruding baggage, on one level.
Thus, with relatively little experience in the pursuit of transforming idealism into material formats, especially within the arts, she has the advantage of being an outsider to the process, so capable of seeing the whole vision, more objectively, hence capable of acting faster and with greater clarity. This potentially allows her greater innovation and experimentation in institution-building, if only the atmosphere nurtures such risk-taking. Yet given mainstream religious motivation has been the most successful examples of institution-building in India, the chances of sustaining a radically different infrascape developmental process will not be easy.
Building a credible infrascape firstly demands forcing and cajoling the economic system into placing the arts and artistic culture at the heart of socio-political developmental policies. For this to be, the artistic community and intelligentsia will have to show the rest of the nation that they are indeed capable of building the basic level infrastructure for the arts, on their own terms. Further, that these terms respect and privilege the artistic creative process and its integrity beyond all else, and that while maintaining this integrity one is capable of generating and simultaneously redistributing vast wealth, better than competing alternatives.
This implies creating new paths away from, yet linked to, the traditional modes of patronage adopted across the world: government support, corporate sponsorship and private philanthropy. It is thus imperative that the creative community, not only generates wealth, but more importantly redistributes this wealth more effectively, than any other mode. In fact one cannot divorce both aspects. From the starting point of earning wealth a significant proportion must be ploughed back into the wider infrastructure-building task. This is the duty of each individual. To pay taxes is just one part of that duty; each individual must get into the habit of taxing themselves, through their own inner discipline, recognising the state of the country, its wider problems, and one’s creative and moral obligation.
It is a desperate need of the times; no more is infrastructure-building the duty of the other, or some paternal state. Each individual must recognize that irrespective of circumstances and position, each has the power to bring about change, not just indirectly by doing one’s work, but more directly by absorbing a wider vision required for infrastructure-building and trying to be true to fulfilling one’s role within that scheme. In this restructuring of duties, where the artistic and clerical overlap, the profound and mundane embrace, we begin to open new dimensions for redefining the role of the intelligentsia, at every level.
For example, by the act of meaningfully positioning (amid a curatorial exhibition space or within the structure of a publication or some virtual reality option) a Deewaar poster, with all its loud colours, seething energy and emotional links, ‘besides’ the tranquil contemplation of a Gaitonde watercolour, many new and unseen inter-relationships will open up, naturally changing the perception of each in the process. Further, the act will cut through various preconceptions if the juxtapositioning reveals a unity which existed, but was denied or suppressed, yet now seems obvious and necessary to explore further. Similarly, the duties before the artist-scholar in the field of putting together the material platforms upon which debate and dialogue, learning and rediscovery, sale and purchase, appreciation and criticism, are nurtured, require a new juxtapositioning and reprioritising.
On another level, many new options of funding cultural projects can arise if the complex nature of intellectual and financial cross-subsidization can be viewed afresh.The nature of this cross-subsidization will in turn depend upon the ability of scholarship to reinterpret and re-express knowledge and the various inter-linkages between all the cultural disciplines, into an effective communicative instrument whereby the links between what has been traditionally associated with the inner & introspective and pure (untainted by outer material obligations) aspects of the creative process and the outer more compromised aspects of the material environment and influences are re-established. For example, who could have imagined that from a handful of curated auctions of modern Indian art one individual would have been able to institutionalize the world’s largest photographic and textual archive on Indian Modern & Contemporary Fine Arts and Cinema, within the span of a few years, without resorting to government support, corporate sponsorship or donations, and at the same time without significantly involving the academic establishment and bureaucracy, while simultaneously evolving the seeds of a new platform which could potentially tackle the corrupt practices which have led to the suppression of one of the world’s greatest cultural heritage’s.
I use this example, not to praise, but just to indicate, that despite the most stubborn of preconceptions on my part, which firmly believed, until the age of thirty-five, that wealth was not an important ingredient in building great educational institutions, and that vision, hard work and the ability to inspire others was enough, India has allowed one to move forward with relative swiftness. This freedom, rarely recognised or given appreciation, especially when compared to western standards, is nonetheless available in few other countries, with the emotional intensity and warmth as in India. This alone is capable of institutionalising love and its family of values into the framework for nurturing the infrastructure for the Indian arts and culture.
Building the Infrascape
October 2001
The task before the intelligentsia and creative community is to build an environment in which the ideal material system can hope to flourish. For this environment to be sustainable and desired by our people, the creative community must have a significant material stake in the system, i.e. in the infrastructure and institutions, which nurtures the environment on a daily basis. This stake in the infrastructure-building process simultaneously demands creative inputs at both the levels of maintaining the integrity of the idealistic vision and taking on the responsibility for the financial self-sufficiency of the process.
Thus creating this infrascape2 is no longer about a division of activity where idealism is the duty of one set of creative minds and the wealth generating and redistributing obligations burdened upon another set of implementing organizations. A fundamental redefinition of the Arts & Cultural Institution is now inevitable, as is the duty demanded from an artistic creative individual and the intelligentsia as a collective force.
One requirement of this new duty is the need to recreate or re-mould the mechanisms and terms by which economic wealth is to be generated and simultaneously redistributed in a more effective manner. This in turn demands a reassessment of all forms of patronage - governmental, corporate and philanthropic, and the possibility of the arts generating wealth for their own infrastructure-building efforts. It also demands a deeper debate, asking: can the creative integrity maintain its obsessive focus, its inspirational force to a wider humanity, when it suddenly places itself amid material obligations and all the distractions of administration and the pursuit of material power?
Another implied responsibility of building the infrascape becomes the task of documenting, preserving and restoring to daily life our artistic and cultural heritage. This in turn opens out a vast educational responsibility. Also, from nurturing and harnessing this heritage and knowledge base emerges the possibility, if undertaken with the integrity of an infrastructure-builder, the possibility of generating and redistributing significant amounts of wealth – aesthetic and economic, and thereby tackling one of the fundamental dilemmas facing the whole task.
This task, ideally to be fulfilled in partnership with government, requires a holistic vision which was once the privilege of government, but now must become the responsibility of the private sector. Recent introspection regarding its role in the cultural arena and a greater recognition of its fiscal imperatives is placing the government in a growingly difficult position. On one level it seeks greater influence in the infrascape, on another all major archives, heritage properties and educational facilities are facing a significant loss of motivation, confidence and resources. In the process the respect for merit and a belief in intellectual integrity and freedom is suffering. Corporate sponsorship will brand the heritage belonging to the public, and in the process persuade that all creative, aesthetic, intellectual and historical efforts are now but another commodity to be purchased. This in turn will negate the potential impact of increasing respect for creativity and its family of values, which in turn lessens the chances of providing the economic value system with a counter-discipline.
Criticising this whole scenario is now easy and pointless, unless a viable alternative is possible and offered. Obviously, the chances of a sustainable alternative exist. On an individual level, one has sowed the seeds of an institutionalizing process which may be able to implement an alternative infrascape-building process, away from the dependence on the usual forms of patronage and their conditions. Of course, the process is still in its infancy, and failure is as likely as success. Osian’s will fulfil its duty. Others will follow and deepen the process. Momentum and progress are inevitable.
1 The arts, artist, artistic, or any similar form is used with the broadest sense of the meaning for the arts, ranging to include the Fine Arts to Cinema, from Philosophy to Music.
2 Infrascape seems an apt word to describe both the environment and its underlying infrastructure for the arts and culture.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Warriors of Non-Violence (2009)
Like others, one’s admiration for Gandhiji forced one to follow a certain path. It is a very difficult one, where you cannot cry out in anger against the injustice inflicted against others and yourself, you cannot resort to all the popular ‘weapons’ required to fight a modern battle, and in sustained silent work alone you must believe that the love and trust of the public will come. That will allow you a chance to influence their sensibilities and values, to the point of mutual surrender and suddenly momentum for change will be triggered. Most difficult of all, you must uphold the highest ethical vision in every daily act and hope that it will not be misconstrued for something clever or matlabi. In essence, the process cannot be divorced from whatever end you seek, there is little room for any kind of compromise in a world full of demanding compromises.
In this scenario, one has sustained the first fifteen years of non-violent battle, trying to place art, culture and its educational values at the center of India’s developmental framework. It is still a half baked cake. One part of the work entails bringing back into India our artistic heritage in the hope that some object may trigger the love and energy of our people to participate a bit deeper, to take new responsibility for building infrastructure with creative self-sufficiency, one free of asking or demanding patronage from the government or sponsorship from the corporate world or donations from the philanthropists. If we can show our people that India’s developmental problems can be tackled through creating a base for the arts and cultural heritage, a new energy and idealism may re-enter our daily mindsets. Thus there is a faith in the artistic objects of deep heritage.
Amid the hundreds of crores spent by Osian’s on building the art collection, archive and library, many of the items have been focused on Gandhiji’s inspirational energy, from the last photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson before his assassination to the iconic Dandi March sculpture study by D.P. Roy Chowdhury. Each has been bought with the hope that when our people see and share these items in a space created with love and passion (The Osianama Complex being built at the former Minerva cinema) they will go beyond themselves to participate in fighting the system with new vigor. For that is all an art object can do: energize each human being to go beyond their limits and become warriors of a non-violent journey with an inner fearlessness and want for freedom.
Hearing of the auction of Gandhiji’s personal items naturally meant we would bid and buy those items, bringing them back home like hundreds of objects before that. Then I read that the Government has demanded the auction to be stopped and is expected to buy the items itself. While I am one hundred per cent behind our government regarding the intent, and that too at any costs, I disagree with the process.
It is time for the Indian in the private sector to stand up and put their money into purchasing what needs to be bought for the larger good. This must emerge voluntarily with love and free will. There is no need for anyone to show charity to India, there is no need for us to beg and depend on the goodwill of individuals who own private property and may want legitimate money. If we want something, there are enough of us in this country to immediately come together and buy, openly, legally and with pride.
Osian’s is definitely not a very rich global institution at present, and to buy these artifacts my staff may again have to go without salary for a month or two, but each one of them will gladly do so, without a second thought, when we bid to bring back Gandhiji’s energy, an energy our people are desperate to share once again in a context of new institutions and vision.
Naturally it is important to understand the responsibility of harnessing this energy. Is it just the task of the government? Is the government really best equipped to tackle this issue? Where will the line be drawn, what about all the other leaders? Think about all the artifacts scattered within India, daily decaying before our eyes, from great temples, mosques, step wells, basilica, palaces, forts, bridges, lacking in funds and vision to energize all who pass by. How many artifacts fill our dusty public museums, unable to quench the great thirst for learning, which itself is now slowly dying, as economic success comes to again and again dominate and distract the youth.
How to tackle this decay of heritage and a lack of respect? Where are the private-public partnerships of substance and mutual trust? I was the youngest member of India’s first National Culture Fund Board, and in three years one saw the sadness and inability of the public sector to build new private-public bridges, and ten years on, we are still making the same mistakes. More than ever it is in Gandhiji’s conviction that through love and honesty, through public service by the private individuals, whatever the accusations against them, a great civilization re-emerges to share herself with the wider humanity.
With the artifacts abroad we must not bully them back, but buy with pride. Wealth must find greater obligations in both the public and private sectors. That will inspire the people at the first step, and thereafter many more will be expected, but they will be in partnership, in mutual respect, with the public participating and all heads, private and public, accountable.
In this scenario, one has sustained the first fifteen years of non-violent battle, trying to place art, culture and its educational values at the center of India’s developmental framework. It is still a half baked cake. One part of the work entails bringing back into India our artistic heritage in the hope that some object may trigger the love and energy of our people to participate a bit deeper, to take new responsibility for building infrastructure with creative self-sufficiency, one free of asking or demanding patronage from the government or sponsorship from the corporate world or donations from the philanthropists. If we can show our people that India’s developmental problems can be tackled through creating a base for the arts and cultural heritage, a new energy and idealism may re-enter our daily mindsets. Thus there is a faith in the artistic objects of deep heritage.
Amid the hundreds of crores spent by Osian’s on building the art collection, archive and library, many of the items have been focused on Gandhiji’s inspirational energy, from the last photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson before his assassination to the iconic Dandi March sculpture study by D.P. Roy Chowdhury. Each has been bought with the hope that when our people see and share these items in a space created with love and passion (The Osianama Complex being built at the former Minerva cinema) they will go beyond themselves to participate in fighting the system with new vigor. For that is all an art object can do: energize each human being to go beyond their limits and become warriors of a non-violent journey with an inner fearlessness and want for freedom.
Hearing of the auction of Gandhiji’s personal items naturally meant we would bid and buy those items, bringing them back home like hundreds of objects before that. Then I read that the Government has demanded the auction to be stopped and is expected to buy the items itself. While I am one hundred per cent behind our government regarding the intent, and that too at any costs, I disagree with the process.
It is time for the Indian in the private sector to stand up and put their money into purchasing what needs to be bought for the larger good. This must emerge voluntarily with love and free will. There is no need for anyone to show charity to India, there is no need for us to beg and depend on the goodwill of individuals who own private property and may want legitimate money. If we want something, there are enough of us in this country to immediately come together and buy, openly, legally and with pride.
Osian’s is definitely not a very rich global institution at present, and to buy these artifacts my staff may again have to go without salary for a month or two, but each one of them will gladly do so, without a second thought, when we bid to bring back Gandhiji’s energy, an energy our people are desperate to share once again in a context of new institutions and vision.
Naturally it is important to understand the responsibility of harnessing this energy. Is it just the task of the government? Is the government really best equipped to tackle this issue? Where will the line be drawn, what about all the other leaders? Think about all the artifacts scattered within India, daily decaying before our eyes, from great temples, mosques, step wells, basilica, palaces, forts, bridges, lacking in funds and vision to energize all who pass by. How many artifacts fill our dusty public museums, unable to quench the great thirst for learning, which itself is now slowly dying, as economic success comes to again and again dominate and distract the youth.
How to tackle this decay of heritage and a lack of respect? Where are the private-public partnerships of substance and mutual trust? I was the youngest member of India’s first National Culture Fund Board, and in three years one saw the sadness and inability of the public sector to build new private-public bridges, and ten years on, we are still making the same mistakes. More than ever it is in Gandhiji’s conviction that through love and honesty, through public service by the private individuals, whatever the accusations against them, a great civilization re-emerges to share herself with the wider humanity.
With the artifacts abroad we must not bully them back, but buy with pride. Wealth must find greater obligations in both the public and private sectors. That will inspire the people at the first step, and thereafter many more will be expected, but they will be in partnership, in mutual respect, with the public participating and all heads, private and public, accountable.
A Philosophy of Action: To Revolutionise an Infrastructure… Art & Cinema (2001)
It has been eight years since I began the infrastructure-building work, returning to India, convinced that within a decade I would build the greatest university for the arts, that too without creative and intellectual compromise, making the creative processes financially independent and self-generating, discarding all patronage, with unbending energy and integrity, and naturally in the process freeing oneself, dissolving away ambition with suppressed humility which along the way would surface and take my hand, saying:
“… beta, come, your duty is done, she is satiated, it is time to now create for yourself, go and philosophise, you have transformed idealism into material form, you have kept the purity of your inner voice alive, absorbed the dirt of generating and redistributing wealth with love, there has been no disunity between vision and action, failures have been outsustained, humour is still intact, take a break before breath fails you, finish your novel, start your screenplays, direct your film…be selfish once again, forget your abstracts of nation and humanity, let them go, let them be themselves, the children are learning, the space has been created, the systems are in place, you are easily irrelevant, it is now just you for yourself, return to your suspended promises, let us go and make cinema, great cinema…”
Yet, these words must still wait. We are slightly behind schedule, the university’s structure is still two divisions short of intention, and today the cinematic infrastructure is the bottomless pit requiring immediate feed. The inevitable irony of financial independence for the arts is the initial vast doses of cross-subsidisation required so as to bring each art form to stand on its own feet. Yet this is not the same kind of subsidisation of the government grant or corporate sponsorship type, but instead the support from an individual creative mind to build a creative institution, there is no leasing out of responsibilities, no expectation of others transforming idealism into material form. There is no dilution of the idealism in action. Such a process naturally becomes the idealism.
So now, to Osian’s visual and textual archives are added an eminent international journal: Cinemaya – the first on Asian Cinema, and an Asian film festival: Cinefan. Three platforms to systematically bring about changes in our cinematic sensibilities.
Infrastructure-building has always been the preserve of governments, the private individual has been considered inadequate or unwilling to take on that responsibility, especially for the arts. It is still not a clear belief that private individuals can build great public institutions, and thereafter infrastructure… yet that is the task we must take on more and more there is no alternative if we truly wish that a fully active creative life is the best way to live, and that material society needs the creative value-system throbbing at its heart if great civilisations are to be nurtured…
In a nutshell, the task and journey before us is this: it is imperative that the arts are placed at the heart of the developmental framework. Further this must be accomplished through a unique process by which the creative arts build their own infrastructure on their own terms, creating a self-generating financial system, free of patronage from any other value system. Only if this is so can the arts genuinely claim to nurture and spread the values of the creative process and its accompanying life. Only if these creative values are respected by a material society will a deeper value system than the economic, evolve, therein placing the creative community and intelligentsia at the centre of responsibility; disciplining and therein re-structuring the modes of allocating resources. All the great arts will have essentially failed in transforming society, assuming that be an objective of artistic creativity, if the way of life of the creative mind cannot be practised, cannot be lived, by every citizen. To be a creative mind, first and foremost, while simultaneously fulfilling our material obligations as a second priority, must be the overwhelming objective. This alone will bring deep love, introspection, passionate-detachment, experimentation, the ability to absorb all contradictions, revealing our intuitive-logic which allows uncertainty to freely reveal itself, on her terms, therein inducing an instinctive fearlessness into the day, in all aspects of daily life, thereby making every little act alive, worthwhile and beautiful, dissolving the sense of distance which the individual and the object cannot help but feel. Learning will become creativity at every level, each act the human being undertakes will have a deeper sense of dignity and a natural high. Soon there will be the constant shout within, saying: that herein I have been true to my inner voice, that there is still a deeper love waiting to be given, which I will share without qualification, and I have also paid my damn bills, and those of my dependents, friends and well-wishers, and more importantly have taken my idealism forward into another material form, beyond just creating my book, or painting or film or play or composition, or whatever, so striving beyond the basic material medium, taking on materialism at a deeper level, tackling the bugs of communication and dissemination, hence making the sacrifice, which clearly recognises the needs and time in which my communities, nations and civilisations, find themselves.
This shout must each day whisper sweetly to the creative mind. Soon it will be instinct to realise that it is not enough just to create the art or book or cinema, and hope that its aura and expression will filter through the system, but also take on the duty of making sure the environment in which we function respects creativity, its integrity and way of life. In this way the processes of creativity also change, taking a deeper tangible responsibility into their heart, cementing that bond of ethics and aesthetics, which we have somewhere along the way lost, suppressed, neglected,… for without the ethical dimension, aesthetics cannot face the world with that essential respect, a respectability which will compel parents and society to say: go my child, become a creative person beyond all else, we are there, always behind you, this is your need, the best way to be true to oneself and others.
Let me just clarify a few of the key ideas upon which the action of infrastructure-building is rooted.
Idealism Clarifies
The human consciousness demands to know itself. To be true to this, self-awareness confronts all of us. Absorbing this uncertainty is the underlying motivation to life. Varied are the evolutionary phases, ranging from the sheltered idealism which yearns for freedom, love and courage, to the hesitant stages where one is awakened to the material duties of idealism. In sustaining these phases to their logical limits comes freedom for the individual, freedom from all sense of obligation, and the will to give to another without reciprocity. This hard fought freedom is the bedrock of spirituality.
Sustaining each evolving phase of this self-awareness determines the individual's contribution to humanity. From unconnected ideas and concepts the individual will create an idealism, which may clarify into a vision. These phases will structure events, projects, institutions and an infrastructure, at different stages, amid a jungle of inter-relationships, across time and space. It is the duty of the material context to utilise, harness and integrate these individual contributions into an effective system. It is this process of transformation and integration of the idealistic into its material institutional forms which determine the quality of life in a nation.
A simultaneity of vision and action is the basic pre-requisite for any effective effort in India. The simultaneity implies the need to harness detachment within the creative action, along a path which cannot help but absorb contradictions with equanimity. It is this passionate-detachment which allows one to respect and integrate each specialised corner to serve the wider multi-faceted intelligence. It is through this fearless attitude that the essential compassion and humour to sustain such a journey arises, from which may emerge a new conviction and vision for non-violence.
Vision is nothing but idealism clarified, ready to take on a practical mantle, to find one's battleground, to take up arms without hesitation. Vision emerges from the struggles of one's private-public persona dissolving away, which in turn forces idealism to become accountable to a voice other than one's inner integrity. This surrender of the self occurs when a faith in humanity decides to raise its voice and stand up. It is probably the most difficult and thankless decision of introspection, and yet essential if any privately nurtured idealism is to become a public source of inspiration. Thus to know the idealism which awakens to and then confronts its materiality is the first task of infrastructure-building.
However, before idealism is able to respond to the demands of its materiality, it must be nurtured, away from material friction. This sheltered idealism, emerging from the early years of introspection, will usually harbour a set of values in their most energetic and pristine form. Stray concepts such as the need for freedom and love, the play with uncertainty, the power of fearlessness, eroticism and obsession, the relationship with wealth, the rights for justice and an ethical life, the nature of the whole, a curiosity about the power of violence, all probably flit through the mind, like isolated islands. The inter-relationships between each value and the outside world, the subtle layers separating each other and underlying each, the vast hidden value-systems embedded in each, the power of each value so as to dominate the mind, all such remain relatively untested.
Yet it is this immunity of innocence which will allow sustaining power in later years. Also, this sheltered quality of introspection eventually forces idealism to re-question itself. The process is instigated by the growing wedge between the private and public face which idealism must possess. Feeling a sense of hypocrisy is inevitable as one recognizes the inability to live up to its own public standards. It is this self-questioning, triggered by the material imperatives of an idealism, which invites pain to play its pivotal role in the evolution of idealism.
Pain can be seen as the first child of idealism trying to impregnate its materiality. With time it becomes the most potent trigger in helping to awaken an idea into action; it most fully helps the mind to see things as they are in fact. However, it also carries the heaviest burden of negative energy, creating dilemmas and hesitations at each threshold. It is a most precarious process which allows pain to be transformed into playing a positive role.
The Role of Creativity
This requestioning process is essentially the handling of uncertainty. Coming to terms with uncertainty implies there will always remain a continual sense of incompleteness. The issue lies in accepting the incompleteness, while maintaining one's motivation. The other key aspect of handling uncertainty is the need to absorb contradictions. It is here that the role of artistic creativity can be best appreciated. Through the family of values it cultivates, such as detachment and fearlessness, the creative process fosters the absorption of contradictions.
The main factor which allows creativity to fulfil this role is the ability of the artistic mind to play with uncertainty a bit longer, without imposing a preconception. The process of transforming questions into answers, intangibilities into tangibilities, formlessness into form, must include sufficient openness so as to allow each created answer to reveal its fuller question, each created form to reveal its fuller formlessness.
This ability to let uncertainty be, of waiting with it, giving it the freedom to be itself, is the root of creativity. In the act of giving, one gives oneself the space and time to mature, while simultaneously absorbing the intensity of the moment. In this tussle evolves the wisdom which realises that all activity is attracted towards non-activity. Change and permanence, detachment and motivation, energy and quiet, are all visualised afresh, their existence re-examined.
Each value now begins its transformation in this awakening.
A tussle between action and non-action, reaction and steadiness, all create a new rhythm. The ability to sustain this pendulum flow is the basis of the transformation. Just as a pendulum is to time, this oscillation needs to be sustained if the rhythm of transforming idealism is to be absorbed. The private and the public, the tangible and intangible, the self and the selfless, these all have elusive differences as idealism awakens to its materiality. Walking this abyss of wafer-thin proportions is the nature of the awakening. In sustaining the pace of the oscillation lies the nature of continual flux, the play with uncertainty... Herein lies a fundamental characteristic of an infrastructure-builder. The integrity with which this oscillation is sustained will determine the success and nature of later action. It will provide the clarity so as to help idealism institutionalise itself.
An example of this oscillation process is the tussle which exists between detachment and passion, involvement and quiet. To be the creator, the spectator and the unconcerned, all in one, simultaneously, slipping into each, is the issue. This helps one realise that each is genuine, and yet each is inadequate, for the real nature is that which allows this slipping into each, that which allows the fusion of the creator, spectator, and the unconcerned. This substance which allows the creator-spectator-unconcerned continuum to exist in us, is the reality the individual is trying to grasp. It is required for one mind to harness all perspectives, to inculcate the respective attitudes and then try to fuse each into this oscillating balance whereby all contribute towards nurturing the continuum. In sustaining this holistic attitude lies the eventual success of the infrastructure-builder.
In understanding the transformations which a creative mind cultivates within a set of values, such as detachment and fearlessness, we can understand more clearly the process by which idealism needs to evolve so as to be able to transform itself into material attitudes which in turn harness the institutionalising process of such values.
Passionate-detachment
Essentially, such a balance requires detachment within the energy of involvement.
The idea of inner detachment is misunderstood, by both east and west. One has highlighted the passive and fatalistic aspects, while the other has focused on the cynical and anti-pleasure aspects. This has led to detachment not being able to sustain a viable practicality for itself. The intangible value of detachment cannot be calculated and the fear of its anti-motivational aspect is too risky. This Catch-22 is reinforced by institutions unwilling to nurture the idea through an educational and work process.
Yet in artistic creativity, detachment is carefully cultivated. Like other human values, detachment represents different facets at different stages of maturity. At lower levels it can lead to indifference or a cool cynicism; inspired as readily as self-absorption. At somewhat higher levels, detachment can inculcate a sense of humour and playfulness which absorbs like a participating-spectator. At higher levels it inspires a calm sense of duty, rooted in absorbing all, grasping the essence of non-judgmental judgments, the idea of inaction, or some continuous effort which seeks no reward but that of being true to activity and its pleasure. At still higher levels it can inspire action in others though remaining quiet (neutral) oneself.
Thus one pivotal dilemma which confronts all individual activity is that non-activity seems wise. Thus an individual who truly wishes to know oneself, and the nature of one's creativity, must sooner or later come to terms with this spectre of non-activity. This spectre can emerge at any age, not just in the twilight, or when energy is tired. The issue is how to allow this seed a significant freedom in the mind, and still continue with a self-renewing motivation. This is the duty of detachment.
In general, however, the positive force inherent in detachment has not been emphasised in the western inner journey. For the east, the non-violent and passive aspect of detachment today lacks credibility, for it is unable to discipline the daily violence. One requires a re-education.
Our understanding regarding love and compassion, within which the greatest force for detachment exists, must be one area of focus. The knowledge that once one received unqualified love, is enough for most to selflessly devote their lives with lesser demands of reciprocity. To give not because one necessarily wants to give, but that one cannot help but give. It is a compulsion which also influences our own desires and wants. An overwhelming momentum is created which sooner or later calms want. Wants and desires are clearly recognised and yet somehow a smile can control their venting.
Yet `letting it be' requires a passionate discipline. For only the most passionate can sustain such detachment and duty. Duty becomes the act which absorbs all pleasures. Detachment is the wisdom which disciplines duty. Creativity is the most complete duty which strives to fulfil this pleasure. Action cannot innovate without coming to terms with these ideas.
Fearlessness
Fearlessness comes from being part of each corner, having let each idea lived within, having been given the opportunities to give such anarchy a freedom. It comes from the ego realising its role, rooted in the humility of its insignificance and the confidence that awareness is indestructible, ever-changing. To demand freedom is an early desire of the ego; to give freedom, is its inner compulsion.
Fearlessness comes from living a life rooted in absorbing all which comes one's way, and yet moulding this absorption with some unique aura. Aura is the appendix of clarity; it is what inspires clarity to become clearer. In clarity lies fearlessness, a clarity which never closes the eye to the surrounding flux. The intent to be fearless is thus rooted in the belief that fearlessness may never come. Yet that is irrelevant after a certain duration, for then enough discipline has been nurtured to let a vulnerability be itself, without having to hide. A frailty is allowed to be revealed without fear. Such is the nature of fearlessness – that fear is a permanent tenant, detached in its corner, with no need to evict.
Creativity has always nourished this fusion of contradictions, to emerge with fuller forms, and the openness of mind which encourages fearlessness. It manifests itself via experimentation, or a belief in randomness, or the ability to merge uncertainties without the need to resolve, or the ability to accept inspiration from any corner, from trivial notions or profound ideas, from ugly forms or beautiful images, from vulgar circumstances or serene moments. There is no sense of proportion but the limitlessness within. There is no value which burdens the creative impulse, for each act of creativity becomes a discipline to sustain the day.
To let each unknowing situation reveal itself, to just spectate and in that distance become the most active participant. It is like the lover who sometimes needs to give distance to loved ones which they may not be ready to accept. In that show of trust, one gives the other a chance to act positively. In that retreating step, one moves towards a fuller togetherness, which otherwise would have resulted in a pushing away, a demand of faithfulness which could not have been fulfiled.
Few have the courage to tell their partner you be faithful to yourself, first and foremost, and I trust that in that act our love will be sustained, our togetherness maintained. Most demand a faithfulness, which sooner or later pushes away the love, for the other is rarely given the time to know themselves, with the freedom they crave another should give them. Trust in oneself does not evolve, and so trust in another feels missing. It is only after such shows of faith that one can take another for granted. For by then it is no longer seen in the tone of `taken for granted'. It has become transformed due to love, which has been nurtured amid this mutual freedom. This is the essence which will mould the future co-existence of people.
This `giving of freedom', and `letting uncertainties be' are subtle ideas which require the reaffirmation of daily life. The present system does not allow one the space and time to practice such ideals, and so naturally their usefulness is negated, and the philosophy dismissed. Thus it becomes the duty of the artist and philosopher to also become the teacher, economist, politician, and sage. Each aspect disciplining the other, thereby giving a fuller authenticity to each specific role.
It must be stressed that the merger of different disciplines is not simply a result of synthesis. The initial separation is the illusion, which is then paradoxically denied by an attempt at synthesis. This gives the human mind the false accolade of creating a form, when all which actually happens is that the underlying unity is revealed. The artist-philosopher-teacher economist-politician-sage is already existing in the human psyche. To reveal the unity is the requirement, rather than teaching that one is creating a union. Thus an educational system which allows an inner organic search, rather than imposing a preconceived inter-disciplinary hierarchy is more likely to succeed. However, the critical faculty which structures a framework so that holism can become a living force, requires the transition of inter-disciplinarity. Further, the creation of synthesis is easier for the mind to assimilate, especially one focused on the reality of opposition.
Hence within creativity exists the genius to grasp the nature of uncertainty. It alone has the openness of intent to give the unlimited more freedom. In this process it has the ability to be fair. It is in providing this spirit of fairness that lies the ethical dimension of creativity, rooted in the instinct of giving freedom, itself dependent on the will to be self-critical with joy. It is this joyous self-criticism which is the foundation of infrastructure-building.
Most western developmental models, which dominate the world, have allowed economics to enter into all areas of life from the idealistic to the aesthetic, emotional and spiritual, areas in which economics possesses no expertise let alone right. So it is happening to more ancient and eastern cultures such as India. I have no desire to create a west-east divide, which is essentially false to a very large extent, but the key issue is about economics (which in turn has been most influenced by western preconceptions regarding the role of economics and wealth in society) and the relationship of creativity to handle economics with integrity, for creativity to sooner or later overwhelm the economic arrogance. However, this will be so only if a deeper value-system can be made into a viable living alternative, thus the need for a great self-generating, financially-independent cultural infrastructure. In building this seemingly contradictory new edifice lies the true test of a great culture and civilisation.
Thus the task before every creative mind must be to recognise that this conflict of the materiality of an economic system and the interiority of a creative value system, is the very nature of life, and today must be placed at the centre of one’s creativity if we are going to aspire to changing society and the terms upon which we all interact with each other. It is virtually that same dilemma, of living with the Highest Inner Self amid the most base material context, and this is not just a philosophical issue of later days in life but of every day in life, at every stage, every act we undertake must be fundamentally aware of this creative responsibility: from where come the funds to nurture idealism? how are they to be utilised? how do I generate wealth and simultaneously redistribute that wealth to build the infrastructure which nurtures creativity for others, and so takes forward the journey of building a material society rooted upon another value system of integrity. Herein lies the answer from which the arts will come to play the dominating role in daily life at all levels, and not only dismissed as entertainment (though essential) or for small elite cliques who only communicate with each other. Cinema’s role is paramount herein.
Cinema is one of the greatest means by which to inspire humanity, make her think and fall in love, make her change all preconceptions and ways of looking and acting, it has inherent that dynamic energy with which life finds greatest affinity, blurring that true and false distinction, where realism and idealism fuse as if it could easily be the other way. To nurture that blurring of difference is essential, to keep mind and heart constantly alert.
The structures one has tried to build have had these principles at their root, whether it was India’s first Auction House for the Arts, or the Archive for the Indian Arts and Cinema, and now Osian’s–Cinefan and Osian’s–Cinemaya. Yet this time, one has not built it from scratch. That journey – of Cinefan and Cinemaya – has been Aruna Vasudev’s, a wise and compassionate person, deeply in love with cinema, dedicated to its cause of reaching out and inspiring others. However, after decades of uncompromising energy she finds a need to rejuvenate and widen her vision and its implementation. The acquisition of intellectual capital and all which goes along with it, is never easy, especially where love of the subject dominates the process of sharing, yet I find the merging of the Cinemaya and Cinefan journey’s into the Osian’s vision, a natural path. Hopefully, we will find the stamina to sustain the vision embarked upon, absorbing the many streams and rivers along the way, with a swell of creativity emerging, so that India can say with pride that we have put into place one of the greatest learning centres for the arts… and upon that wink of realisation I truly hope to walk away and make my films which lie buried away,… Till then, the team at Osian’s, Aruna and myself are here to serve you, bringing the best writing in cinema, opening out cinematic horizons in many new ways over the coming years, fusing the aesthetics of the fine arts with the deepest passionate-detachment which India cannot help but add to the great Asian canopy of cohering contradictions, where delusion and reason fuse to ignite our energies into a new idealism.
“… beta, come, your duty is done, she is satiated, it is time to now create for yourself, go and philosophise, you have transformed idealism into material form, you have kept the purity of your inner voice alive, absorbed the dirt of generating and redistributing wealth with love, there has been no disunity between vision and action, failures have been outsustained, humour is still intact, take a break before breath fails you, finish your novel, start your screenplays, direct your film…be selfish once again, forget your abstracts of nation and humanity, let them go, let them be themselves, the children are learning, the space has been created, the systems are in place, you are easily irrelevant, it is now just you for yourself, return to your suspended promises, let us go and make cinema, great cinema…”
Yet, these words must still wait. We are slightly behind schedule, the university’s structure is still two divisions short of intention, and today the cinematic infrastructure is the bottomless pit requiring immediate feed. The inevitable irony of financial independence for the arts is the initial vast doses of cross-subsidisation required so as to bring each art form to stand on its own feet. Yet this is not the same kind of subsidisation of the government grant or corporate sponsorship type, but instead the support from an individual creative mind to build a creative institution, there is no leasing out of responsibilities, no expectation of others transforming idealism into material form. There is no dilution of the idealism in action. Such a process naturally becomes the idealism.
So now, to Osian’s visual and textual archives are added an eminent international journal: Cinemaya – the first on Asian Cinema, and an Asian film festival: Cinefan. Three platforms to systematically bring about changes in our cinematic sensibilities.
Infrastructure-building has always been the preserve of governments, the private individual has been considered inadequate or unwilling to take on that responsibility, especially for the arts. It is still not a clear belief that private individuals can build great public institutions, and thereafter infrastructure… yet that is the task we must take on more and more there is no alternative if we truly wish that a fully active creative life is the best way to live, and that material society needs the creative value-system throbbing at its heart if great civilisations are to be nurtured…
In a nutshell, the task and journey before us is this: it is imperative that the arts are placed at the heart of the developmental framework. Further this must be accomplished through a unique process by which the creative arts build their own infrastructure on their own terms, creating a self-generating financial system, free of patronage from any other value system. Only if this is so can the arts genuinely claim to nurture and spread the values of the creative process and its accompanying life. Only if these creative values are respected by a material society will a deeper value system than the economic, evolve, therein placing the creative community and intelligentsia at the centre of responsibility; disciplining and therein re-structuring the modes of allocating resources. All the great arts will have essentially failed in transforming society, assuming that be an objective of artistic creativity, if the way of life of the creative mind cannot be practised, cannot be lived, by every citizen. To be a creative mind, first and foremost, while simultaneously fulfilling our material obligations as a second priority, must be the overwhelming objective. This alone will bring deep love, introspection, passionate-detachment, experimentation, the ability to absorb all contradictions, revealing our intuitive-logic which allows uncertainty to freely reveal itself, on her terms, therein inducing an instinctive fearlessness into the day, in all aspects of daily life, thereby making every little act alive, worthwhile and beautiful, dissolving the sense of distance which the individual and the object cannot help but feel. Learning will become creativity at every level, each act the human being undertakes will have a deeper sense of dignity and a natural high. Soon there will be the constant shout within, saying: that herein I have been true to my inner voice, that there is still a deeper love waiting to be given, which I will share without qualification, and I have also paid my damn bills, and those of my dependents, friends and well-wishers, and more importantly have taken my idealism forward into another material form, beyond just creating my book, or painting or film or play or composition, or whatever, so striving beyond the basic material medium, taking on materialism at a deeper level, tackling the bugs of communication and dissemination, hence making the sacrifice, which clearly recognises the needs and time in which my communities, nations and civilisations, find themselves.
This shout must each day whisper sweetly to the creative mind. Soon it will be instinct to realise that it is not enough just to create the art or book or cinema, and hope that its aura and expression will filter through the system, but also take on the duty of making sure the environment in which we function respects creativity, its integrity and way of life. In this way the processes of creativity also change, taking a deeper tangible responsibility into their heart, cementing that bond of ethics and aesthetics, which we have somewhere along the way lost, suppressed, neglected,… for without the ethical dimension, aesthetics cannot face the world with that essential respect, a respectability which will compel parents and society to say: go my child, become a creative person beyond all else, we are there, always behind you, this is your need, the best way to be true to oneself and others.
Let me just clarify a few of the key ideas upon which the action of infrastructure-building is rooted.
Idealism Clarifies
The human consciousness demands to know itself. To be true to this, self-awareness confronts all of us. Absorbing this uncertainty is the underlying motivation to life. Varied are the evolutionary phases, ranging from the sheltered idealism which yearns for freedom, love and courage, to the hesitant stages where one is awakened to the material duties of idealism. In sustaining these phases to their logical limits comes freedom for the individual, freedom from all sense of obligation, and the will to give to another without reciprocity. This hard fought freedom is the bedrock of spirituality.
Sustaining each evolving phase of this self-awareness determines the individual's contribution to humanity. From unconnected ideas and concepts the individual will create an idealism, which may clarify into a vision. These phases will structure events, projects, institutions and an infrastructure, at different stages, amid a jungle of inter-relationships, across time and space. It is the duty of the material context to utilise, harness and integrate these individual contributions into an effective system. It is this process of transformation and integration of the idealistic into its material institutional forms which determine the quality of life in a nation.
A simultaneity of vision and action is the basic pre-requisite for any effective effort in India. The simultaneity implies the need to harness detachment within the creative action, along a path which cannot help but absorb contradictions with equanimity. It is this passionate-detachment which allows one to respect and integrate each specialised corner to serve the wider multi-faceted intelligence. It is through this fearless attitude that the essential compassion and humour to sustain such a journey arises, from which may emerge a new conviction and vision for non-violence.
Vision is nothing but idealism clarified, ready to take on a practical mantle, to find one's battleground, to take up arms without hesitation. Vision emerges from the struggles of one's private-public persona dissolving away, which in turn forces idealism to become accountable to a voice other than one's inner integrity. This surrender of the self occurs when a faith in humanity decides to raise its voice and stand up. It is probably the most difficult and thankless decision of introspection, and yet essential if any privately nurtured idealism is to become a public source of inspiration. Thus to know the idealism which awakens to and then confronts its materiality is the first task of infrastructure-building.
However, before idealism is able to respond to the demands of its materiality, it must be nurtured, away from material friction. This sheltered idealism, emerging from the early years of introspection, will usually harbour a set of values in their most energetic and pristine form. Stray concepts such as the need for freedom and love, the play with uncertainty, the power of fearlessness, eroticism and obsession, the relationship with wealth, the rights for justice and an ethical life, the nature of the whole, a curiosity about the power of violence, all probably flit through the mind, like isolated islands. The inter-relationships between each value and the outside world, the subtle layers separating each other and underlying each, the vast hidden value-systems embedded in each, the power of each value so as to dominate the mind, all such remain relatively untested.
Yet it is this immunity of innocence which will allow sustaining power in later years. Also, this sheltered quality of introspection eventually forces idealism to re-question itself. The process is instigated by the growing wedge between the private and public face which idealism must possess. Feeling a sense of hypocrisy is inevitable as one recognizes the inability to live up to its own public standards. It is this self-questioning, triggered by the material imperatives of an idealism, which invites pain to play its pivotal role in the evolution of idealism.
Pain can be seen as the first child of idealism trying to impregnate its materiality. With time it becomes the most potent trigger in helping to awaken an idea into action; it most fully helps the mind to see things as they are in fact. However, it also carries the heaviest burden of negative energy, creating dilemmas and hesitations at each threshold. It is a most precarious process which allows pain to be transformed into playing a positive role.
The Role of Creativity
This requestioning process is essentially the handling of uncertainty. Coming to terms with uncertainty implies there will always remain a continual sense of incompleteness. The issue lies in accepting the incompleteness, while maintaining one's motivation. The other key aspect of handling uncertainty is the need to absorb contradictions. It is here that the role of artistic creativity can be best appreciated. Through the family of values it cultivates, such as detachment and fearlessness, the creative process fosters the absorption of contradictions.
The main factor which allows creativity to fulfil this role is the ability of the artistic mind to play with uncertainty a bit longer, without imposing a preconception. The process of transforming questions into answers, intangibilities into tangibilities, formlessness into form, must include sufficient openness so as to allow each created answer to reveal its fuller question, each created form to reveal its fuller formlessness.
This ability to let uncertainty be, of waiting with it, giving it the freedom to be itself, is the root of creativity. In the act of giving, one gives oneself the space and time to mature, while simultaneously absorbing the intensity of the moment. In this tussle evolves the wisdom which realises that all activity is attracted towards non-activity. Change and permanence, detachment and motivation, energy and quiet, are all visualised afresh, their existence re-examined.
Each value now begins its transformation in this awakening.
A tussle between action and non-action, reaction and steadiness, all create a new rhythm. The ability to sustain this pendulum flow is the basis of the transformation. Just as a pendulum is to time, this oscillation needs to be sustained if the rhythm of transforming idealism is to be absorbed. The private and the public, the tangible and intangible, the self and the selfless, these all have elusive differences as idealism awakens to its materiality. Walking this abyss of wafer-thin proportions is the nature of the awakening. In sustaining the pace of the oscillation lies the nature of continual flux, the play with uncertainty... Herein lies a fundamental characteristic of an infrastructure-builder. The integrity with which this oscillation is sustained will determine the success and nature of later action. It will provide the clarity so as to help idealism institutionalise itself.
An example of this oscillation process is the tussle which exists between detachment and passion, involvement and quiet. To be the creator, the spectator and the unconcerned, all in one, simultaneously, slipping into each, is the issue. This helps one realise that each is genuine, and yet each is inadequate, for the real nature is that which allows this slipping into each, that which allows the fusion of the creator, spectator, and the unconcerned. This substance which allows the creator-spectator-unconcerned continuum to exist in us, is the reality the individual is trying to grasp. It is required for one mind to harness all perspectives, to inculcate the respective attitudes and then try to fuse each into this oscillating balance whereby all contribute towards nurturing the continuum. In sustaining this holistic attitude lies the eventual success of the infrastructure-builder.
In understanding the transformations which a creative mind cultivates within a set of values, such as detachment and fearlessness, we can understand more clearly the process by which idealism needs to evolve so as to be able to transform itself into material attitudes which in turn harness the institutionalising process of such values.
Passionate-detachment
Essentially, such a balance requires detachment within the energy of involvement.
The idea of inner detachment is misunderstood, by both east and west. One has highlighted the passive and fatalistic aspects, while the other has focused on the cynical and anti-pleasure aspects. This has led to detachment not being able to sustain a viable practicality for itself. The intangible value of detachment cannot be calculated and the fear of its anti-motivational aspect is too risky. This Catch-22 is reinforced by institutions unwilling to nurture the idea through an educational and work process.
Yet in artistic creativity, detachment is carefully cultivated. Like other human values, detachment represents different facets at different stages of maturity. At lower levels it can lead to indifference or a cool cynicism; inspired as readily as self-absorption. At somewhat higher levels, detachment can inculcate a sense of humour and playfulness which absorbs like a participating-spectator. At higher levels it inspires a calm sense of duty, rooted in absorbing all, grasping the essence of non-judgmental judgments, the idea of inaction, or some continuous effort which seeks no reward but that of being true to activity and its pleasure. At still higher levels it can inspire action in others though remaining quiet (neutral) oneself.
Thus one pivotal dilemma which confronts all individual activity is that non-activity seems wise. Thus an individual who truly wishes to know oneself, and the nature of one's creativity, must sooner or later come to terms with this spectre of non-activity. This spectre can emerge at any age, not just in the twilight, or when energy is tired. The issue is how to allow this seed a significant freedom in the mind, and still continue with a self-renewing motivation. This is the duty of detachment.
In general, however, the positive force inherent in detachment has not been emphasised in the western inner journey. For the east, the non-violent and passive aspect of detachment today lacks credibility, for it is unable to discipline the daily violence. One requires a re-education.
Our understanding regarding love and compassion, within which the greatest force for detachment exists, must be one area of focus. The knowledge that once one received unqualified love, is enough for most to selflessly devote their lives with lesser demands of reciprocity. To give not because one necessarily wants to give, but that one cannot help but give. It is a compulsion which also influences our own desires and wants. An overwhelming momentum is created which sooner or later calms want. Wants and desires are clearly recognised and yet somehow a smile can control their venting.
Yet `letting it be' requires a passionate discipline. For only the most passionate can sustain such detachment and duty. Duty becomes the act which absorbs all pleasures. Detachment is the wisdom which disciplines duty. Creativity is the most complete duty which strives to fulfil this pleasure. Action cannot innovate without coming to terms with these ideas.
Fearlessness
Fearlessness comes from being part of each corner, having let each idea lived within, having been given the opportunities to give such anarchy a freedom. It comes from the ego realising its role, rooted in the humility of its insignificance and the confidence that awareness is indestructible, ever-changing. To demand freedom is an early desire of the ego; to give freedom, is its inner compulsion.
Fearlessness comes from living a life rooted in absorbing all which comes one's way, and yet moulding this absorption with some unique aura. Aura is the appendix of clarity; it is what inspires clarity to become clearer. In clarity lies fearlessness, a clarity which never closes the eye to the surrounding flux. The intent to be fearless is thus rooted in the belief that fearlessness may never come. Yet that is irrelevant after a certain duration, for then enough discipline has been nurtured to let a vulnerability be itself, without having to hide. A frailty is allowed to be revealed without fear. Such is the nature of fearlessness – that fear is a permanent tenant, detached in its corner, with no need to evict.
Creativity has always nourished this fusion of contradictions, to emerge with fuller forms, and the openness of mind which encourages fearlessness. It manifests itself via experimentation, or a belief in randomness, or the ability to merge uncertainties without the need to resolve, or the ability to accept inspiration from any corner, from trivial notions or profound ideas, from ugly forms or beautiful images, from vulgar circumstances or serene moments. There is no sense of proportion but the limitlessness within. There is no value which burdens the creative impulse, for each act of creativity becomes a discipline to sustain the day.
To let each unknowing situation reveal itself, to just spectate and in that distance become the most active participant. It is like the lover who sometimes needs to give distance to loved ones which they may not be ready to accept. In that show of trust, one gives the other a chance to act positively. In that retreating step, one moves towards a fuller togetherness, which otherwise would have resulted in a pushing away, a demand of faithfulness which could not have been fulfiled.
Few have the courage to tell their partner you be faithful to yourself, first and foremost, and I trust that in that act our love will be sustained, our togetherness maintained. Most demand a faithfulness, which sooner or later pushes away the love, for the other is rarely given the time to know themselves, with the freedom they crave another should give them. Trust in oneself does not evolve, and so trust in another feels missing. It is only after such shows of faith that one can take another for granted. For by then it is no longer seen in the tone of `taken for granted'. It has become transformed due to love, which has been nurtured amid this mutual freedom. This is the essence which will mould the future co-existence of people.
This `giving of freedom', and `letting uncertainties be' are subtle ideas which require the reaffirmation of daily life. The present system does not allow one the space and time to practice such ideals, and so naturally their usefulness is negated, and the philosophy dismissed. Thus it becomes the duty of the artist and philosopher to also become the teacher, economist, politician, and sage. Each aspect disciplining the other, thereby giving a fuller authenticity to each specific role.
It must be stressed that the merger of different disciplines is not simply a result of synthesis. The initial separation is the illusion, which is then paradoxically denied by an attempt at synthesis. This gives the human mind the false accolade of creating a form, when all which actually happens is that the underlying unity is revealed. The artist-philosopher-teacher economist-politician-sage is already existing in the human psyche. To reveal the unity is the requirement, rather than teaching that one is creating a union. Thus an educational system which allows an inner organic search, rather than imposing a preconceived inter-disciplinary hierarchy is more likely to succeed. However, the critical faculty which structures a framework so that holism can become a living force, requires the transition of inter-disciplinarity. Further, the creation of synthesis is easier for the mind to assimilate, especially one focused on the reality of opposition.
Hence within creativity exists the genius to grasp the nature of uncertainty. It alone has the openness of intent to give the unlimited more freedom. In this process it has the ability to be fair. It is in providing this spirit of fairness that lies the ethical dimension of creativity, rooted in the instinct of giving freedom, itself dependent on the will to be self-critical with joy. It is this joyous self-criticism which is the foundation of infrastructure-building.
Most western developmental models, which dominate the world, have allowed economics to enter into all areas of life from the idealistic to the aesthetic, emotional and spiritual, areas in which economics possesses no expertise let alone right. So it is happening to more ancient and eastern cultures such as India. I have no desire to create a west-east divide, which is essentially false to a very large extent, but the key issue is about economics (which in turn has been most influenced by western preconceptions regarding the role of economics and wealth in society) and the relationship of creativity to handle economics with integrity, for creativity to sooner or later overwhelm the economic arrogance. However, this will be so only if a deeper value-system can be made into a viable living alternative, thus the need for a great self-generating, financially-independent cultural infrastructure. In building this seemingly contradictory new edifice lies the true test of a great culture and civilisation.
Thus the task before every creative mind must be to recognise that this conflict of the materiality of an economic system and the interiority of a creative value system, is the very nature of life, and today must be placed at the centre of one’s creativity if we are going to aspire to changing society and the terms upon which we all interact with each other. It is virtually that same dilemma, of living with the Highest Inner Self amid the most base material context, and this is not just a philosophical issue of later days in life but of every day in life, at every stage, every act we undertake must be fundamentally aware of this creative responsibility: from where come the funds to nurture idealism? how are they to be utilised? how do I generate wealth and simultaneously redistribute that wealth to build the infrastructure which nurtures creativity for others, and so takes forward the journey of building a material society rooted upon another value system of integrity. Herein lies the answer from which the arts will come to play the dominating role in daily life at all levels, and not only dismissed as entertainment (though essential) or for small elite cliques who only communicate with each other. Cinema’s role is paramount herein.
Cinema is one of the greatest means by which to inspire humanity, make her think and fall in love, make her change all preconceptions and ways of looking and acting, it has inherent that dynamic energy with which life finds greatest affinity, blurring that true and false distinction, where realism and idealism fuse as if it could easily be the other way. To nurture that blurring of difference is essential, to keep mind and heart constantly alert.
The structures one has tried to build have had these principles at their root, whether it was India’s first Auction House for the Arts, or the Archive for the Indian Arts and Cinema, and now Osian’s–Cinefan and Osian’s–Cinemaya. Yet this time, one has not built it from scratch. That journey – of Cinefan and Cinemaya – has been Aruna Vasudev’s, a wise and compassionate person, deeply in love with cinema, dedicated to its cause of reaching out and inspiring others. However, after decades of uncompromising energy she finds a need to rejuvenate and widen her vision and its implementation. The acquisition of intellectual capital and all which goes along with it, is never easy, especially where love of the subject dominates the process of sharing, yet I find the merging of the Cinemaya and Cinefan journey’s into the Osian’s vision, a natural path. Hopefully, we will find the stamina to sustain the vision embarked upon, absorbing the many streams and rivers along the way, with a swell of creativity emerging, so that India can say with pride that we have put into place one of the greatest learning centres for the arts… and upon that wink of realisation I truly hope to walk away and make my films which lie buried away,… Till then, the team at Osian’s, Aruna and myself are here to serve you, bringing the best writing in cinema, opening out cinematic horizons in many new ways over the coming years, fusing the aesthetics of the fine arts with the deepest passionate-detachment which India cannot help but add to the great Asian canopy of cohering contradictions, where delusion and reason fuse to ignite our energies into a new idealism.
Monday, March 2, 2009
BUILDING THE INFRASCAPE (2001)
The task before the intelligentsia and creative community is to build an environment in which the ideal material system can hope to flourish. For this environment to be sustainable and desired by our people, the creative community must have a significant material stake in the system, i.e. in the infrastructure and institutions, which nurtures the environment on a daily basis. This stake in the infrastructure-building process simultaneously demands creative inputs at both the levels of maintaining the integrity of the idealistic vision and taking on the responsibility for the financial self-sufficiency of the process.
Thus creating this infrascape* is no longer about a division of activity where idealism is the duty of one set of creative minds and the wealth generating and redistributing obligations burdened upon another set of implementing organizations. A fundamental redefinition of the Arts & Cultural Institution is now inevitable, as is the duty demanded from an artistic creative individual and the intelligentsia as a collective force.
One requirement of this new duty is the need to recreate or re-mould the mechanisms and terms by which economic wealth is to be generated and simultaneously redistributed in a more effective manner. This in turn demands a reassessment of all forms of patronage - governmental, corporate and philanthropic, and the possibility of the arts generating wealth for their own infrastructure-building efforts. It also demands a deeper debate, asking: can the creative integrity maintain its obsessive focus, its inspirational force to a wider humanity, when it suddenly places itself amid material obligations and all the distractions of administration and the pursuit of material power?
Another implied responsibility of building the infrascape becomes the task of documenting, preserving and restoring to daily life our artistic and cultural heritage. This in turn opens out a vast educational responsibility. Also, from nurturing and harnessing this heritage and knowledge base emerges the possibility, if undertaken with the integrity of an infrastructure-builder, of generating and redistributing significant amounts of wealth ‑ aesthetic and economic, and thereby tackling one of the fundamental dilemmas facing the whole task.
This task, ideally to be fulfilled in partnership with government, requires a holistic vision which was once the privilege of government, but now must become the responsibility of the private sector. Recent introspection regarding its role in the cultural arena and a greater recognition of its fiscal imperatives is placing the government in a growingly difficult position. On one level it seeks greater influence in the infrascape, on another all major archives, heritage properties and educational facilities are facing a significant loss of motivation, confidence and resources. In the process the respect for merit and a belief in intellectual integrity and freedom is suffering. Corporate sponsorship will brand the heritage belonging to the public, and in the process persuade that all creative, aesthetic, intellectual and historical efforts are now but another commodity to be purchased. This in turn will negate the potential impact of increasing respect for creativity and its family of values, which in turn lessens the chances of providing the economic value system with a counter-discipline.
Criticising this whole scenario is now easy and pointless, unless a viable alternative is possible and offered. Obviously, the chances of a sustainable alternative exist. On an individual level, one has sowed the seeds of an institutionalizing process which may be able to implement an alternative infrascape-building process, away from the dependence on the usual forms of patronage and their conditions. Of course, the process is still in its infancy, and failure is as likely as success. Osian’s will fulfil its duty. Others will follow and deepen the process. Momentum and progress are inevitable.
* Infrascape seems an apt word to describe both the environment and its underlying infrastructure for the arts and culture.
Thus creating this infrascape* is no longer about a division of activity where idealism is the duty of one set of creative minds and the wealth generating and redistributing obligations burdened upon another set of implementing organizations. A fundamental redefinition of the Arts & Cultural Institution is now inevitable, as is the duty demanded from an artistic creative individual and the intelligentsia as a collective force.
One requirement of this new duty is the need to recreate or re-mould the mechanisms and terms by which economic wealth is to be generated and simultaneously redistributed in a more effective manner. This in turn demands a reassessment of all forms of patronage - governmental, corporate and philanthropic, and the possibility of the arts generating wealth for their own infrastructure-building efforts. It also demands a deeper debate, asking: can the creative integrity maintain its obsessive focus, its inspirational force to a wider humanity, when it suddenly places itself amid material obligations and all the distractions of administration and the pursuit of material power?
Another implied responsibility of building the infrascape becomes the task of documenting, preserving and restoring to daily life our artistic and cultural heritage. This in turn opens out a vast educational responsibility. Also, from nurturing and harnessing this heritage and knowledge base emerges the possibility, if undertaken with the integrity of an infrastructure-builder, of generating and redistributing significant amounts of wealth ‑ aesthetic and economic, and thereby tackling one of the fundamental dilemmas facing the whole task.
This task, ideally to be fulfilled in partnership with government, requires a holistic vision which was once the privilege of government, but now must become the responsibility of the private sector. Recent introspection regarding its role in the cultural arena and a greater recognition of its fiscal imperatives is placing the government in a growingly difficult position. On one level it seeks greater influence in the infrascape, on another all major archives, heritage properties and educational facilities are facing a significant loss of motivation, confidence and resources. In the process the respect for merit and a belief in intellectual integrity and freedom is suffering. Corporate sponsorship will brand the heritage belonging to the public, and in the process persuade that all creative, aesthetic, intellectual and historical efforts are now but another commodity to be purchased. This in turn will negate the potential impact of increasing respect for creativity and its family of values, which in turn lessens the chances of providing the economic value system with a counter-discipline.
Criticising this whole scenario is now easy and pointless, unless a viable alternative is possible and offered. Obviously, the chances of a sustainable alternative exist. On an individual level, one has sowed the seeds of an institutionalizing process which may be able to implement an alternative infrascape-building process, away from the dependence on the usual forms of patronage and their conditions. Of course, the process is still in its infancy, and failure is as likely as success. Osian’s will fulfil its duty. Others will follow and deepen the process. Momentum and progress are inevitable.
* Infrascape seems an apt word to describe both the environment and its underlying infrastructure for the arts and culture.
Introduction to Intuitive-logic: The Next Step (1999)
The human consciousness demands to know itself. To be sincere to this process of self-awareness confronts every individual. Coming to terms with this uncertainty is the underlying motivation to life. Varied are the evolutionary phases, ranging from the nurturing of a sheltered idealism which yearns for freedom, love and courage, to the hesitant stages where one is awakened to the material duties of idealism. In sustaining these phases to their logical limits comes freedom for the individual, freedom from all sense of obligation. This hard fought freedom is the bedrock of spirituality.
Sustaining each evolving phase of this self-awareness determines the individual’s contribution to the wider humanity. From unconnected ideas and concepts the individual will eventually create an idealism, which may clarify into a vision. These phases will be transformed into events, projects, networks and an infrastructure, at different stages, amid a jungle of inter-relationships, across time and space. It is the duty of the material institutional context to utilise, harness and integrate these individual contributions into an effective system. It is this process of transformation and integration of the idealistic into its material institutional forms which determine the quality of life in a nation.
Underlying India’s unrealised potential, is the failure to transform her unique humanistic idealism into a credible institutional system. That a set of Indian values with universal inspiration would emerge, now seems a distant reality. Certain established institutional agents of change and progress now lack credibility. Most of them recognise their failure, and are open to change, but are still unable to engender the required progress in practice. This flux allows a new and deeper role for the individual and their idealism in the process of infrastructure-building, especially in the field of arts, culture and its education.
Upon this role of the individual will depend the nature and probability of the Indian arts, culture and its education to play a significant role in the development of India. In this task the lone creative activist-visionary requires a new attitude and army. The scope and reach of their duty is to be redefined.
This essay briefly introduces some aspects of this redefinition. It focuses on the stage of the individual’s role, when the unity of philosophy and action are deepest, so that idealism awakens to its materiality, and seeks the method and attitude so as to begin and sustain an institutionalising process of change.
‘To Revolutionise’, implies radical thought and its implementation. Given the task at hand the issue is not just to criticise the existing infrastructure but to actually create a viable alternative, and to do so through a process which is unique, yet which takes one closer to understanding the reality of the situation. In recognising the potential of charity, artistic creativity, scholarship and risk-taking, so as to help create an integrated infrastructure for the Indian arts, culture and its education, there is the possibility to revolutionise1…
1 On another level of energy, to just create the space where one can work uninterrupted and relatively free, requires a revolution, let alone harboring any ideas about changing India and the like. To just have her let you be, and maybe smile upon you now and again, is change enough…
Recognising the wider Material Reality
Before venturing into the issues of idealism and its materiality, it is important to just summarise one’s reading of India’s present situation, in terms of the main forces at work in moulding her nature and direction. This position, however objective in intent, influences the role earmarked for the individual. Further, a nation such as India, still forces one to constantly reconsider what is the relevance of the idealism, the creativity, the scholarship, the charity, if all around there is inequality, ignorance, dirt and violence. To keep balance and still respond to one’s duty thus demands an insight relatively detached from the idealism and pain.
At present, India is holding her sense of identity very heavily. The revival dominating her institutional values border upon a raw and jingoistic sense of insecurity. The defensiveness hiding behind a belated sense of bravado, which must be transitory, is leading to many ad hoc institutional mechanisms. In this necessary fever to reassert, values emanating from a mediocre definition of religion are overwhelming previous attempts (mostly feeble) of allowing a secular and more tolerant atmosphere to pervade the interactions between India’s religions and communities. This stampede to identify with any easy and popularised aspect of Hinduism is corrupting an already highly eroded habit of intelligent public debate. Concepts of artistic and intellectual freedom have lost their sense of right. Naturally attitudes of avoidance are replacing attitudes of absorption. This encourages the transformation of difference into division into barrier into conflict, rather than each difference co-existing with mutual joy and respect.
Egging forward this short-sighted (despite clear long term grassroot developments) Hindu reassertion are the equally short-sighted and reactionary attitudes of the politicised and militant international Islamic factions. However, from instigators to bait, all are now caught in a suffocating atmosphere where rational dialogue and the sharing of lifestyles is a distant reality. Violence, national and international, now seems to be a constant umbrella for the medium term; moving under this shroud can only bring paranoia to all actions.
Further, the value-systems of the British-inherited legacy are already weakened after the post-modern criticism of colonial prejudice. The systems inherited from other minority religions and communities are also dissolving into irrelevancy, vis-a-viz the national scale, though for different reasons. This essentially leaves the Hindu temple as the only prospering institution.
Hand in hand with these shifting attitudes comes the relatively liberalised and still highly inequitable flow of economic values. The entrepreneurship required to generate wealth on the scale India demands is slowly evolving. However, the serious recognition by the corporate world of their wider duty of building the essential infrastructure and welfare systems, is not growing at the pace required. Irrespective of international trends towards dismantling welfare systems and the consequences of fiscal-deficit funding, India must resist these temptations. Yet such resistance demands alternative means of generating and redistributing wealth. It is here that the arts, culture and its education will urgently have to devote visionary effort.
A more serious dilemma is the actual role economic values are usurping for itself. Most societies entrust their expectations to the economic mechanism; of transforming mental fluidity into material flexibility. The problem is that the mechanism also possesses its separate logic. After all, the ability of the economic system to absorb change is unsurpassed. Given this monopoly power it is now trying to determine all the value-systems by which we direct co-existence, from the emotional to the aesthetic to the spiritual, areas in which it has no expertise. It is this hidden economic agenda we have been unable to control. It has conditioned everything. The positive trade-off is that it structures everything.
In the west, it was an initial sense of feeling suspended, after the disintegration of the religious world-view, that directed the psyche into specialised identities, through the engine of industrialisation. At that time, neither the arts nor the sciences were in a position to foresee the power of the economic-logic. They actively participated in giving momentum to the machine. That the faculty of self-criticism would remain in the machine was the faith of human reason. Centuries of tussle with materialism made such a god inevitable. Today it seeks a place upon the Indian pantheon.
Amid all these forces are the implications of half-baked globalisation. The present open-ended postmodern pluralistic relativism is beginning to tire people, especially in the urban west. As a result there is a latching onto narrower identities, a retreat upon crutches which are local and easy to verify. In India, the frustration worsens as few opportunities open up with a minimal sense of belonging. Globalisation attempts are hence witnessing a simultaneous increase in communal mentalities. This has led to international exchange not having a very positive philosophical impact upon liberalising attitudes, beyond issues of economic professionalism.
Twisting through the religious and economic forces of change are the caste and regional lobby groups, cutting away corners wherever the centralised vision has failed to provide a viable alternative or effective monitoring. Whatever the role of previous injustice, insufficient financial resources and political corruption in building these divisive regional blocs, it is also the failure of an artistic-cultural-educational ethos to provide a daily alternative, which must be addressed.
Amid this seething cauldron lies the discredited intelligensia and academia, now more aware of their neglected duties. Yet the urgent need is for this sector to regalvanise itself; to create the space and structures by which the religious, economic and divisive forces are disciplined into working towards a humanistic idealism. It is here that the creative mind faces its deepest dilemma. To strengthen the intelligensia and academia is essential, yet how to ally with an educational system rotting at the roots? To amend and mould the system is definitely not the answer; to reinvent the ground-rules is the only option.
Idealism Awakens to its Materiality
Any successful infrastructure-building vision needs to grasp the obstacles which the above concerns may place before one’s efforts. This demands a simultaneity of vision and action as the basic pre-requisite for any effort in India. The simultaneity implies the need to harness ‘detachment’ within the creative action, along a battleground which cannot help but absorb contradictions with an equanimity. It is this ‘passionate-detachment’ which allows one to respect and integrate each specialised corner to serve the wider multi-factedness intelligence. It is through this fearless attitude that the essential compassion and humour to sustain such a journey arises, from which may emerge the conviction and vision for non-violence.
Vision is nothing but idealism clarified, ready to take on a practical mantle, to find one’s battleground, to take up arms without hesitation. Vision emerges from the struggles of one’s private-public persona dissolving away, which in turn forces idealism to become accountable to a voice other than one’s inner integrity. This surrender of the self, occurs when a faith in humanity decides to raise its voice and stand up. It is probably the most difficult and thankless decision of introspection, and yet essential if any privately nurtured idealism is to become a public source of inspiration. Thus to know the idealism which awakens to and then confronts its materiality is the first task of infrastructure-building.
However, before idealism is able to respond to the demands of its materiality, it must be nurtured, away from material friction. This sheltered idealism ('sheltered' from having to transform ideas into practice), emerging from the early years of introspection, will usually harbour a set of values in their most energetic and pristine form. Stray concepts such as the need for freedom and love, the play with uncertainty, the power of fearlessness, eroticism and obsession, the relationship with wealth, the rights for justice, the nature of the whole, a curiosity about the power of violence, all probably flirt through the mind, like isolated islands. The inter-relationships between each value and the outside world, the subtle layers separating each other and underlying each, the vast hidden value-systems embedded in each, the power of each value so as to dominate the mind, all such remain relatively untested.
Yet it is this immunity of innocence which will allow sustaining power in later years. When material constraints begin to eat into the idealistic principles it is essential that the deepest innocence of an idea once held base in the mind and heart. It is this fearless state of innocence, hand in hand with the totality of vision, which allows an ideal to later metamorphosise into a form which can sustain action, and yet maintain its idealistic integrity.
Naturally, it is this sheltered quality of the introspection which eventually forces idealism to question itself. This questioning is instigated by the growing wedge between the private and public persona which idealism must possess. Feeling a sense of hypocrisy is inevitable as one recognises the inability of a sheltered idealism to live up to its own standards in public. It is this self-questioning, triggered by some form of realisation regarding the material imperatives of an idealism, which invites ‘pain’ to play its pivotal role in the evolution of idealism.
Pain can be seen as the first child of idealism trying to impregnate its materiality. With time it becomes the most potent trigger in helping to awaken an idea into action; it most fully helps the mind to see things as they are in fact. However, it also carries the heaviest burden of negative energy, creating dilemmas and hesitations at each threshold. It is a most precarious process which allows pain to be transformed into playing a positive role. It is also this process which allows the values of idealism to requestion themselves in light of its materiality.
The Role of Creativity
The requestioning process is essentially the handling of uncertainty. Coming to terms with uncertainty implies there will always remain a continual sense of incompleteness. The issue lies in accepting the incompleteness, while maintaining one’s motivation. The other key aspect of handling uncertainty is the need to absorb contradictions. It is here that the role of artistic creativity can be best appreciated. Through the family of values it cultivates, such as ‘detachment’ and ‘fearlessness’, the creative process fosters the absorption of contradictions, which in turn allows the awakening of idealism to its materiality to be sustained.
The main factor which allows creativity to fulfil this role, is the ability of the artistic mind to play with uncertainty a bit longer, without imposing a preconception. The process of transforming questions into answers, intangibilities into tangibilities, formlessness into form, must include sufficient openness so as to allow each created answer to reveal its fuller question, each created form to reveal its fuller formlessness.
This ability to let uncertainty be, of waiting with it, giving it the freedom to be itself, is the root of creativity. In the act of giving, one gives oneself the space and time to mature, while simultaneously absorbing the intensity of the moment. In this tussle evolves the wisdom which realises that all activity is attracted towards non-activity. Change and permanence, detachment and motivation, energy and quiet, are all visualised afresh, their existence re-examined.
Each value now begins its transformation in this awakening. A tussle between action and non-action, reaction and steadiness, all create a new rhythm, so as to balance the to and fro motions. The ability to sustain this pendulum flow is the basis of the transformation. Just as pendulum is to time, this oscillation needs to be sustained if the rhythm of transforming idealism is to be absorbed. The private and the public, the tangible and intangible, the self and the selfless, these all have elusive thin differences as idealism awakens to its materiality. Walking this abyss of wafer-thin proportions is the nature of the awakening. In sustaining the pace of the oscillation lies the nature of continual flux, the play with uncertainty... herein lies a fundamental characteristic of an infrastructure-builder. The integrity with which this oscillation is sustained will determine the success and nature of later action. It will provide the clarity so as to help idealism institutionalise itself.
An example of this oscillation process is the tussle which exists between detachment and passion, involvement and quiet. To be the creator, the spectator and the unconcerned, all in one, simultaneously, slipping into each, is the real issue. This helps one realise that each role is genuine, and yet inadequate, for the real nature is that which allows this slipping into each, that which allows the fusion of the creator, spectator, and the unconcerned. This substance which allows the creator-spectator-unconcerned continuum to exist in us, is the reality the individual is trying to grasp. It is required for one mind to harness all perspectives, to inculcate the respective attitudes and therein try to fuse each into this oscillating balance whereby all contribute towards nurturing the continuum. In sustaining this holistic attitude lies the eventual success of the infrastructure-builder.
In this process inter-disciplinarity is but an effective stepping stone towards holism and its interconnectedness. You cannot simply take five different departments put them into one enclosed space and institution, and say inter-disciplinarity exists. The process is more akin to the rocky water source which encapsulates and then flows into different streams, and later when more steady, the streams come to merge into an all encompassing powerful flowing river. Inter-disciplinarity is more like the dam which collects and allows the later merger to occur more efficiently.
In understanding the transformations which a creative mind cultivates within a set of values, such as ‘detachment’ and ‘fearlessness’, we can understand more clearly the process by which idealism needs to evolve so as to be able to transform itself into material attitudes, which in turn harness the institutionalising process of such values.
i........ Passionate-detachment
Essentially such a balance requires detachment within the energy of involvement.
The idea of inner detachment is misunderstood, by both east and west. One has highlighted the passive and fatalistic aspects, while the other has focused on the cynical and anti-pleasure aspects. This has led to detachment not being able to sustain a practicality for itself. The intangible value of detachment cannot be calculated and the fear of its anti-motivational aspect is too risky. This lack of living use is reinforced by institutions unwilling to nurture the idea through an educational and work process.
Yet in artistic creativity, detachment is carefully cultivated. Like other human values, detachment represents different facets at different stages of maturity. At lower levels it can lead to indifference or a cool cynicism; inspired as readily as self-absorption. At somewhat higher levels detachment can inculcate a sense of humour and playfulness which absorbs like a participating-spectator. At higher levels it inspires a calm sense of duty, rooted in absorbing all, grasping the essence of non-judgmental judgments, the idea of inaction, or some continuous effort which seeks no reward but that of being true to activity and its pleasure. At still higher levels it can inspire action in others though remaining neutral oneself.
Thus one pivotal dilemma which confronts all individual activity is that non-activity seems wise. Thus an individual who truly wishes to know oneself, and the nature of one’s creativity, must sooner or later come to terms with this spectre of non-activity. This spectre can emerge at any age, not just in the twilight, or when energy is tired. The issue is how to allow this seed a significant freedom in the mind, and still continue with a self-renewing motivation. This is the duty of detachment.
However, in general, the positive force inherent in detachment has not been emphasised in the western inner journey. For the east, the non-violent and passive aspect of detachment today lacks a credibility, for it is unable to discipline the daily violence. One requires a re-education.
Our understanding regarding love and compassion, within which the greatest force for detachment ironically exists, must be one area of focus. The knowledge that once one received unqualified love, is enough for most to selflessly devote their lives with lesser demands of reciprocity. To give not because one necessarily wants to give, but that one cannot help but give. It is a compulsion which also influences our own desires and wants. An overwhelming momentum is created which sooner or later calms want. Wants and desires are clearly recognised and yet somehow a smile can control their venting.
Yet ‘letting it be’ requires a passionate discipline. For only the most passionate can sustain such detachment and duty. Duty becomes the act which absorbs all pleasures. Detachment is the wisdom which disciplines duty. Creativity is the most complete duty which strives to fulfil this pleasure. Action cannot sustain innovation without coming to terms with these ideas.
ii....... Fearlessness & Absorption of Contradictions
Fearlessness comes from being part of each corner, having let each idea lived within, having been given the opportunities to give such anarchy a freedom. It comes from the ego realising its role, rooted in the humility of its insignificance and the confidence that awareness is indestructible, ever-changing. To demand freedom is an early desire of the ego; to give freedom is its inner compulsion.
Fearlessness comes from living a life rooted in absorbing all which comes one’s way, and yet moulding this absorption with some unique aura. Aura is the appendix of clarity; it is what inspires clarity to become clearer. In clarity lies fearlessness, a clarity which never closes the eye to the surrounding flux. The intent to be fearless is thus rooted in the belief that fearlessness may never come. Yet that is irrelevant after a certain duration, for then enough discipline has been nurtured to let a vulnerability be itself, without having to hide. A frailty is allowed to be revealed without fear. Such is the nature of fearlessness that fear is a permanent tenant, detached in its corner, with no need to evict.
Creativity has always nourished this fusion of contradictions, to emerge with fuller forms, and the openness of mind which encourages fearlessness. It manifests itself via experimentation, or a belief in randomness, or the ability to merge uncertainties without the need to resolve, or the ability to accept inspiration from any corner, from trivial notions or profound ideas, from vulgar circumstances or serene moments. There is no sense of proportion but the limitlessness within. There is no value which burdens the creative impulse, for each act of creativity becomes a discipline to sustain the day.
To let each unknowing situation reveal itself, to just spectate and in that distance become the most active participant. It is like the lover who sometimes needs to give distance to loved ones which they may not be ready to accept. In that show of trust, one gives the other a chance to act positively. In that retreating step, one moves towards a fuller togetherness, which otherwise would have resulted in a pushing away, a demand of faithfulness which could not have been fulfiled.
Few have the courage to tell their partner you be faithful to yourself, first and foremost, and I trust in that act our love will be sustained, our togetherness maintained. Most demand a faithfulness, which sooner or later pushes away the love, for the other is rarely given the time to know themselves, with the freedom they crave another should bestow. Trust in oneself does not evolve, and so trust in another feels missing. It is only after such shows of faith that one can take another for granted. For by then it is no longer seen in the tone of ‘taken for granted’. It has become transformed due to love, which has been nurtured amid this mutual freedom. This is the essence which will mould the future co-existence of people.
This ‘giving of freedom’, and ‘letting uncertainties be’ are subtle ideas which require the reaffirmation of daily life. The present system does not allow one the space and time to practice such ideals, and so naturally their usefulness is negated, and the philosophy dismissed. Thus it becomes the duty of the artist and philosopher to also become the teacher, economist, politician, and sage. Each aspect disciplining the other, thereby giving a fuller authenticity to each specific role.
In this pursuit of totality every new linkage and inter-relationship acts as a discipline to the other, closing off irrelevancies with a greater pace and justification than opening out new possibilities. Yet each new possibility also creates a distraction, which in turn influences the nature of concentration. However, the only path by which new distractions become points of foci, and hence areas of concentrated effort, is by absorption rather than avoidance being the basis of a learning process. Only in sustaining this (seemingly) unending spiral of connections between seeming distractions and foci can one begin to nurture a multi-facetedness intelligence, which eventually itself becomes the core focus through which all distractions flow and remould.
It must be stressed that the merger of different disciplines is not simply a result of synthesis. The initial separation is the illusion, which is then paradoxically denied by an attempt at synthesis. This gives the human mind the false accolade of creating a form, when all which actually happens is that the underlying unity is revealed.
The artist-philosopher-teacher-economist-politician-sage is already existing in the human psyche. To reveal the unity is the requirement, rather than teaching that one is creating a union. Thus an educational system which allows an inner anarchic search, rather than imposing a preconceived inter-disciplinary hierarchy is more likely to succeed. However, the critical faculty which structures a framework so that holism can become a living force, requires the transition of inter-disciplinarity. Further, the creation of synthesis is easier for the mind to assimilate, especially one focused on the reality of opposition.
Within creativity exists the genius to grasp the nature of uncertainty. It alone has the openness of intent to give the unlimited more freedom. In this process it has the ability to be fair. It is in providing this spirit of fairness that lies the ethical dimension of creativity, rooted in the instinct of giving freedom, itself dependent on the will to be self-critical with joy. It is this joyous self-criticism which is the foundation of infrastructure-building.
Materialising Idealism into its Institutional Framework
One unique linkage which has the clear potential to restructure any infrastructure-building process for the arts, is the relationship which (a redefined) charity can sustain with artistic creativity and scholarship, so as to create new innovative structures.
The key issue at stake is how to create the attitude which encourages the voluntary giving up of wealth by a section of the population, towards a dedicated, systematic and transparent private institutional network of redistributing wealth. For this to be achieved the pivotal factor is establishing the credibility of the process by which wealth can be created by charitable institutions and the extent of the multiplier effects this can leverage for the redistribution cycle. This in turn is dependent on changing the existing bargaining platform upon which the corporate, government and cultural entity discuss and decide issues of patronage and collaboration. This demands the creation of a new space (and hence set of values) which exists outside the current cultural-corporate-government nexus.
The whole process of creating this alternative space must clearly symbolise the creative values it represents. This implies that an ability to generate wealth must exist which balances the edge of corporate and/or governmental patrons, simultaneously with the vision to redistribute this wealth so as to serve the wider infrastructure needs.
This demands, among other factors, the creation of a new set of work ethics. This revolves around inspiring the motivation of volunteer labour, or restructuring volunteer labour to work in a new and systematic manner, where task preconceptions are continually open to change. Tackling the economic incentive mindset, without resorting to a blind religious faith is the critical dilemma. At the heart of this change is the new role a creative individual must chalk out regarding their needs and material ambitions. Added to this are concepts of public accountability, the nature of monitoring methods, and the inspirational energy emanating from the work as perceived by the public.
It is here that a redefined role for charity becomes pivotal. Potentially it has the freedom to create and redistibute wealth with the most idealistic motivation. Given the relatively raw stage of development at which professional charitable institutes find themselves, the impact of even a minor structural change can induce a relatively significant impact. However, the sustained feasibility of this endeavour will depend upon many of the issues previously discussed.
In a way, the task is to try and improve upon the governmental experience with Public Goods & Externalities in regard to production, pricing, distribution, and the manner in which the private individual is motivated to volunteer services for a wider cause. This framework, easily absorbed within the Charitable framework, then needs to bring the motivational and innovative aspects of creativity to find and fulfil the necessary risks which can be taken so as to create the resources and energy which will inspire a new set of institutional values. The process by which a relatively radical concept eventually becomes transformed into the orthodoxy also needs to be addressed. The need to keep alive the questioning ethic once an orthodoxy has emerged is the problem the private-charitable institution will have to tackle more successfully than the public-government entities have managed.
All these concepts can only take relevance if a practical dimension is shown to be possible. During the last five years I have tried to fulfil my individual responsibilities to these ideas. HEART has been created from scratch, in all ways, and today a platform with which to take forward the institutionalising possibility stands before us. The two new, but clearly interlinked, areas of effort by which the work is to proceed is the building of India’s first domestic auction house and the work towards the preservation of our cultural heritage monuments. Both will require a new charitable-corporate mix.
A year ago I was totally ignorant regarding the issues at stake in the preservation of our cultural heritage monuments. After an initial manic burst of curiosity (Refer to List, p261) hand in hand with a deeper understanding of the relevant government machinery, one came to appreciate the intellectual and material vastness of this subject, and the deep (potential) links it held with all aspects of Indian life, related to the artistic, historical, institutional, environmental and developmental factors. The subject also perfectly symbolised the Indian failure of preserving the material and tangible forms of its idealism. It would also provide the perfect complement to the more elite and focused role of modern and contemporary art in building an educational infrastructure. Further, here was the perfect opportunity to bring together all sectors of the nation and create a new platform for collaboration with a clear practical objective in which the role of artistic culture could clearly mould the process of development. HEART's MOU with the Government of India's National Culture Fund (NCF) is the first step in this direction.
It is to implementing the above task, and in helping to create a new structure for a domestic auction house, hand in hand with our previous commitments, that HEART is moving forward in the medium term. The nature of the journey is such that irrespective of our success in creating new concrete institutional forms, we will definitely succeed in inspiring a whole range of individuals and institutions to take more innovative risks, and to plan them with utmost care, thereby changing the perception of risk itself. For a conservative India, to embrace deeper the need and ability to risk is the first step towards a new institutional mindset. It is the duty of the creative mind and community to push forward this fundamental change within the next decade.
Curator’s Note
Since returning to India in 1994, I have tried to study all perspectives of Indian art, especially its modern and contemporary traditions. The initial medium term (five to seven years) objective was to re-understand the artistic and cultural system from the ‘grassroots’. This meant clarifying the intellectual framework hand in hand with creating new mechanisms and structures which will help implement one’s vision regarding the role of art, culture and its education in the development of India. Within five years a credible platform has been created.
A unique process of integrating and redefining charity, artistic creativity, scholarship and risk-taking is at the heart of this platform. In sustaining this work, a new space and set of values are emerging whereby the process of infrastructure-building for the Indian arts has the potential of transforming previous mindsets and practices regarding the subject. Within this focus the role of art auctions and a domestic auction house are pivotal. However, in both cases a redefinition of their scope and duty is demanded. The nature and success of this redefinition will depend upon how the following issues are tackled:
— The extent and manner by which generation and redistribution of wealth is affected by art auctions and a domestic auction house.
— What are the structures required so as to re-emphasise the motivation of an auction house from commercial imperatives to a wider public service, while maintaining its professionalism at international standards.
— The manner in which a research and documentation process is to be in-built and disseminated through auctions and an Indian auction house.
— Curated auctions already demand a clear unity between the aesthetic, intellectual and financial frameworks. Can auctions such as Intuitive-logic be sustained on the scale and at the pace required, as the pre-requisites are even more demanding, given they are conceived as part of a systematic infrastructure-building vision for the arts.
— How to harness the advantages of curated art auctions in establishing standards of aesthetic discrimination and deeper links between critical-historical narratives and contemporary pricing.
— The manner in which auctions can mould the involvement of the government and corporate sectors so as to play a more progressive and positive role in transforming infrastructure bottlenecks.
— The extent it can inspire the international community to get involved with appreciating and preserving the Indian cultural heritage and nurturing new and more radical exchanges of thought and culture.
— The degree to which auctions can change attitudes regarding financial transparency, thereby leading to deeper changes regarding public accountability.
— The way in which the elite nature of auctions can be compensated, through the above changes, so as to create new structures which allow the arts to redefine their reach and socio-economic status.
Intuitive-Logic: The Next Step takes forward one’s redefining experiments with most of these issues. However these wider concerns can only be tackled successfully if the curated auction is credible in a basic way. This ‘basic’ quality implies the art auction must tackle the following concerns:
— It must be able to bring together a collection of rare and high quality works of art. The majority of these works must not be accessible through the normal gallery and dealer networks.
— This rarity and quality must be clearly perceived by the public, and the underlying financial system must exist for fairly valuing these intangibles over time. For example if ‘quality’ is determined by an attached significance of a critical-historical narrative, among other factors, then one reason a premium price is justified, is the belief that the price will increase in the future because incorporating the significance of this narrative will still be recognised in the long run (ie: scholarship as a whole does not represent a passing prejudice, bias or fashion). Thus a clear link between aesthetic understanding and the academia-cum-artistic media needs to exist, which in turn the economic system must find credible.
— The manner by which the works of art are chosen, inter-related and contextualised must clarify and nurture the required appreciation process. For example, a historical context needs to be created, in which various levels of categorisation and different kinds of ideologies can credibly dissolve, leaving only the overall quality to dominate the curatorial exercise.
— The ‘auction house’ or organisers must be prepared to create and sustain the highest levels of financial transparency and public accountability.
— The success of achieving actual prices within the Price Estimates must be relatively high (60% +) to establish clear links between curatorial knowledge and its financial grasp. Further, the proportion of lots sold must be even higher (70% +).
— The documentation which communicates certain related features of an art work must strive for an intellectual and aesthetic excellence in both style and substance.
— The auction network must try to tackle the financial anomalies, inconsistencies and deterents inherent in the system, such as the imposition of Sales Tax on art (and its variation between states), the lack of credible valuation methods for insurance purposes, or even the ironic case of the Government of India charging a 50% Import Duty on Indian art wishing to come back to India!
— It must discipline the tamasha aspect associated with auctions, and yet engender an increasing popular interest which maintains the integrity of the works to be auctioned.
In tackling the above concerns the creation of a viable domestic secondary market for the arts and antiquities becomes a closer reality, in which the domestic auction house plays a pivotal role. This in turn is also the only credible long term solution to prevent the illegal export and outflow of India’s artistic and cultural heritage.
The success of Intuitive-Logic: The Next Step will suggest the speed at which a domestic auction house will come to exist. The auction will also reveal how ready the Indian public are to appreciate their artistic heritage in financial terms. Anything close to a sale of Rs.3.50 crores will be a success. This in turn will answer questions regarding the existing and potential proportion of ‘white’ cheque transactions as against the cash ‘black’ economy, especially for a centre such as New Delhi, not yet renown for its transparency of transactions.
If things progress smoothly over the next few years, the Indian visual arts may soon become the model market amid all Indian cultural disciplines, capable of transforming the suppressed black economy and its violence into a buoyant, transparent and integrated infrastructure, something which even the vast cinema economy has failed to achieve. With such self-sufficiency in place, the task of helping other artistic-cultural disciplines improve their infrastructure takes on a new credibility and momentum. To then change the educational system for the arts may not be the forlorn task it is today…
Sustaining each evolving phase of this self-awareness determines the individual’s contribution to the wider humanity. From unconnected ideas and concepts the individual will eventually create an idealism, which may clarify into a vision. These phases will be transformed into events, projects, networks and an infrastructure, at different stages, amid a jungle of inter-relationships, across time and space. It is the duty of the material institutional context to utilise, harness and integrate these individual contributions into an effective system. It is this process of transformation and integration of the idealistic into its material institutional forms which determine the quality of life in a nation.
Underlying India’s unrealised potential, is the failure to transform her unique humanistic idealism into a credible institutional system. That a set of Indian values with universal inspiration would emerge, now seems a distant reality. Certain established institutional agents of change and progress now lack credibility. Most of them recognise their failure, and are open to change, but are still unable to engender the required progress in practice. This flux allows a new and deeper role for the individual and their idealism in the process of infrastructure-building, especially in the field of arts, culture and its education.
Upon this role of the individual will depend the nature and probability of the Indian arts, culture and its education to play a significant role in the development of India. In this task the lone creative activist-visionary requires a new attitude and army. The scope and reach of their duty is to be redefined.
This essay briefly introduces some aspects of this redefinition. It focuses on the stage of the individual’s role, when the unity of philosophy and action are deepest, so that idealism awakens to its materiality, and seeks the method and attitude so as to begin and sustain an institutionalising process of change.
‘To Revolutionise’, implies radical thought and its implementation. Given the task at hand the issue is not just to criticise the existing infrastructure but to actually create a viable alternative, and to do so through a process which is unique, yet which takes one closer to understanding the reality of the situation. In recognising the potential of charity, artistic creativity, scholarship and risk-taking, so as to help create an integrated infrastructure for the Indian arts, culture and its education, there is the possibility to revolutionise1…
1 On another level of energy, to just create the space where one can work uninterrupted and relatively free, requires a revolution, let alone harboring any ideas about changing India and the like. To just have her let you be, and maybe smile upon you now and again, is change enough…
Recognising the wider Material Reality
Before venturing into the issues of idealism and its materiality, it is important to just summarise one’s reading of India’s present situation, in terms of the main forces at work in moulding her nature and direction. This position, however objective in intent, influences the role earmarked for the individual. Further, a nation such as India, still forces one to constantly reconsider what is the relevance of the idealism, the creativity, the scholarship, the charity, if all around there is inequality, ignorance, dirt and violence. To keep balance and still respond to one’s duty thus demands an insight relatively detached from the idealism and pain.
At present, India is holding her sense of identity very heavily. The revival dominating her institutional values border upon a raw and jingoistic sense of insecurity. The defensiveness hiding behind a belated sense of bravado, which must be transitory, is leading to many ad hoc institutional mechanisms. In this necessary fever to reassert, values emanating from a mediocre definition of religion are overwhelming previous attempts (mostly feeble) of allowing a secular and more tolerant atmosphere to pervade the interactions between India’s religions and communities. This stampede to identify with any easy and popularised aspect of Hinduism is corrupting an already highly eroded habit of intelligent public debate. Concepts of artistic and intellectual freedom have lost their sense of right. Naturally attitudes of avoidance are replacing attitudes of absorption. This encourages the transformation of difference into division into barrier into conflict, rather than each difference co-existing with mutual joy and respect.
Egging forward this short-sighted (despite clear long term grassroot developments) Hindu reassertion are the equally short-sighted and reactionary attitudes of the politicised and militant international Islamic factions. However, from instigators to bait, all are now caught in a suffocating atmosphere where rational dialogue and the sharing of lifestyles is a distant reality. Violence, national and international, now seems to be a constant umbrella for the medium term; moving under this shroud can only bring paranoia to all actions.
Further, the value-systems of the British-inherited legacy are already weakened after the post-modern criticism of colonial prejudice. The systems inherited from other minority religions and communities are also dissolving into irrelevancy, vis-a-viz the national scale, though for different reasons. This essentially leaves the Hindu temple as the only prospering institution.
Hand in hand with these shifting attitudes comes the relatively liberalised and still highly inequitable flow of economic values. The entrepreneurship required to generate wealth on the scale India demands is slowly evolving. However, the serious recognition by the corporate world of their wider duty of building the essential infrastructure and welfare systems, is not growing at the pace required. Irrespective of international trends towards dismantling welfare systems and the consequences of fiscal-deficit funding, India must resist these temptations. Yet such resistance demands alternative means of generating and redistributing wealth. It is here that the arts, culture and its education will urgently have to devote visionary effort.
A more serious dilemma is the actual role economic values are usurping for itself. Most societies entrust their expectations to the economic mechanism; of transforming mental fluidity into material flexibility. The problem is that the mechanism also possesses its separate logic. After all, the ability of the economic system to absorb change is unsurpassed. Given this monopoly power it is now trying to determine all the value-systems by which we direct co-existence, from the emotional to the aesthetic to the spiritual, areas in which it has no expertise. It is this hidden economic agenda we have been unable to control. It has conditioned everything. The positive trade-off is that it structures everything.
In the west, it was an initial sense of feeling suspended, after the disintegration of the religious world-view, that directed the psyche into specialised identities, through the engine of industrialisation. At that time, neither the arts nor the sciences were in a position to foresee the power of the economic-logic. They actively participated in giving momentum to the machine. That the faculty of self-criticism would remain in the machine was the faith of human reason. Centuries of tussle with materialism made such a god inevitable. Today it seeks a place upon the Indian pantheon.
Amid all these forces are the implications of half-baked globalisation. The present open-ended postmodern pluralistic relativism is beginning to tire people, especially in the urban west. As a result there is a latching onto narrower identities, a retreat upon crutches which are local and easy to verify. In India, the frustration worsens as few opportunities open up with a minimal sense of belonging. Globalisation attempts are hence witnessing a simultaneous increase in communal mentalities. This has led to international exchange not having a very positive philosophical impact upon liberalising attitudes, beyond issues of economic professionalism.
Twisting through the religious and economic forces of change are the caste and regional lobby groups, cutting away corners wherever the centralised vision has failed to provide a viable alternative or effective monitoring. Whatever the role of previous injustice, insufficient financial resources and political corruption in building these divisive regional blocs, it is also the failure of an artistic-cultural-educational ethos to provide a daily alternative, which must be addressed.
Amid this seething cauldron lies the discredited intelligensia and academia, now more aware of their neglected duties. Yet the urgent need is for this sector to regalvanise itself; to create the space and structures by which the religious, economic and divisive forces are disciplined into working towards a humanistic idealism. It is here that the creative mind faces its deepest dilemma. To strengthen the intelligensia and academia is essential, yet how to ally with an educational system rotting at the roots? To amend and mould the system is definitely not the answer; to reinvent the ground-rules is the only option.
Idealism Awakens to its Materiality
Any successful infrastructure-building vision needs to grasp the obstacles which the above concerns may place before one’s efforts. This demands a simultaneity of vision and action as the basic pre-requisite for any effort in India. The simultaneity implies the need to harness ‘detachment’ within the creative action, along a battleground which cannot help but absorb contradictions with an equanimity. It is this ‘passionate-detachment’ which allows one to respect and integrate each specialised corner to serve the wider multi-factedness intelligence. It is through this fearless attitude that the essential compassion and humour to sustain such a journey arises, from which may emerge the conviction and vision for non-violence.
Vision is nothing but idealism clarified, ready to take on a practical mantle, to find one’s battleground, to take up arms without hesitation. Vision emerges from the struggles of one’s private-public persona dissolving away, which in turn forces idealism to become accountable to a voice other than one’s inner integrity. This surrender of the self, occurs when a faith in humanity decides to raise its voice and stand up. It is probably the most difficult and thankless decision of introspection, and yet essential if any privately nurtured idealism is to become a public source of inspiration. Thus to know the idealism which awakens to and then confronts its materiality is the first task of infrastructure-building.
However, before idealism is able to respond to the demands of its materiality, it must be nurtured, away from material friction. This sheltered idealism ('sheltered' from having to transform ideas into practice), emerging from the early years of introspection, will usually harbour a set of values in their most energetic and pristine form. Stray concepts such as the need for freedom and love, the play with uncertainty, the power of fearlessness, eroticism and obsession, the relationship with wealth, the rights for justice, the nature of the whole, a curiosity about the power of violence, all probably flirt through the mind, like isolated islands. The inter-relationships between each value and the outside world, the subtle layers separating each other and underlying each, the vast hidden value-systems embedded in each, the power of each value so as to dominate the mind, all such remain relatively untested.
Yet it is this immunity of innocence which will allow sustaining power in later years. When material constraints begin to eat into the idealistic principles it is essential that the deepest innocence of an idea once held base in the mind and heart. It is this fearless state of innocence, hand in hand with the totality of vision, which allows an ideal to later metamorphosise into a form which can sustain action, and yet maintain its idealistic integrity.
Naturally, it is this sheltered quality of the introspection which eventually forces idealism to question itself. This questioning is instigated by the growing wedge between the private and public persona which idealism must possess. Feeling a sense of hypocrisy is inevitable as one recognises the inability of a sheltered idealism to live up to its own standards in public. It is this self-questioning, triggered by some form of realisation regarding the material imperatives of an idealism, which invites ‘pain’ to play its pivotal role in the evolution of idealism.
Pain can be seen as the first child of idealism trying to impregnate its materiality. With time it becomes the most potent trigger in helping to awaken an idea into action; it most fully helps the mind to see things as they are in fact. However, it also carries the heaviest burden of negative energy, creating dilemmas and hesitations at each threshold. It is a most precarious process which allows pain to be transformed into playing a positive role. It is also this process which allows the values of idealism to requestion themselves in light of its materiality.
The Role of Creativity
The requestioning process is essentially the handling of uncertainty. Coming to terms with uncertainty implies there will always remain a continual sense of incompleteness. The issue lies in accepting the incompleteness, while maintaining one’s motivation. The other key aspect of handling uncertainty is the need to absorb contradictions. It is here that the role of artistic creativity can be best appreciated. Through the family of values it cultivates, such as ‘detachment’ and ‘fearlessness’, the creative process fosters the absorption of contradictions, which in turn allows the awakening of idealism to its materiality to be sustained.
The main factor which allows creativity to fulfil this role, is the ability of the artistic mind to play with uncertainty a bit longer, without imposing a preconception. The process of transforming questions into answers, intangibilities into tangibilities, formlessness into form, must include sufficient openness so as to allow each created answer to reveal its fuller question, each created form to reveal its fuller formlessness.
This ability to let uncertainty be, of waiting with it, giving it the freedom to be itself, is the root of creativity. In the act of giving, one gives oneself the space and time to mature, while simultaneously absorbing the intensity of the moment. In this tussle evolves the wisdom which realises that all activity is attracted towards non-activity. Change and permanence, detachment and motivation, energy and quiet, are all visualised afresh, their existence re-examined.
Each value now begins its transformation in this awakening. A tussle between action and non-action, reaction and steadiness, all create a new rhythm, so as to balance the to and fro motions. The ability to sustain this pendulum flow is the basis of the transformation. Just as pendulum is to time, this oscillation needs to be sustained if the rhythm of transforming idealism is to be absorbed. The private and the public, the tangible and intangible, the self and the selfless, these all have elusive thin differences as idealism awakens to its materiality. Walking this abyss of wafer-thin proportions is the nature of the awakening. In sustaining the pace of the oscillation lies the nature of continual flux, the play with uncertainty... herein lies a fundamental characteristic of an infrastructure-builder. The integrity with which this oscillation is sustained will determine the success and nature of later action. It will provide the clarity so as to help idealism institutionalise itself.
An example of this oscillation process is the tussle which exists between detachment and passion, involvement and quiet. To be the creator, the spectator and the unconcerned, all in one, simultaneously, slipping into each, is the real issue. This helps one realise that each role is genuine, and yet inadequate, for the real nature is that which allows this slipping into each, that which allows the fusion of the creator, spectator, and the unconcerned. This substance which allows the creator-spectator-unconcerned continuum to exist in us, is the reality the individual is trying to grasp. It is required for one mind to harness all perspectives, to inculcate the respective attitudes and therein try to fuse each into this oscillating balance whereby all contribute towards nurturing the continuum. In sustaining this holistic attitude lies the eventual success of the infrastructure-builder.
In this process inter-disciplinarity is but an effective stepping stone towards holism and its interconnectedness. You cannot simply take five different departments put them into one enclosed space and institution, and say inter-disciplinarity exists. The process is more akin to the rocky water source which encapsulates and then flows into different streams, and later when more steady, the streams come to merge into an all encompassing powerful flowing river. Inter-disciplinarity is more like the dam which collects and allows the later merger to occur more efficiently.
In understanding the transformations which a creative mind cultivates within a set of values, such as ‘detachment’ and ‘fearlessness’, we can understand more clearly the process by which idealism needs to evolve so as to be able to transform itself into material attitudes, which in turn harness the institutionalising process of such values.
i........ Passionate-detachment
Essentially such a balance requires detachment within the energy of involvement.
The idea of inner detachment is misunderstood, by both east and west. One has highlighted the passive and fatalistic aspects, while the other has focused on the cynical and anti-pleasure aspects. This has led to detachment not being able to sustain a practicality for itself. The intangible value of detachment cannot be calculated and the fear of its anti-motivational aspect is too risky. This lack of living use is reinforced by institutions unwilling to nurture the idea through an educational and work process.
Yet in artistic creativity, detachment is carefully cultivated. Like other human values, detachment represents different facets at different stages of maturity. At lower levels it can lead to indifference or a cool cynicism; inspired as readily as self-absorption. At somewhat higher levels detachment can inculcate a sense of humour and playfulness which absorbs like a participating-spectator. At higher levels it inspires a calm sense of duty, rooted in absorbing all, grasping the essence of non-judgmental judgments, the idea of inaction, or some continuous effort which seeks no reward but that of being true to activity and its pleasure. At still higher levels it can inspire action in others though remaining neutral oneself.
Thus one pivotal dilemma which confronts all individual activity is that non-activity seems wise. Thus an individual who truly wishes to know oneself, and the nature of one’s creativity, must sooner or later come to terms with this spectre of non-activity. This spectre can emerge at any age, not just in the twilight, or when energy is tired. The issue is how to allow this seed a significant freedom in the mind, and still continue with a self-renewing motivation. This is the duty of detachment.
However, in general, the positive force inherent in detachment has not been emphasised in the western inner journey. For the east, the non-violent and passive aspect of detachment today lacks a credibility, for it is unable to discipline the daily violence. One requires a re-education.
Our understanding regarding love and compassion, within which the greatest force for detachment ironically exists, must be one area of focus. The knowledge that once one received unqualified love, is enough for most to selflessly devote their lives with lesser demands of reciprocity. To give not because one necessarily wants to give, but that one cannot help but give. It is a compulsion which also influences our own desires and wants. An overwhelming momentum is created which sooner or later calms want. Wants and desires are clearly recognised and yet somehow a smile can control their venting.
Yet ‘letting it be’ requires a passionate discipline. For only the most passionate can sustain such detachment and duty. Duty becomes the act which absorbs all pleasures. Detachment is the wisdom which disciplines duty. Creativity is the most complete duty which strives to fulfil this pleasure. Action cannot sustain innovation without coming to terms with these ideas.
ii....... Fearlessness & Absorption of Contradictions
Fearlessness comes from being part of each corner, having let each idea lived within, having been given the opportunities to give such anarchy a freedom. It comes from the ego realising its role, rooted in the humility of its insignificance and the confidence that awareness is indestructible, ever-changing. To demand freedom is an early desire of the ego; to give freedom is its inner compulsion.
Fearlessness comes from living a life rooted in absorbing all which comes one’s way, and yet moulding this absorption with some unique aura. Aura is the appendix of clarity; it is what inspires clarity to become clearer. In clarity lies fearlessness, a clarity which never closes the eye to the surrounding flux. The intent to be fearless is thus rooted in the belief that fearlessness may never come. Yet that is irrelevant after a certain duration, for then enough discipline has been nurtured to let a vulnerability be itself, without having to hide. A frailty is allowed to be revealed without fear. Such is the nature of fearlessness that fear is a permanent tenant, detached in its corner, with no need to evict.
Creativity has always nourished this fusion of contradictions, to emerge with fuller forms, and the openness of mind which encourages fearlessness. It manifests itself via experimentation, or a belief in randomness, or the ability to merge uncertainties without the need to resolve, or the ability to accept inspiration from any corner, from trivial notions or profound ideas, from vulgar circumstances or serene moments. There is no sense of proportion but the limitlessness within. There is no value which burdens the creative impulse, for each act of creativity becomes a discipline to sustain the day.
To let each unknowing situation reveal itself, to just spectate and in that distance become the most active participant. It is like the lover who sometimes needs to give distance to loved ones which they may not be ready to accept. In that show of trust, one gives the other a chance to act positively. In that retreating step, one moves towards a fuller togetherness, which otherwise would have resulted in a pushing away, a demand of faithfulness which could not have been fulfiled.
Few have the courage to tell their partner you be faithful to yourself, first and foremost, and I trust in that act our love will be sustained, our togetherness maintained. Most demand a faithfulness, which sooner or later pushes away the love, for the other is rarely given the time to know themselves, with the freedom they crave another should bestow. Trust in oneself does not evolve, and so trust in another feels missing. It is only after such shows of faith that one can take another for granted. For by then it is no longer seen in the tone of ‘taken for granted’. It has become transformed due to love, which has been nurtured amid this mutual freedom. This is the essence which will mould the future co-existence of people.
This ‘giving of freedom’, and ‘letting uncertainties be’ are subtle ideas which require the reaffirmation of daily life. The present system does not allow one the space and time to practice such ideals, and so naturally their usefulness is negated, and the philosophy dismissed. Thus it becomes the duty of the artist and philosopher to also become the teacher, economist, politician, and sage. Each aspect disciplining the other, thereby giving a fuller authenticity to each specific role.
In this pursuit of totality every new linkage and inter-relationship acts as a discipline to the other, closing off irrelevancies with a greater pace and justification than opening out new possibilities. Yet each new possibility also creates a distraction, which in turn influences the nature of concentration. However, the only path by which new distractions become points of foci, and hence areas of concentrated effort, is by absorption rather than avoidance being the basis of a learning process. Only in sustaining this (seemingly) unending spiral of connections between seeming distractions and foci can one begin to nurture a multi-facetedness intelligence, which eventually itself becomes the core focus through which all distractions flow and remould.
It must be stressed that the merger of different disciplines is not simply a result of synthesis. The initial separation is the illusion, which is then paradoxically denied by an attempt at synthesis. This gives the human mind the false accolade of creating a form, when all which actually happens is that the underlying unity is revealed.
The artist-philosopher-teacher-economist-politician-sage is already existing in the human psyche. To reveal the unity is the requirement, rather than teaching that one is creating a union. Thus an educational system which allows an inner anarchic search, rather than imposing a preconceived inter-disciplinary hierarchy is more likely to succeed. However, the critical faculty which structures a framework so that holism can become a living force, requires the transition of inter-disciplinarity. Further, the creation of synthesis is easier for the mind to assimilate, especially one focused on the reality of opposition.
Within creativity exists the genius to grasp the nature of uncertainty. It alone has the openness of intent to give the unlimited more freedom. In this process it has the ability to be fair. It is in providing this spirit of fairness that lies the ethical dimension of creativity, rooted in the instinct of giving freedom, itself dependent on the will to be self-critical with joy. It is this joyous self-criticism which is the foundation of infrastructure-building.
Materialising Idealism into its Institutional Framework
One unique linkage which has the clear potential to restructure any infrastructure-building process for the arts, is the relationship which (a redefined) charity can sustain with artistic creativity and scholarship, so as to create new innovative structures.
The key issue at stake is how to create the attitude which encourages the voluntary giving up of wealth by a section of the population, towards a dedicated, systematic and transparent private institutional network of redistributing wealth. For this to be achieved the pivotal factor is establishing the credibility of the process by which wealth can be created by charitable institutions and the extent of the multiplier effects this can leverage for the redistribution cycle. This in turn is dependent on changing the existing bargaining platform upon which the corporate, government and cultural entity discuss and decide issues of patronage and collaboration. This demands the creation of a new space (and hence set of values) which exists outside the current cultural-corporate-government nexus.
The whole process of creating this alternative space must clearly symbolise the creative values it represents. This implies that an ability to generate wealth must exist which balances the edge of corporate and/or governmental patrons, simultaneously with the vision to redistribute this wealth so as to serve the wider infrastructure needs.
This demands, among other factors, the creation of a new set of work ethics. This revolves around inspiring the motivation of volunteer labour, or restructuring volunteer labour to work in a new and systematic manner, where task preconceptions are continually open to change. Tackling the economic incentive mindset, without resorting to a blind religious faith is the critical dilemma. At the heart of this change is the new role a creative individual must chalk out regarding their needs and material ambitions. Added to this are concepts of public accountability, the nature of monitoring methods, and the inspirational energy emanating from the work as perceived by the public.
It is here that a redefined role for charity becomes pivotal. Potentially it has the freedom to create and redistibute wealth with the most idealistic motivation. Given the relatively raw stage of development at which professional charitable institutes find themselves, the impact of even a minor structural change can induce a relatively significant impact. However, the sustained feasibility of this endeavour will depend upon many of the issues previously discussed.
In a way, the task is to try and improve upon the governmental experience with Public Goods & Externalities in regard to production, pricing, distribution, and the manner in which the private individual is motivated to volunteer services for a wider cause. This framework, easily absorbed within the Charitable framework, then needs to bring the motivational and innovative aspects of creativity to find and fulfil the necessary risks which can be taken so as to create the resources and energy which will inspire a new set of institutional values. The process by which a relatively radical concept eventually becomes transformed into the orthodoxy also needs to be addressed. The need to keep alive the questioning ethic once an orthodoxy has emerged is the problem the private-charitable institution will have to tackle more successfully than the public-government entities have managed.
All these concepts can only take relevance if a practical dimension is shown to be possible. During the last five years I have tried to fulfil my individual responsibilities to these ideas. HEART has been created from scratch, in all ways, and today a platform with which to take forward the institutionalising possibility stands before us. The two new, but clearly interlinked, areas of effort by which the work is to proceed is the building of India’s first domestic auction house and the work towards the preservation of our cultural heritage monuments. Both will require a new charitable-corporate mix.
A year ago I was totally ignorant regarding the issues at stake in the preservation of our cultural heritage monuments. After an initial manic burst of curiosity (Refer to List, p261) hand in hand with a deeper understanding of the relevant government machinery, one came to appreciate the intellectual and material vastness of this subject, and the deep (potential) links it held with all aspects of Indian life, related to the artistic, historical, institutional, environmental and developmental factors. The subject also perfectly symbolised the Indian failure of preserving the material and tangible forms of its idealism. It would also provide the perfect complement to the more elite and focused role of modern and contemporary art in building an educational infrastructure. Further, here was the perfect opportunity to bring together all sectors of the nation and create a new platform for collaboration with a clear practical objective in which the role of artistic culture could clearly mould the process of development. HEART's MOU with the Government of India's National Culture Fund (NCF) is the first step in this direction.
It is to implementing the above task, and in helping to create a new structure for a domestic auction house, hand in hand with our previous commitments, that HEART is moving forward in the medium term. The nature of the journey is such that irrespective of our success in creating new concrete institutional forms, we will definitely succeed in inspiring a whole range of individuals and institutions to take more innovative risks, and to plan them with utmost care, thereby changing the perception of risk itself. For a conservative India, to embrace deeper the need and ability to risk is the first step towards a new institutional mindset. It is the duty of the creative mind and community to push forward this fundamental change within the next decade.
Curator’s Note
Since returning to India in 1994, I have tried to study all perspectives of Indian art, especially its modern and contemporary traditions. The initial medium term (five to seven years) objective was to re-understand the artistic and cultural system from the ‘grassroots’. This meant clarifying the intellectual framework hand in hand with creating new mechanisms and structures which will help implement one’s vision regarding the role of art, culture and its education in the development of India. Within five years a credible platform has been created.
A unique process of integrating and redefining charity, artistic creativity, scholarship and risk-taking is at the heart of this platform. In sustaining this work, a new space and set of values are emerging whereby the process of infrastructure-building for the Indian arts has the potential of transforming previous mindsets and practices regarding the subject. Within this focus the role of art auctions and a domestic auction house are pivotal. However, in both cases a redefinition of their scope and duty is demanded. The nature and success of this redefinition will depend upon how the following issues are tackled:
— The extent and manner by which generation and redistribution of wealth is affected by art auctions and a domestic auction house.
— What are the structures required so as to re-emphasise the motivation of an auction house from commercial imperatives to a wider public service, while maintaining its professionalism at international standards.
— The manner in which a research and documentation process is to be in-built and disseminated through auctions and an Indian auction house.
— Curated auctions already demand a clear unity between the aesthetic, intellectual and financial frameworks. Can auctions such as Intuitive-logic be sustained on the scale and at the pace required, as the pre-requisites are even more demanding, given they are conceived as part of a systematic infrastructure-building vision for the arts.
— How to harness the advantages of curated art auctions in establishing standards of aesthetic discrimination and deeper links between critical-historical narratives and contemporary pricing.
— The manner in which auctions can mould the involvement of the government and corporate sectors so as to play a more progressive and positive role in transforming infrastructure bottlenecks.
— The extent it can inspire the international community to get involved with appreciating and preserving the Indian cultural heritage and nurturing new and more radical exchanges of thought and culture.
— The degree to which auctions can change attitudes regarding financial transparency, thereby leading to deeper changes regarding public accountability.
— The way in which the elite nature of auctions can be compensated, through the above changes, so as to create new structures which allow the arts to redefine their reach and socio-economic status.
Intuitive-Logic: The Next Step takes forward one’s redefining experiments with most of these issues. However these wider concerns can only be tackled successfully if the curated auction is credible in a basic way. This ‘basic’ quality implies the art auction must tackle the following concerns:
— It must be able to bring together a collection of rare and high quality works of art. The majority of these works must not be accessible through the normal gallery and dealer networks.
— This rarity and quality must be clearly perceived by the public, and the underlying financial system must exist for fairly valuing these intangibles over time. For example if ‘quality’ is determined by an attached significance of a critical-historical narrative, among other factors, then one reason a premium price is justified, is the belief that the price will increase in the future because incorporating the significance of this narrative will still be recognised in the long run (ie: scholarship as a whole does not represent a passing prejudice, bias or fashion). Thus a clear link between aesthetic understanding and the academia-cum-artistic media needs to exist, which in turn the economic system must find credible.
— The manner by which the works of art are chosen, inter-related and contextualised must clarify and nurture the required appreciation process. For example, a historical context needs to be created, in which various levels of categorisation and different kinds of ideologies can credibly dissolve, leaving only the overall quality to dominate the curatorial exercise.
— The ‘auction house’ or organisers must be prepared to create and sustain the highest levels of financial transparency and public accountability.
— The success of achieving actual prices within the Price Estimates must be relatively high (60% +) to establish clear links between curatorial knowledge and its financial grasp. Further, the proportion of lots sold must be even higher (70% +).
— The documentation which communicates certain related features of an art work must strive for an intellectual and aesthetic excellence in both style and substance.
— The auction network must try to tackle the financial anomalies, inconsistencies and deterents inherent in the system, such as the imposition of Sales Tax on art (and its variation between states), the lack of credible valuation methods for insurance purposes, or even the ironic case of the Government of India charging a 50% Import Duty on Indian art wishing to come back to India!
— It must discipline the tamasha aspect associated with auctions, and yet engender an increasing popular interest which maintains the integrity of the works to be auctioned.
In tackling the above concerns the creation of a viable domestic secondary market for the arts and antiquities becomes a closer reality, in which the domestic auction house plays a pivotal role. This in turn is also the only credible long term solution to prevent the illegal export and outflow of India’s artistic and cultural heritage.
The success of Intuitive-Logic: The Next Step will suggest the speed at which a domestic auction house will come to exist. The auction will also reveal how ready the Indian public are to appreciate their artistic heritage in financial terms. Anything close to a sale of Rs.3.50 crores will be a success. This in turn will answer questions regarding the existing and potential proportion of ‘white’ cheque transactions as against the cash ‘black’ economy, especially for a centre such as New Delhi, not yet renown for its transparency of transactions.
If things progress smoothly over the next few years, the Indian visual arts may soon become the model market amid all Indian cultural disciplines, capable of transforming the suppressed black economy and its violence into a buoyant, transparent and integrated infrastructure, something which even the vast cinema economy has failed to achieve. With such self-sufficiency in place, the task of helping other artistic-cultural disciplines improve their infrastructure takes on a new credibility and momentum. To then change the educational system for the arts may not be the forlorn task it is today…
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