image courtesy: KNMA
A report by neha zooni tickoo
On 2nd July 2016, Kiran Nadar Museum of
Art, Saket was host to an evening contemplating a coup. “Invitation for a Coup”
emerged from the perplexing blackout “performed” on the TV news channel by
anchor and journalist Ravish Kumar in order “to advocate doubt as a method”
against the cacophony of these times. Ravish Kumar’s radical intervention aired
in the living rooms of urban India was complete with abject darkness of the TV
screen and spoke of a despairingly transformed ruthless space of contemporary
media politics. Ravish’s blackout portrayed a picture of withdrawal where the
simulacrum frenzy has ceased to be.
Without taking the title of the conversation as a
misnomer, the evening began as a somber setting accompanied with a few words
written on a whiteboard: ‘NEGATION’, ‘REDACTION’, ‘ERASURE’, and ‘POSSIBILITY’.
The audience was prodded to delve deep into the words by way of an engagement
with the “coup”. The question looming large was (and will perhaps continue to be):
“How would art create a coup like situation in these politically charged
times?” What is it about these words that could provide towards an artist’s
repertoire in the ongoing revolution(s). The ensuing discussion, however, contemplated
negation as a trope in the toolbox of political art, with or without its
metaphysical gear on.
Sreshta Rit Premnath, the guest artist in the
conversation, is the co-founder of Shifter
magazine, (http://shifter-magazine.com/about) and is an
Assistant Professor at Parsons, New York. In light of his past work, he spoke
of quintessential absences in the world around him and his art. He spoke of cargo
ships being captured by pirates and their absences thereafter; his fancy for
the emptiness of the bright green backgrounds used to digitally manipulate
images on TV screen and apply VFX in cinematography; and of peoples made “invisible”
and rendered “unintentional”. Ruminating poetically through his artworks from
2008 onwards, with special reference to ‘Zero Knot’ (2010), he recited his poem
while a slide show of his art work shot from different angles played on the
screen. A few lines from the poem were as follows:
“What I can’t see is withdrawn,
What I don’t know is withdrawn,
Can a thing withdraw from itself?
When I shift my attention,
Who withdraws,
You or me?
A people is silenced from whom?”
These lines permeate the sphere of the metaphysical
on several levels where the being of his artwork and its elimination in parts
fulfill the purpose. At this point, Akansha intervened with a mention of French
linguist Maurice Blanchot, whose forte was the style of ‘recit’ which harbours
heavily on the incoherence and paradoxical virtues of a narrative. This style
of narration is against linearity and basically straddles in the anti-genre.
Perhaps Premnath’s work is in attempt of something similar.
Strips of green and blue colours frequent
Premnath’s works in minimalist ways such that they represent “zero colour” for
him. He said, “between 0 and infinity, we find 1. There is no withdrawal, yet
everything is taken away”. He maintained
that he allows political and metaphysical thinking to permeate into each other
in his art. He spoke of coup through the
lens of ‘possibilities’ and ‘probabilities’. In his work, the trope of negation
is seen in the outlined cutouts of popular leaders, rendering the figure
invisible through the tarpaulin-ed cover-ups. He attempts to dissect the
metaphysics of negation by speaking of more works from 201o-2016 – ‘Pole’
(2012), ‘Folding Rulers’ (2012), ‘Sand Box’, (2010), and ‘To Destroy is Also to
Make Visible’ (2016) all deal with real life events in the course of history
like the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, and the ravaged Syrian cityscape.
At this juncture, Akansha spoke about recent
events of dissent in the history of university student protests in India: one
from the controversial exhibition of queer artist Chandra Mohan at Faculty of Fine
Arts, M. S. University, Gujarat and the other from Sarojini Naidu Institute of
Arts & Communication, University of Hyderabad. In her research, she has
been able to look at negation implemented by the state agents and in the latter
case by the artists themselves to evoke a sentiment of political dissent. It thus
begins to become apparent how the trope of negation achieved through the elimination
of the artwork becomes something bigger as an artistic and political statement.
In his work ‘I Will Die When I Stop Building’
(2012), Premnath visually narrates the story of Ramaiya, the famous builder from
Bengaluru who is known to rebuild buildings he was commissioned in the past. He
pointed out that it is the death drive that animates the urban development
scenario and the passion which guides it. In another work titled ‘Eclipse’
(2010), photographs of the solar eclipse ring clearly demonstrate the desire to
shoot the hidden Sun, showing only its ring, making invisible the object of
desire itself. Other works he mentioned were ‘Sleeping Dog’ (2013), ‘Plot’
(2014-15) and ‘Recto-Verso’ (2016). ‘Recto-Verso’ is a stunning work that
delineates the necessity to understand the hidden, or the “negated Other”. It
tells the story of hazards for the hired labourers, many of whom reportedly
fall off tall bunk beds in sleep and die. Tightrope walking between sleep and
death, tied to streams of sub-consciousness, ‘Sleeping Dog’ (2013), the video
work is constituted of clips of street dogs in deep sleep on busy roads as the
world passes by.
As the conversation drew to a close, the interactive
session with the audience raised several interesting questions. Noted
photographer Ram Rahman pondered about the poetic-text accompanying the art
work in the exhibition space to which Premnath responded by saying that his
artwork is usually showcased without the text recitation but, at other times,
he provides the text to be read alongside. Art critic Hemant Sareen pointed out
the un-readability of the conceptual aspect of Premnath’s work and its
probability to be read as eccentric. An interesting input about the trope of
negation came from the biological perspective when a member of the audience
pointed out that it is ‘decapitation’ in biological terms that leads to growth
in many ways and means. A young student in the audience was keen to know where ‘negation
is placed’, citing the specific example of self-immolation by Tibetan
protestors. Another member of the audience, a dancer, pointed towards the performative,
ritual aspect in the very occurrence of an actual political coup, and sought a
discussion on the same in relation to the artistic, metaphysical or conceptual
value associated to Premnath’s art practice.
Hinged to the most immediate crises in the
political scenario of the world and for the artist to address and counter it, the
conversation successfully brought along fervor in the gathering.
