TAKE - Curate I Issue 5 I August 2011

The Phantom Lady Strikes Again

For this issue, the Phantom Lady invites her friend, the cultural theorist- curator-art critic N. Rajyalakshmi to interview Archana Hande about her thrilling bicycling tour of Switzerland.

LADY ON A BICYCLE

NR  Ms. Archana, I am very curious to hear about your cycling project in Switzerland. Did you know that learning bicycling was an important part of the women’s reform movement in India? It meant modernity and freedom, and even now we can see that a woman on a vehicle is the butt of jeers and jokes, if not outright attack.  A friend was telling me that his grandmother created a sensation in Pune as a young widow, learning bicycling from her teenage son. And there is that hilarious scene in Arun Khopkar’s film Katha Don Ganpatraonchi about the two feuding Ganpat Raos, when the mother arrives on a visit in her nine-yard sari, cycling to military music and doing ferocious lathi exercises at every stop.

AH  (Laughs) In Switzerland I was a great curiosity and known as the “the Indian lady on a bicycle”. The Swiss are used to seeing Indian tourists who love luxury and will not walk a step. On top of Mount Titlies in Engelberg where a song was picturized for the film Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, there is a big cut out of Shah Rukh and Kajol as Raj and Simran, which is a favourite place for Indians to take photographs. At the base of the mountain you will find a desi hawker’s cart with vada pav, pav bhaji, idli and chai where Indian tourists crowd to devour the food. While eating, they make enquiries like, whether it will be cold and snowy up at 3,238 metres? They are usually dressed in thin Tshirts or sarees and Hawaii chappals. By the time they finish, the ticket counters are closed so they have to come back the next morning!

NR  (Laughs) What was your project about?

AH  I applied for a residency to Pro- Helvetia and my proposal was that I wanted to become a landscape painter. I was in art school in Santiniketan where we are taught to be landscape painters – we used to cycle around the countryside with our sketch books every afternoon and the seniors used to train us: senior boys training junior girls. And it had to be in a particular style. So in Switzerland I thought I’d cycle around being a landscape painter, or playing a location hunter for Bollywood films. A cycle has more convenient access to places: you can carry it, go along paths and stop anywhere you like.

The idea was to bring back the Swiss landscape to India. It’s like a migration of landscape: first, when the trouble started in Kashmir, Switzerland became “Kashmir” in Bollywood films, later Switzerland became “Switzerland”, and then Switzerland came to India. I’ve seen painted Swiss landscape sets in the Ramoji Rao Studios in Hyderabad. At one point the Himachal and Ladakh areas which had less conflict became “Switzerland”. It was all about the exoticness of snow.

NR  I saw a Hindi film, I think it was Hum, in which the Ooty scenes were shot in Mauritius. The scenery did not look like a hill station at all - it looked tropical!

AH  Before going there, I thought it would be very simple- I’d take a tent and a bike and stop whenever I was tired- and I’d do watercolours whenever I felt like.

Then I realized that you can’t do that because there are a lot of restrictions on camping: you can’t really camp anywhere, there are special camping areas, so you have to find places to stay. I would have to carry food for the whole day. I was told that people in the interiors may not speak English and that Switzerland was divided into cantons, and that a lot of the cantons may have a problem with race, so they might not be helpful at all. The Swiss people I was corresponding with thought that Switzerland was not friendly- they were scared that if I was tired and knocked at someone’s door to stay the night I may not be entertained, and they were nervous that I was a woman and an Indian woman, and that I couldn’t afford to stay in Bed and Breakfasts because it would have cost me a lot of money. They completely ruled out my idea of spending the night in village homes, because they said I could meet a psychopath, for instance.

NR  This sounds like a great adventure, and you did it alone. It must have taken a lot of planning?

AH  It took three months of planning - I bought an 18-gear bike in India and did some trial runs in Bangalore and Mumbai, from Kandivli where I live in Mumbai, to Alibaug which is 75 kms away and back, for example. I had to check the timing and whether I could maintain the energy; on the second day the body gets tired, and then you pick up the energy again. In Bangalore I would cycle from my parents’ home to far off parts of the city every day so that my body was not so unprepared.

NR  How did you work it out? You had never been to Switzerland before.

AH  I met several people by chance, and through friends, who helped me. Surekha told me about Lilian Hasler, a Swiss sculptor who lived in Pune. When I met her and told her about my project, she laughed. She said an Indian doing anything physical was the most hilarious thing! Then Lilian said she would help me and took out a cycling map of Switzerland. She showed me all the low and high areas, and advised me to try and follow the rivers and the lakes because if there was a water body, it meant it was a low lying area. She asked me to figure out the entire route and fix it before I left. She said don’t knock on strange doors, but organize a set of friends from here.

Suresh Kumar Gopalreddy’s friend was a sportsman called Balz Laimberger from Aarau. He’s a cyclist and a sailor. He told me to come with a plan, he’s part of a cycling group and they have a directory with the phone numbers and addresses of about five hundred people from all over Switzerland who are cyclists. So a cyclist can call up a member and ask to stay for one night- but you have to be a member. Since Balz was one, he said that any time I got stuck in a place I could call him and fix up my stay, but I could call only a day earlier.  He helped me with the route suggesting short cuts, more scenic views and mountains to avoid, fleshing out the map that Lilian and I had planned.

           

Bernard Imhasly, the Swiss brother-in-law of my gallerist Shireen Gandhy and his daughter Anisha who lives in Bern, helped out and later Pro-Helvetia gave me an assistant, Lena Eriksson who started connecting with all these people. She made a list of what I would need for the trip and warned me about sudden rains.

NR  And what happened in Switzerland? Did everything go according to plan?   

AH  In the first ten days I thought I would travel by train and get used to the country.  Art Basel was going on and I met a lot of Indian artist friends there and spent time with them seeing all the museums, but it was raining throughout! I fixed my trip to start on 20th June but the rain wouldn’t stop. I was nervous because I wouldn’t be able to cycle properly or do watercolours and I had to reach my host by 7pm. everyday.

In Basel, people told me about Jean- Frederic Schnyder, a Swiss artist who’s a big star: he’s a landscape painter who cycles and paints.  He has several series of works- sometimes he only cycles up to highways and paints them, sometimes it’s just mountains. He’s older now but he did this till his forties and became famous for it. I was very excited about this but everyone told me that it was very difficult to get in touch with him. He lives in Zug. I realized I could go to his place on my bicycle tour, but that would come at the end as it was near Zurich.

Luckily, the rain stopped on the first day and it was sunny for the rest of my trip. I planned my journey anti- clockwise from Zurich. I had wanted to do it clockwise like the pradakshina, but the route was very mountainous, so it was easier to go anti-clockwise and do the plains first. Someone told me this had been Napoleon’s route when he attacked Switzerland! I thought I could meet Jean- Frederic in Zug at the end and show him all my watercolours. I would call my trip “ Meeting Jean- Frederic Schnyder” and build up a story around it, about being on my way to meet him.

NR  I googled Schnyder and an article says he paints certain banal things over and over again, like series of train stations, and called him an artist- archivist. That’s interesting because you work with the idea of the archive yourself, and this is close to your project.

AH  Everyone told me that it was impossible to meet Jean-Frederic unless I went through his gallery, that he rarely appears in public. He didn’t even have an email id or a cell number, just a landline. Till the day I left Basel, I couldn’t get through to him. So the plan to meet him in Zug was unpredictable.

I stayed at Lilian’s flat in the first month in Zurich. When I reached Zurich, Lilian arrived from Pune and she gave me her 7- gear bicycle to use on my trip. Lilian was still doubtful about me. On the first day she showed me around Zurich, and on the second day she gave me the keys of her bike and the address of her studio and said she was having a barbecue there and I should be there at 6 pm sharp. I googled and found a detailed cycle map. I didn’t realize this was a test! The studio was in the countryside 30 kms. away but I managed to cycle there on time. She was pleased and gave me the green signal.

Between Lena, Lilian and Balz, they gave me everything I needed. I didn’t have to buy any equipment, except my clothes. At my first stop in Aarau my host Balz and his friend Jürg Fritzsche laughed at me when they saw my 7- gear bike and Jürg gave me his new 24- gear light mountain bike to use. I was embarrassed because the bike was really expensive, but Balz told me in an aside that Jürg was very rich and he could afford it!

I had to learn how to repair a puncture, and in Switzerland, even parking a bike is a skill because you have to lift it up high and hang it up by a hook on a pole in the parking areas.

NR  And what happened on the actual journey?         

AH  Swiss people exercise the whole day! They spend their lunch breaks having a quick sandwich and jogging the rest of the time. In fact I hardly saw any place that was lonely because there were people cycling or jogging in the deepest forests. Sometimes I felt silly to be doing this project which was so normal for them.

My experience was the opposite of what we had imagined. In one of the most conservative cantons in Giswil (which I was warned could be racist), where I had no host to stay with, the Hotel Krone gave me a free room. The owner said an Indian woman cycling was a rare thing and should be encouraged! Sometimes when I got lost and knocked at some door, people would give me food and drink and cycle along with me till I found my route. I experienced no racism, and because of other cyclists encouraging me on the road, I finished my trip, otherwise I could have got tired and got on to a train at any time, since I had a free train pass.

The host in every town cooked a fantastic dinner for me and showed me around the city. They would make breakfast for me the next day and pack lunch for the journey. So I saw the events and museums everywhere. One of the interesting things I saw was the Obwald music festival held in the deep woods near Giswil. This happens once every year, when there is yodelling through the night. Groups from different cantons perform different types of yodelling. It was a full moon night and Bernard and Anisha had booked a table there. A guest country is invited each year and it was Mali this time. All night, there were group performances by Swiss yodellers, very formal, alternating with wild Mali dancing, with Mali and Swiss food being served. It was a fantastic experience.

When I reached Burgdorf I saw a huge poster of Subodh Gupta’s show, and

in Thun I ran into Bharti Kher’s show. The museum people in Thun said I could park my bike with all my luggage right inside the building at the reception- it was so funny, like taking Subodh’s work to see Bharti’s show!

NR  Ms. Archana, all this is seems so strenuous! Did you manage to do any watercolours at all?                     

AH  The water colour painting project was very difficult, because I hadn’t calculated that I would need to calm down for some time after the cycling, or that sometimes the landscape would not change for a long time. But I would blog every evening. My bicycle tour is part of an ongoing work called Archana Devi Travels.

Sometimes I would end up taking the wrong route. I once took the hiker’s route instead of the cycling path and I had to carry my bike with the luggage up a steep path beside a waterfall, for two or three hours. A car hit me once, and I had several falls, but nothing serious, just got a few bruises.

NR  And did you meet Jean-Frederic Schnyder?

AH  The night before I was leaving for Zug, when I still had no clue about how to contact Jean- Frederic, my host, a curator who knew his gallerist, managed to get his number. I called him and he was so welcoming, inviting me to come at any time! When I reached there he spent four hours with me seeing my watercolours and bringing out his old paintings, to compare our versions of the same landscapes. He knows every mountain in Switzerland. When I asked him about his reputation as a difficult recluse, he laughed and said that was only for commercial people like curators and gallerists, for artists he was always available. He insisted that I stay with them another day, but when I said I had to leave for Zurich, he gave me all his catalogues and even packed my bike for me expertly. So I did finally meet the mythical Jean-Frederic Schnyder!

Cycled 532 kms.

Starting 21 June to 1 July 2010

Route: Zurich – Aarau – Burgdorf – Bern – Thun – Bonigen, near Interlaken – Mariengen – Giswil via Brünig Pass – Sarnen – Engelberg - Emmenbrucke - Zug - Zurich

http://archanadevitravels.blogspot.com

N. Rajyalakshmi

( N. Rajyalakshmi began her career as a journalist in the Ideal Times, Bangalore, where she had a regular culture column. She is now widely respected internationally as a leading intellectual in the cultural field, celebrated particularly for her interviews with the artist Pushpamala N.)

Pictures courtesy: Archana Hande

March 2011

issue 5

Arguments for Boycott of Deconstructing India show in Tel Aviv Museum I Pushpamala N. I August 2011

ARGUMENTS FOR INDIAN ARTISTS BOYCOTT OF TEL AVIV MUSEUM SHOW

The Indian Artists Boycott of the Deconstructing India show to be held at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in April 2012, is in solidarity with the International Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel called by Palestinian intellectuals, artists and citizen groups, and the India Campaign. The call for boycott, inspired by the earlier successful international boycott against Apartheid South Africa, is a non-violent Gandhian campaign to pressurize Israel to recognize the rights of the Palestine people directed at mainstream Israeli institutions, and not at individuals. 

Once Israel follows UN norms and recognises the legitimate demands of the Palestinians, the Boycott will be called off, just as the boycott against Apartheid South Africa was called off when the apartheid system was dismantled.

The curatorial note is written on the Tel Aviv Museum letterhead. What the Tel Aviv Museum says about itself on the website confirms that it is a central part of the art establishment in Israel. It is no dissident institution. Founded in 1932, the Museum was chosen in 1948 by David Ben-Gurion, the architect of Israel and its first Prime minister, to formally proclaim the Establishment of the State of Israel in a ceremony. It is a major institution, which is on the tourist sites of the country, part of the “central hub of modern Hebrew culture” which by definition, leaves out Palestinian culture. In fact Palestinians will find it very difficult to see the Indian show because of the various blockades and security checks that they have to pass through: it is not for them. While the curator’s intentions may be good, it is difficult to believe that a change will come from within this institutional framework.

While there are dissident artists and groups within Israel, who may be working in similar ways as us, this show is not hosted by them or in an alternative space. In fact, some of the progressive people in Israel also support the Boycott.

The Israeli government is now building Brand Israel which uses cultural events and figures to promote Israel as an exciting, glamourous tourist destination, to whitewash the actual realities there. Singers Paul McCartney and Madonna who performed there were projected in this way. The Indian artists who will show in the highly publicised New Museum Wing will be used to vindicate and promote Brand Israel. I was not sure whether I was comfortable with that.

Some artists feel that we should keep cultural spaces separate from politics. However, the curatorial note of “Deconstructing Israel” is itself political. It speaks of colonization, partition of India and creation of Israel which are all political events. The artists have been chosen because they “deconstruct stereotypes”. We are not deconstructing stereotypes for fun or interior decor, but to make a political, institutional and social critique. 

Indian artists are making works on political subjects like global and national economic exploitation, poverty, rights of farmers and workers and minorities, religious intolerance, gender and sexuality issues, ecology; and use directly political material and quotations in their work. Many of us have been directly involved in protests and agitations, write eloquently on various public issues, and worked to support and build alternate spaces and platforms outside formal institutions to express our voice.

In fact, many Indian artists are invited internationally to show in biennales and important exhibitions precisely because they are making “political’ work. We cannot suddenly turn around and say we are not political. 

In the curatorial note, the curators compare the histories of the two nations as being victims of colonization, comparing the partition of India with the creation of Israel and the ensuing problems and animosities, which itself is problematic. I do not believe that the cases are similar. The Israeli State proclaims that it is built on desert land, an empty land which it civilized and made fertile. This thesis from the start negates the existence of the Palestinians for centuries on this land and dismisses their culture and civilization. It is not a democracy as described in the curatorial synopsis but a military state practising the system of apartheid, that has compulsory two- year military service for all its young people, the main purpose of which is to repress and control the Palestinians. The Tel Aviv Museum rewards free passes to Israeli soldiers for their recreation after their tiring duties, and they form an important part of the museum audience.

To answer the argument that all governments are repressive and why only target Israel: I believe this is a purist argument that cynically precludes all action. In fact I have not heard of a boycott call against USA, China or other places mentioned by artists as repressive, from people repressed by them. There are specific international petitions like the recent protest against Ai Wei Wei’s arrest that many of us have signed, but it is interesting that neither Ai Wei Wei who worked on the Beijing Olympics, nor other targeted Chinese artists or academics, have actually called for a boycott of Chinese institutions. They may not want , or need a boycott.

There is a misconception that this is just a show of moral disapproval, something “holier than thou”. The Boycott is not about some “good people” punishing some “bad people” for their “bad deeds”. The Boycott is a tactic and a strategy for collective action, most famously adopted by Mahatma Gandhi for the Swadeshi movement, to put pressure on a worst- case situation to change it. As we know, we did get Independence by following these strategies, which have influenced the world. No change is instant and needs to build up over time. However each action is like a building block.

Some artist friends felt that as artists, we had no power to change anything, so what was the point in the Boycott? The answer is that artists, intellectuals and sportspeople are seen as opinion makers which is why they are asked to take a stand on issues. In the earlier successful Boycott of Apartheid South Africa, the strong stand taken by individuals and small groups built into a large movement that pressurized world governments into imposing sanctions, which finally led to the dismantling of Apartheid.

Though others like Nalini Malani had categorically decined to show in this exhibition sometime ago, this was not made public. I felt that the issue should go into the public sphere to provoke debate and bring awareness. To boycott or not to boycott is each artist’s decision, but it is interesting that everybody in the art world is now thinking about the matter, as well as the spontaneous letters that have come in solidarity.

Pushpamala

Bangalore August 2011

Art Asia Pacific Magazine I Hemant Sareen I On the Boycott of the Tel Aviv Museum show on India I interview with Pushpamala N. I July 2011

ON THE CALL OF BOYCOTT OF THE DECONSTRUCTING INDIA SHOW AT TEL AVIV MUSEUM IN 2012

HS: Were you aware of your inclusion in the show before you received a formal invitation?

PN: Curator Tami Freiman contacted my gallery, Chemould Prescott Road in Mumbai about wanting some of my work for a show in Tel Aviv. Since I had not heard about the show, I wrote to her and asked her for a concept note and list of artists, as I think it is very important to know the context of an exhibition. In fact at that time I was interested in going to Israel if I got the opportunity to see for myself what the situation was. When I read the concept note I realized that it was an official state show in the Tel Aviv Museum and did not want to participate. I also have problems with the concept.

HS: Did you have time to think about your decision? Did you consult other participating artists?

PN: It was my decision to decline the show and call the other artists to join me in a boycott. I thought about it and felt it was right.  It’s also that I am in Bangalore now and most of the artists are in Delhi or Mumbai.  The joke is that some of the artists I spoke to from the curator’s list were mystified as they didn’t even know about the show!

HS: How many have boycotted the show?

PN: Artists Anita Dube, Amar Kanwar, and myself, from the present curators list, have declined to show. But some others like Nalini Malani refused much earlier without going public. Ashok Sukumaran wrote that he had been approached too. I decided to go public to put the issue in the public sphere. The curators have been approaching artists since several months it seems. Several people from the art world have written their support for us in a short time.

HS: You are boycotting the show in support of the Palestinian Civil Society Movement's  BDS campaign. Is there any personal reason or is it a more impersonal and humanitarian motivation that made you boycott the show?

PN: I hope you are not trying to trivialize the issue. There is no personal reason! 

I believe in the boycott as a non-violent strategy to bring about change. The Palestinian movement is inspired by the earlier International boycott against Apartheid South Africa which finally led to sanctions and brought about the dismantling of the apartheid system. The most famous boycott however, was the Non-Co-operation Movement of Mahatma Gandhi against the British, which led to Indian Independence and has inspired all other boycotts since! Nelson Mandela and the ANC adopted these methods for South Africa and Martin Luther King for the Civil Rights movement in America. But I am not naïve to think that anything is instant. Every action is a step or a building block.

I am one of the signatories of the India campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. To clarify some confusions about it, the Boycott is addressed at mainstream and state institutions complicit with state policy and not individuals. It exists so far as the Israeli state continues with its illegal apartheid policies and recognises the rights of the indigenous Palestinian people, it is not for all time, obviously. I would like to continue to have a long term relationship with the Palestinian groups and maybe work out some projects in the art world.

HS: Critics of your boycott remind you of other countries and regimes with equally bad human rights records, China for instance, where Indian artists are regularly featured. How would you respond to that?

PN: Critics of my boycott start with the US and Europe and then go on to China! People are mistaking this as taking a high moral ground and show of moral displeasure. The call for boycott, as I have mentioned is a collective strategy to bring about change in a worst case scenario, it is not about so called “good people” punishing some “bad people” for their “ bad deeds”. It is of course based on sympathy and support for the desperate and unchanging scene there. 

Recently, there was an international petition protesting against the Chinese government’s arrest of Ai Wei Wei, which many of us signed. However, neither Ai Wei Wei nor any Chinese artists or groups, have sent an international Boycott call. In fact Ai Wei Wei had worked just before that for the Beijing Olympics. Artists have a complex relationship there with the government, are critical, but also probably disinclined towards outside interference, just as the Iranian people are wary, or we are. 

In this case, I would have refused individually anyway, but I made a general call to the artists in response and in solidarity with an existing movement. I would be careful about playing God and asking for boycotts left and right, unless there was a credible movement. By the way, 100 artists from Canada and 150 from Ireland have signed the PACBI boycott call earlier, besides many popular musicians and groups worldwide cancelling concerts there.

Why is it that in the case of so called rogue countries boycotted by the west, the action is taken for granted, while Israel which is breaking all international laws has so much sympathy?

HS: What would you say to those Indian artists still insisting on participating in the show?

PN: I think it is each one’s individual choice. Everybody is thinking about it and each artist will have their own opinion. One thing is sure:  there has been a lot of debate generated, and still going on. I get several letters everyday, each with different positions. I welcome argument; it galvanizes the art scene when it is in danger of becoming soporific. Didn’t Amartya Sen write a book called “The Argumentative Indian”?!

Earlier, the India campaign had asked writers and musicians to boycott their invitations, but there was no response. It is a measure of the liveliness of the Indian art scene and Indian artists sincerity that there is so much discussion going on. 

And have you noticed something? For the last decade the only public discussion about Indian art was art market, prices and auctions. Now suddenly everyone is talking about the Palestine issue! Isn’t that interesting? 

HS: Has the Ministry of Culture been in touch with you on this issue?

PN: No, why should they? Sounds Kafkaesque. It is my right to agree or refuse to participate in any event. And this is a funny question because part of the argument against cultural boycott is that the cultural is separate from the political!

Pushpamala N.

2011

TAKE - Ouevre I Issue 4 I

The Phantom Lady Strikes Again

The Phantom Lady takes off from Umesh Maddanahalli’s project with donkeys in Mysore, and ruminates about donkeys in art …

DONKEY TALES

The donkey is seen as a lowly animal, an ass, a beast of burden. It is neither noble like the horse nor as endearing as the dog. The donkey is actually the common man, the subaltern of the animal world: sort of foolish and unattractive, obstinate by nature, and unwilling to be cuddly and pet-like.

Umesh Maddanahalli’s recent student workshop, Name and Form in CAVA, (Chamarajendra Academy of Visual Arts) Mysore, looked at the donkey bench, a commonly used object for artistic study and practice, as a starting point to connect the study of art to the experience of ordinary life.  The “donkey” as we know is a bench with a resting place for a board, used in the classroom for life study, drawing and painting. It has a vaguely animal-like form with a neck and head and four legs. Umesh plays with the meaning of the object by replacing the donkey bench with real donkeys, to look again at art pedagogy and art history as it has come down to us from the 19^th century and think about the “journey of art”. He questions whether it is at all important to study a chronological sequence of events, and whether the examination of the art of the past means anything to us today.

Umesh hired a group of donkeys from a village near Mysore and the project was that the students walk them back to their “home” sixty five kilometres away to a place called Santhe Saruguru, also called Kaththe or “ Donkey” Saruguru, which is well-known for breeding donkeys, which are used as pack animals and for manure, or sometimes rented out for film shootings. The group would walk through the day till sunset, stopping to cook and sleep in villages along the way, carrying some provisions along with them, but borrowing pots and pans from the villagers and cooking on rough stone and wood fire stoves made on the spot, spending nights in the village schools. The students could document the project in any medium they wanted and edit the material in any way.

A keeper brought six of the animals to CAVA, situated on the principal street of the city, Sayaji Rao Road, (named after the Baroda Maharaja who was a close friend of the Mysore king) which is the main route for the ceremonial Dasara procession.  Umesh and the troupe of thirty students started off in a straggly group with the donkeys the next morning, exciting curious attention from the public, astonished people and vehicles stopping on the crowded street and staring at them. The students were confused about what to say to bystanders; rustic people laughed and told them the donkey was Lakshmi and lucky for them. The students holding the donkeys being unused to handling them could not control them, and either the donkeys would pull them in different directions or stop mulishly, holding them all up. The journey took three days with many adventures on the way, with some of the students dropping out, but most staying till the end.

On the first day one of the donkeys which was loosely tied, escaped and vanished just outside Mysore while they were having lunch. Frantic calls were made to friends to look for it. There was a pall of gloom and though abandoning the donkey and walking on was discussed, the students sat down by the side of the road and refused to move till the animal was found. This aroused great interest on the highway and trucks and cars stopped to find out if it was a strike or satyagraha. Finally someone found it after several hours and brought it back in a tempo to great jubilation, and the donkey which had been unnamed till then, was called Gopala. It seemed that the beast, which by reports had always been a troublesome animal, had by an act of rebellion become an individual. Just two or three generations ago, the lower castes in India had no names of their own and were either called by the day of the week on which they were born, or followed the custom of naming all the children, male and female, in the family god’s name. Even having an individual name is an elite thing.

Several people from Mysore visited the group in the evenings. The CAVA Dean came with art history students, and Mysore artists like N.S. Harsha and Dwarkanath, the theatre designer for the State Repertory Rangayana, dropped in. Dwakanath’s take on the workshop was that the donkeys were just an excuse and not central to the experience. What was interesting for him was the way the students quickly divided themselves into different groups: some handling the animals, some cooking, some washing up the pots.  But finally, everything revolved around taking the donkeys back home. They got close to donkey behaviour living with them, saw how they walked, grazed, shat, slept, and their stubborn animal-ness. It was a “life study” of another kind.

Au hasard Balthazar (By Chance, Balthazar) the classic 1966 film directed by Robert Bresson, one of the cult figures of the French New Wave, revolves around a donkey. The film follows the lives of Marie, a shy farm girl and her donkey Balthazar through a life of callous abuse and is described as having “exquisite renderings of pain and abasement” and “compendiums of cruelty”. While some critics have seen it as a religious allegory and a spiritual tale of human suffering, others see it as an existential account of life as it is, or as Jean-Luc Goddard described it, “really the world in an hour and a half”. The donkey’s dumb pliant figure takes us through the indifference, sadism, greed, exploitation, irresponsibility and criminality of humankind, represented by the characters of the village who use it in various ways, told in an unsentimental and minimalist aesthetic style.

The donkey was the pivotal character in Kerala filmmaker John Abraham’s 1977 Tamil film Agraharathil Kazhuthai ( Donkey in a Brahmin Village), a biting satire on brahminical superstition and bigotry. The film which got the National Award, was not allowed to be screened on Doordarshan by the furious Brahmin lobby, and ignored by the press. Critiquing the caste system was an important part of the Indian New Wave cinema of the ‘70s and the filmmaker uses the device of inserting an ass into a place anxious about its ritual purity, with all its black humour. A donkey which strays into a Brahmin village, is adopted by Professor Narayan Swamy who appoints a mute girl to look after it, much to the disapproval of the entire village. It is seen as an unclean animal which pollutes the village, and when the girl’s still-born baby is found outside the temple, the donkey is blamed for it and killed. Later a series of miracles happen and the Brahmins believe that it is due to the donkey’s blessings. When they dig out the skull of the donkey to give it a ritual funeral, the fire symbolically spreads and engulfs the village in a huge conflagration, destroying everything except the professor and the mute girl. It is the Day of Judgement and only the innocents are saved.

The director John Abraham, who is remembered more as a bohemian anarchist, was a revolutionary who believed in the empowering and liberating effect of cinema and tried to create a new kind of people’s film making. He formed the Odessa Collective (named after the port in one of the most important films of all time, Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, about the great Russian naval mutiny of 1905 against the officers of the Tsarist regime) which tried to change the history of film production and distribution by going to the villages and directly raising money from the people. His last film Amma Ariyan (Report to Mother), was funded by collecting one rupee each from the audience from screening Chaplin’s The Kid all over Kerala. The film once made was also released non- commercially.

Many of my Malayali artist friends like Madhusudanan used the image of the donkey  in their work in the 1980s as a symbol of oppression, possibly coming from the Christian Left. The donkey, being a creature of the desert lands, figures in many Biblical stories. In both Jewish and Christian traditions, the Messiah is described as riding on a donkey. It is a heavily loaded symbol, particularly in Christian legend, seen as a metaphor for Christ’s meekness, humility and poverty, and stands for the spiritual kingdom of god. Jesus rode into Bethlehem on a donkey as the Messiah on Palm Sunday. It appears often in Western painting: in the Flight into Egypt, as also in the manger scene at the birth of Christ when he is recognized as the Saviour, and first worshipped by the lowly animals. In earlier times it appears that riding a donkey indicated affluence as commoners at the time went on foot. Later on when the nobility begin owning horses, riding a donkey takes on the opposite meaning and becomes a sign of simplicity and sobriety. Christ pictured on a donkey came to symbolize forgiveness and peace, whereas the image of Christ mounted on a horse was seen as a sign of judgement and war.

The donkey is also a jackass, standing for a dumb and unthinking foolishness. Manjunath Kamath uses the image constantly in his work to satirically comment on the antics of men. But most famously, Bhupen Khakhar has used the Panchatantra story of the Father, the Son and the Donkey with a wicked twist for his gay “coming out” painting You Can’t Please All painted in 1982. A naked man stands on a balcony, looking down at the story unfolding below in stages like an Indian miniature painting. A father and son set out on a journey to the town to sell a donkey. On the way they meet some people who laugh at them for walking while one could ride. So the boy sits on the donkey and they go on. They meet an old man who criticizes the boy for having no respect for his father, so the son gets down and the father rides on the donkey. Further on they are mocked for the son walking when he could ride the donkey too. Finally, when both are riding the donkey, they are abused for overloading the poor animal. They then decide to tie the legs of the donkey to a pole and carry it upside down on their shoulders. While crossing a bridge on the river, the donkey struggles and falls into the water and drowns. At which, says Bhupen Khakkar, the man watching from the balcony concludes, “You can’t please everyone” and takes off his clothes.

Umesh’s workshop was a miniature form of his larger idea to travel across various parts of India with a retinue of donkeys. He would welcome art students and anyone else who wanted to walk the roads of India in the company of donkeys, stopping to cook when hungry and resting when tired. “The herd of donkeys and its human companions” would visit art schools on their “rambles” and the journey would be recorded on camera. The project may not prove anything or answer any questions, or really help to discover the nature of art history or pedagogy. However, it would raise some questions. He says the premise of Name and Form lies in the last lines of a poem by Gopal Honnalgere:

you

search

for the donkey

you

ride

on

The Phantom Lady

December 2010