Saturday, April 22, 2017

Notes from the Serendipity Arts Festival 2016

India never evolves, it jumps. We have situations where one day there is no toilet and the other day, they are hundreds. We have situations where there is no electricity, but the person of the house has a mobile phone.
We are not going to ever have 240 museums - like London.

What we have to do is to open up locked up temporary infrastructure for arts and artists. Second is to open up / find patrons who will have something worthwhile to offer.

India is not necessarily an educated race, but we are highly intelligent.

Feroze Gujral

--

What is the History of memory? How do we utilize memory?
The struggle of the archive is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
A shared history means a shared experience.

The phenomenon of Europe and America coming and "helping" us to discover our destiny.
Rise of extreme nationalism in our countries.

What kind of crisis emerge, what are the violent implications when a country wants to expand its economic might in its surrounding areas? The first 1857 nationalism movement was against the economic exploitation.  What are the ethics of working in a particular kind of political economy?

War has forced a lot of people to migrate. Migration to America and Europe have not yet been a big political question. But these questions are going to come up. Nepal is stuck between two world superpowers - India and China.

We have to learn to be silent and listen to our neighbour.

When you have no power to talk to the big, powerful people, the only way to probably talk to them is humour and satire. It completely undermines the political process and art can bring about some subtlty. You can be standing opposite to a very highly intelligent person who is opposing you and still not be bale to be do anything about it. It is here that art can intervene as a mediator. Art has influenced and shaped narratives in every culture - and it happens over a longer duration of time. Subtleties of political debate can be conducted only through art.

To be sure,  nation/states can't understand humour.

Amrith Lal

--
If you are true to yourself, you are true to your political time. So this question will be inevitably there in your work. So you don't have to question consciously.

Riyas Komu



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