New Year 2013 Celebrations

My first New Year in USA was made completely memorable by my friends at New York: Rohit, Karthik, Vinit along with two new friends - Debashree and Jasdeep, joined by Neelima straight from San Francisco on the New Year! We went around the Times Square looking at the craziness of people to see the ball dropping event. It was for the first time after coming to USA that I saw a density as huge as something I would see in Mumbai everyday! Immense security and pretty organized New York streets allowed us to cut across the avenues to move to less crowded areas. The bars were full, the pubs shouted loud, the streets were lit up - New Year celebration was all around.

Strolling around the Rockefeller center whose courtyard was turned into a skating rink, and looking around the beautifully lit Christmas tree, we went towards another part of the city, quieter and as merrier as the above. We chose a beautiful cafe to hang out, where we went insane at our table - actually a blackboard! We architects and lawyers from Harvard, Cornell and Yale took over our drawing skills drafting out a construction sheet on the table. Occasionally we corrected each other to show guidelines, formatting and essential details! We soon had to order extra chalk exhausting that kept on our table.

Our next session at the night was a long game of Pictionary with Bollywood movies. And let me see if anyone of you can guess the drawings below. Some were so funny and obvious that mere 4 blanks did the job. Others were quite intellectual. Debashree proved to be the most prolific drawing out iconic scenes from movies, while Jasdeep did a good job of guessing some despite not being good at drawing!

We went home late, by around 1 30 am when we started a 6-player Ludo - something retrofitted with the old Ludo version, that Rohit had! The game went on non stop for 4 hours, when we finally decided to retire leaving the game unfinished!

On a round of New Year Resolutions on the next day in a south Indian Restaurant, where everyone decided some, I had none. In the meanwhile, Karthik asked me to visit Boston instead of returning back to New Haven. While I went into my grey zone, Neelima made me go for it, asking me to be more instinctive this year. I thought for a while and dived in. And I think that was one of the better decisions I made. I thoroughly enjoyed Boston - a great city, with great friends, great buildings, and absolutely unforgettable moments.

Boston Story next.

Happy New Year 2013

New Societies

These days I have suddenly started to take a lot of interest in things in process. Primarily this is in relation to music production and film production. My interest has geared towards, and gearing towards "how" things are made and can be made. In what ways can ideas be realized. I discovered some really interesting projects documented on Youtube and some such places. If any one is interested, one must look at:

• The Music Project by Tehelka
• Sneha Khanwalkar's show Sound Tripping
• Making of various films
• to some extent Dewarists
• A Capella Groups
• Short film and Animation groups
• Comic and graphic novel artists
• Writers, poets, painters, artists etc

Technology has enabled every one in large capacities eliminating the need for any partners in the production of a sale-able commodity in today's world. But there is some really cool stuff happening out there which is completely overshadowed by mainstream and popular things that we are overtly masked by. There is a rich repository of music, films, interviews, rough cuts, recordings - a lot of material yet unexplored. If only one had the time to look at the immense amount of energy put into such things, there is so much that one could do.

The digital revolution can inverse the notion of the capitalistic way in which most societies are ordered, because it empowers a seemingly insignificant entity to an unbelievable audience. It allows filtration of choice and gets you an appropriate outreach. Although this process happens subtextually, many of us are not still exposed to so much that may interest us. While this may not always get media covering, I am sure it helps these individuals their survival.

The fast changing ways in which culture mutates and creates "new" identities for peoples are regrouped through the channel of the Internet. Internet thus creates completely new societies, sometimes although virtual, through the thread of "common interest". So get there and reach out to the person/group/activity that you like doing. It's just a matter of typing vague phrases on Google and the gaps will be prompted to you by the Internet itself.

***

But I am a bit scared of the universalizing tendencies due to the medium through which such ideas route themselves and proliferate. The English language, the digital media and the computer screen (image) leave out a lot many things that are essential for the receptivity of any kind of art form. Art forms are not only rooted in their visual cultures, the way in which they are primarily mediated and projected. They are often more rooted in their places through their environmental conditions and settings. For example, the seas and storms reflect the Western Classical music forms, the bountifulness of the Bengali countryside reflects in the Rabindrasangeet, the tragedies (the theatre) echo the evolving morals of the European societies, the African masquerades are absolutely ritualistic,  the clothings of various places is a direct response to the climates people grow up in. As all such forms are channeled through the Internet - through medium of image, music and text - much is flattened, much is circulating, mixing and pairing up - not that this hasn't happened in the past. But the time over which such fusion occurs has relatively changed and hence these new formations are very shortlived. It is the time-space relationship that configures the life-span of these forms. We live in a world of moments and momentariness. We like momentary pleasures, momentary joys, momentary gossips, news, events...We consume moments for moments to pass moments. Every moment is a new moment. These moments make up momentum of an event, which to is momentary when considered in historical time.

I conclude remembering Heidegger whose philosophical thoughts summarize that one needs to ground oneself hard on the roads of the countryside to get one's foot print, an impression.

(Hence it is very laborious to define and trace the self.)

Impressions are not momentary, impressions last longer, stay firmer and require some strength and work, only to be revealed by some archaeologist of the future to be able to give meaning to our otherwise fleeting present.

Kiss

"An art professor once told me that in composition, elements should either overlap or there should be some space between them; that it produecs discomfort when things where tangential. he called this phenomenon kissing..."

John Baldessari, Kissing Series: Simone Palm Trees (Bear), 1975. 

"The basic concept was not try to destroy or be provocative to the architecture, but to melt in. As if I would kiss Taniguchi. Mmmmm." (said with closed eyes and elaborate flourish, a bright yellow down vest,. and a heavy Swiss accent).

"Behind the scenes with Pipilotti Rist, Pour Your Body out (7354 cubic Metres)"

-Kissing Architecture, Sylvia Lavin

Kissing may mirror suckling, turn into grooming, generate oral fixations , find sublimated means of expression, and even be erotic. Kissing may be self soothing and appeasing. But ultimately kissing is something you cannot do on your own. Kissing always involves the surprise of the difference of another mouth that is like yours but not yours. kissing is not a collaboration between two that aims to make one unified thing it is the intimate friction between two mediums that produces twoness --- reciprocity without identity - which opens new epistemological and formal models for redefining architecture's relation to other mediums and hence to itself.

-Kissing Architecture, Sylvia Lavin, p.54-55

Kiss

A world that has just been turned around

I told them: "I miss dirtyness - I miss the dirt around, the bottles lying, the pan masala packets, the spit, the dead mice, the crushed pigeons, the rotting flowers, the smells, the leaves, the sweat, the closeness, the density, the air, the smog, the dust, the stains, the layers of peeled posters..."

They just made faces.

I now live in a place where colourful fall leaves are blown away from the pavements using diesel operated blowers. Dried leaves are removed using small vans which blow them and collect them. Clearing off tree leaves is a cultural activity. Skeletal remains of leaves outside their houses are collected by families and pushed into large paper bags which are bought from supermarkets!Similarly, snow shoveling is also a ritualistic activity. Although every thing looks perfect all the time, I wonder how people strive towards making it more perfect. The constantly work towards clarifying the lines they have drawn on earth - including those between road and the pavement, pavement and building porch, porch and house, rooms within house...

These spaces are maps personified. Every line on the map is a real manifest. All representations of their space work towards leveling themselves out - they try to match each other to an extent where everything is real.

I simply ask - "Is this really real?" A place I imagined through greeting cards, paintings - which I always thought were only drawings, only representations! I now live in a world that was never alive to me. A strange predicament between the real and the unreal hits me.

---

All views eyes frame are photogenic
All mind is turning schizophrenic


Of notions that have turned reverse
Spaces that strongly feel averse


Searching my filthy beauty on the street
Was present right under my seat

In search of real I struggle around
A cobweb under my chair I found

Reality finally hits the ground
My world has just been turned around.

---

Ghost Photos

Random Thoughts

How do you feel when someone who you seemingly respect does not reciprocate in the same way?
Was just wondering!

Being an Alien

Most of my friends here in the US say that they were / are immediately subsumed by the Indian crowd as soon as they arrive here. The Indians take them to places, introduce them to culture, help them place gradually in this new time-space. This makes the transition a lot more comfortable - smooth.

On the other hand, they say that Yale has a very low international admittance. Statistics say it's only 8%. There is no 'Indian community' here at Yale, except the Hindu Society and the South Asian Students Association. The latter is more heavy with Koreans and Chinese. One hardly finds Indians for traditional gatherings.

But what after all is the need to meet, know and be around Indians here? At the American Alumni Association award ceremony, the Director said "try not to be around Indians, make friends from other countries - you are going there for exposure."

Having spent about two-and-a-half months here, I constantly get pulled by the two thoughts above. Where on one hand, I have the opportunity of being away from Indians and Indian culture (and being within a foreign crowd), I feel a strong pull gravitating me towards my community. I shall go towards describing what this whole phenomena is!

There are several issues that operate under above attitudes that various people promote back in India. And through my discussion with various friends here, and who have been here, I have come to realize several aspects. I shall try and enlist them one by one.

The first, which my friend Prashant (Prabhu) told me was that it makes a difference at what age you go to the US. Generally people visiting the US at the age of 22-23 do not find it so hard to mingle up and adopt to change. Those are still the years in which you are moulding your personality and have not seen the world outside the cushioned space of academics. Secondly, it makes a difference if you have been a visitor to the US before actually spending a longer time there. You have a brief exposure of the bests that can happen to you / you can experience in your formal US life.

Coming to what the life in US is: US is a land of young people. The country attracts a lot of youth and likes to invest in youth. The average age of people who drive this country would be around 25-40. This age-group, absolutely free, independent, with very little family connections, away from parents, with hardly any culture of savings, sometimes spendthrift - generate a different kind of socio-economic dynamic. Either you need to attune yourself to it at the right moment or you distinguish yourself from them if it's late!

In universities like Yale, as I said before, since most of the population is American, they get along well within themselves. They have their own circles, own things to do. For them, it does not matter whether or not they indulge in new friends from other places. They know their system, they have their priorities and they hardly have time to indulge with you. In a program like mine - an independent research program, our interactions become further rarefied. Our ages are disparate and we are only 4 of us in this program. It is hard to initiate or enter into the space of Americans. Or rather, I still do not know how. They are not as sociable as us (Indians) and I have yet not seen any American who approaches an outsider for friendship. One wonders why it has to be only us to take the first step, and constantly keep on trying hard to maintain it?

The answer is simple: We came here. We decided to leave our country and study in another. And the above process is what is called the condition of alienation. With no cultural ties to this place, a completely new social dynamic and constraints of geography and time-space, the sense of alienation is completely encompassing.

You realize that when you want to talk back home or a friend, the time zones clash. The facilities of communication clash. And since you can not afford luxury, everything becomes confined. Thus there are two forces acting towards a single condition - an externalized social space that does not absorb you and an internal constraint that restricts you and makes you realize of your limitations - both making you more and more inward.

And well, this inward reflection makes one aware of oneself. In this condition, you are your best friend and you are your worst enemy. All decisions affect you and you are under your full control. All thoughts are self generated, all moods are self controlled. It's futile to expect anything from any one. History and geography play a game.

And this is just something I wanted to write since a long time. This shall pass too.

History of Madness

If madness drags everyone into a blindness where all bearings are lost, then the madman by contrast brings everyone back to their own truth: in comedy, where everyone deceives someone else and lies to themselves, he is a comedy of the second degree, a deception that is itself deceptive.

The Ship of Fools, Hieronymous Bosch

The Cure of Folly (the Cure of Madness), Hieronymous Bosch

Mad Meg, Brueghel


The rise of madness on the Renaissance horizon is first noticeable in this decay of Gothic symbolism, as though a network of tightly ordered spiritual significations was beginning to become undone, revealing figures with meanings only perceptible as insane. Gothic forms lived on, but little by little they fell silent, ceasing to speak, to recall or instruct. The forms remained familiar, but all understanding was lost, leaving nothing but a fantastical presence; and freed from the wisdom and morality it was intended to transmit, the image began to gravitate around its own insanity.

All from Michael Foucault.

Techno-cultural Revelations & Adjustments

Technology makes so much sense here in USA. I think it is ideal for this world. I don't think USA will survive without it!

I had to adapt to a lot of technology as I came here and I am still in the process of updating myself with all the stuff that they use. In the first month, I found it extremely difficult to maintain my schedule. Since the university is a campus and classes happen all over, I was almost fed up using maps and codes for building names. Every bit of document seemed like an index. It seemed as if I was wasting more time in remembering than traveling! I was forgetting so many smaller things that needed to be taken care of and there were pockets of time which had gotten created because of the flexible nature of choice.

(This is one thing I realize as I write: In Indian system of education, you are packed with classes one after the other, and it's all structured for you. Neither do you have to think of space, nor time. You are seated in one place most of the time and the faculty is circulating. Here, every one is circulating all the time. In the system back home, I always knew that I would be engaged for half my day. So I had a fixed empty half - which I could mindlessly think of utilizing anyway. Here, since I have different pockets of time on different days, conventional time table techniques constantly failed)

I finally had to ask my colleague how she maintained her time table. One of them said that she would make a 'To Do' list every morning and follow that. Another one, was much ahead. She would use Google Calender. I have become so used to google calender now that I absolutely need to see it to know which pockets I have free. It makes sense to use them since there is internet every where, there is a computer everywhere and it just syncs with the smart phones. Thus, smart phones are used to their maximum potential. The timetable is always with me since any change is updated through wifi on campus.

Bus systems are on GPS and so I only move out when I see the bus approaching on my phone app. When you call a security shuttle, it gives you a time and arrives then. Before arriving, it gives you an automated call to be prepared out of the house near the place you specified to be picked up. Announcements about weather, storms, robberies and system crash are immediately e mailed. Basically - everything is tied up to the  internet and a strong network system.

The google calender has helped me to slot in chosen lectures, symposia, music events or any other events into my schedule. I plan my time through the google calender. It pops up a message in advance to remind you if you are forgetting any thing! It just makes you forget your distress of following up things.

But in terms of exploiting technology, I am far behind. I will have to make extra effort in order to really be up to date! Needless to say there is another side to this story. But that's not for this post!