|
The New Indians and Their Games
 Chintan Upadhyay’s latest project is titled ‘New Indians’. He explores what makes the new Indian ‘new’ and what makes him/her tick. His provocative works presented in Galerie Natalie Seroussie, Paris, have already brought a lot of critical acclamation to the artist. JohnyML visits the show and comes up with the following essay.
A few years back, when the then incumbent BJP leadership in India said ‘India Shining’, the opposition parties and the secular forces of the country took the slogan with a fair amount of scorn and contempt. When a new government under the leadership of the Congress party replaced the BJP, the slogan changed slightly; it was rephrased as ‘Incredible India!’ A ‘shining India’ glossed over the political cruelties inflicted upon a populace by the fundamentalist forces active in the country. An ‘Incredible India’ was in a way an aesthetic continuation of the same. Poetic justice of that slogan is an aspirational and inspirational band-aid fixed on the ruptures caused in the history by the previous power wielders, as historical ruptures cannot be mended by literary devices. The novel reality of India lies in somewhere between the blinding glow of a shining India and our willing suspension of disbelief to enjoy the growth of the country. Any attempt to grapple with this Indian reality by a ‘New’ Indian amounts to self-gazing, an effort to go beyond the blinding lights, to step on all ruptures and gaze into a negative mirror.
Chintan Upadhyay’s latest solo show titled ‘New Indians’ at Galerie Natalie Seroussi, Paris, conceptually deals with this ‘self-gazing’. The artist, using his works as a medium, looks into a negative mirror that reveals the unpalatable truths about one’s own self. Negative mirror is a concept proposed by Italo Calvino, through the words of Marco Polo, the traveler. When you look into a negative mirror, it shows you what you did not have and would not have. It tells you about the stark present, a temporariness which you experience intensely but negate with a longing for what you did not have and would not have. Negative mirroring tells you about your reality, a kind of inescapable now-ness and in this you reveal all those hidden forces that drive you to the past and future. Chintan’s works in his new project, ‘New Indians’ are the negative mirrors held up to the ‘new’ Indians.
Theoretical discourses on gaze generally linger around the power that ‘gaze’ can hold. Gaze is an act of aggression that strips the object of gaze of its subjectivity and individuality. Gaze of the ‘object’, which could be called counter gaze, at times can challenge the confirmed notions and belief patterns of the society. When Edouard Manet painted ‘Luncheon on the Grass’ in 1862-63 and presented in the Salon des Refuses, there was a public outcry because the gaze of the woman who looked just like any one amongst the viewers, was too strong to withstand. Her nudity and the nakedness of gaze, while sitting amongst the ‘well dressed gentlemen’ of the society, not only criticized the accepted notion of art history but also challenged the hidden ‘now-ness’ of the society. Any society that nurtures pornographic thoughts in mind and outwardly expresses another sophisticated self would be challenged if a negative mirror is held against it. Chintan’s act of holding a negative mirror on to the contemporary Indian society takes cues from the famous Impressionist’s deliberate act of defiance both in enlarging the scale of painting, which used to be reserved for the ‘grand themes’ by Neo-classical and Romantic painters and in choosing a subject so familiar to the ‘general’ public.
New Indian or in other terms, new Indian-ness is an interesting field of investigation for Chintan Upadhyay. He perceives and locates this new Indian-ness in the fast changing values resulting from the insecurities caused by the incursions of globalization. According to the artist, as his works reveal, a new Indian has deep roots in his tradition, which he obviously wants to cut off but conspicuously not able to do that. The new Indian, carrying the baggage of history (of any sort) is doubly burdened with his day to day-ness and notions of decency and sophistication. The new Indian acts in a field, which is programmed and patterned according to the demands of a changed materialistic reality. The unbearable lightness of being, as Milan Kundera puts it, is nothing but act in a programmed field while the instincts tell one to rebel. Each rebellion is contained, for the presumed social progress, and controlled by the external agencies, and the expression of rebellion either gets transcended into the realm of avarice or transforms into unquenchable greed for consumption. Concerns about societal growth, political engagement, cultural involvement etc, for a new Indian becomes areas of contained rebellion. However, according to Chintan, these containment most often (or even on a day to day basis) explodes into the production of private worlds, where the individual acts out his ‘terrible being’ in full glee and abandon.
In this project, Chintan explores this private world of the individual, which according to him is the only way of defining the ‘new’ Indian. This private world is a new republic with rules and regulations written, obeyed and even inflicted and performed by the individual citizen. Considering the social life as a realm that is perceivable to every one and open to examination at every juncture gets coalesced by the private inner life. Thanks to the pace of our social life, we often fail to notice these areas of merging, and to observe it from a different angle, these juxtapositions function as a thread that connects various individual republics with surprisingly identical rules and regulations. Chintan’s project tells the viewer about these private worlds of imagination, which proliferate like virus, making use of all the possible mediums including technology. Chintan places before us a world of rebellion, which the common man would otherwise call a world of transgression and degeneration.
Chintan’s new Indian is equipped with a gaze and a counter gaze. Or we could even say that his new Indian is simply a negative mirror, which asks for self gazing. It is interesting to notice that how two parallel mirrors bring forth a sort of multiple reflections which merge only into infinity. If we consider the private world of the new Indian as a world of rebellion, then we have in each new Indian a world that exactly looks the same and the multiplicity of these worlds takes us only to infinity. It is here, Chintan plays with the notion of ‘now-ness’ and ‘gaze’. While confronting the works, the viewer suddenly sees his own self, inscribed with graffiti; graffiti eked out either from the personal history, general history or even art history. This private rebellious world is filled with wall writings, which talks of the ‘present mind’ of the viewer, the new Indian (though, the project is presented in Paris for the first time). The ‘history’ becomes a seepage mark on to the walls of social life. And the very same history acts out as surrogates of the present bodies in social field/play.
As we have seen in the history of the Impressionists’ rebellion, it is the familiarity that makes the people aware of the power of a familiar body or gaze. In ‘New Indians’ Chintan brings a familiar body; the body of the smart alec babies. Smart Alec babies, as far as the social give and take between the artist and his viewers are concerned are familiar presences that have hosted various artistic ideas that Chintan had employed in the previous years. These babies are familiar to the public in a way that their gestures and postures can send flutters amongst the viewers. They are arrogant and smart like the new Indians and above all, they externalize an internal world, which the viewer wants to convey to the other fellow republics secretly while adhering and swearing their allegiance to the confirmed society. The graffiti or inscriptions that we see on the bodies of these babies are the images from the Indian miniature tradition. Chintan has taken special care to cull out those images that depicts various poses of sexual intercourse, from the Kamasutra illustrations in miniature mode. Obviously what the viewer sees is ‘the’ internalized and suppressed world of his own self; a never ending indulgence in sexual revelry.
The relevant question that arises here is this; why does the artist choose ‘sex’ as a tool in order to exemplify the ‘now-ness’ of the new Indian? Hasn’t the new Indian got any other things to indulge in? Studies have revealed that the male folk all over the world think about sex every other passing minute as the female folk world over think about shopping or other ways of sensual gratification. Though it is a generalized statement, the fact is that sexual satiation and other forms of consumption are intricately connected. Violence and gluttony are the ultimate forms of gratifying one’s demand for sensual pleasures. As the extremity of love leads into the destruction (even through preservation) of the object of love, extremity of sensual gratification either leads into voracious consumption/indulgence (of/in anything) or over indulgence with sex. Eros is one of the greatest driving forces that makes the men tick. In a globalized scenario, violence is transcended into consumption and sex. The new Indian is no different in this regard.
Traditional roots that one wants to discard but unable to do so take a visual form in Kamasutra illustrations employed by Chintan on to his smart Alec babies. This historical burden, though transcended into the realm of art, finds its crass expressions in the real and virtual world simulations of sexual act. It is here Chintan comes out with his provocative but critical observations on the private republics created by the individual citizens. When stripped off of all modes of rebellion, the individual citizen finds or invents newer modes in the socially accepted things. SMS, MMS, YouTube, all those websites that provide sexual materials, films, magazines, video games, jokes, emails and anything that connects the individual citizen to his counterparts elsewhere, in this context, become a potential tool for inscribing the rules and regulations of the private republics. The very same mediums become the carriers of these rules and regulations, negating and at times over writing the regulations of the legal republic/state.
Chintan would like to call this mode of rebellion or this mode of being a ‘new’ Indian, an act of piracy and DJ-ing. The new Indian establishes his identity through pirating the available. To go beyond the social laws and to establish the self-republic, one has to resort to pirate the ‘givens’ and interestingly, for the ‘new’ Indian what the most available thing that comparatively attractive to all is the private videos transmitted through various modes of communication including sexually explicit MMS clippings. These clippings mostly passed from one to the other by mobile phones break down the distinction between the dichotomies like private/public, permissive/restricted, sophisticated/uncouth, raw/cooked, nature/culture, sacred/profane etc. What once considered sacred and private, suddenly becomes public and profane while collapsing all the notions of privacy and secrecy. These clippings move faster and wider as each citizen who receives such clippings feels and urgency to share it with a fellow citizen, interestingly, with an intention to keep his own identity as a secret. At certain levels, some secrete exchanges between two sharing individuals spill over to the public realm and in turn get pirated and manipulated in further exchanges.
Breaching a private code is a virtual form of violence. And if you notice, sexual privacy is one of the private codes that is breached at every other moment. Hence, violence and sex become the defining characteristics of the ‘new’ Indian who indulge in this activity of sharing and manipulating. The act of piracy becomes a private rebellion of its own merit and sharing becomes a sort of connecting to the other republics. Chintan establishes this identity of the ‘new’ Indian as a private rebel/a pirate/ a DJ, through his video titled ‘New Indian Porn’.
‘New Indian Porn’ is a collection of sexually explicit MMS clippings exchanged between the individuals in contemporary India. The artist, in the credit lines says that the actors are the ‘ordinary Indians’. These clippings that are ‘pirated’ and DJ-yed by the artist, show how the private lives are spilled over into the public. Interestingly, any one can notice that these clippings feature people from all the walks of Indian life. You find a teenager giving the head to her boy friend who hold his mobile camera on at her act, you see a decent gentle man doing the same to a young call girl invited to the hotel room, a daring prostitute exposes herself to the camera willingly, an aunty changing her clothes while coyly looking at the camera trained at her, a truck driver visiting a prostitute, a man in his saffron clothes fornicating a call girl who desperately wants to cover her face, a shadow like man doing the act with a ‘real doll’ etc are looped in the video.
I would like to emphasize how these clippings become the tools of piracy and rebellion. The teenager who gives a blowjob to her boyfriend does it willingly and in camera. But she does not want it to be sent out to the public. It is a private moment of sharing but soon to be breached and exploded into the public realm. Should we call it an act of rebellion or breach of trust? For me, any rebellion involves a fair amount of breach of trust. It is not in keeping the privacy that the young man finds his pleasure but he gets it when he sends it out to his friends knowing well that it is going to go all over the places. The man in saffron emblematically stands for the right wing fundamentalists in ‘new’ India, who censor anything that is offensive to the Indian culture. This clipping reveals to what extent the double speak of the saffron brigade can go. The man who plays with the real doll is could be the artist himself. However, the surrogate presence of the artist as one of the ‘new’ Indians is interesting as he represents another community within who wants to share their private fantasies and ways of gratifying it though the new modes of communication.
The cross section of the ‘new’ Indians as we see it in Chintan’s video tells us one more thing that it is not a degenerated section of the society that dwells in all kinds of dungeon activities. It is the ‘new’ Indian with his suppressed desires does all these. He is in a dilemma; whether to suppress or to rebel. The post capitalist and late capitalist economics of the new world order (of a globalized world) has rendered even the ‘new’ Indian devoid of all devices of rebellion. Hence, one has to depend on what is intensely private and the publicizing of the private world (of one’s own and of others) becomes the most potential rebellious act, knowingly or unknowingly. The ‘new’ Indian is a rebel, a pirate and a DJ- all in an unknown dilemma.
I would like to go back to the notion of gaze in the Kamasutra miniatures as depicted on the smart alec babies and the postures and positions adopted by the ‘ordinary Indians’ in the MMS clippings. As all we know, though the sage Vastsyayan (who codified the sexual postures and behaviours in his most popular text Kamasutra) details sixty postures for sexual intercourse, only trained acrobats could emulate all those postures. Humanely possible postures in sex are limited and all over the world people practice it without studying sage Vatsyayan. Hence, there is an interesting correspondence between the images depicted on the smart alec babies (both in painting and sculptures) and the postures preferred by the ‘ordinary Indians’ in the MMS clippings. This mutual correspondence is fascinating as if they were proving the findings of the sage correct and to the point. The artist does obviously make this comparison possible by choosing only those postures that are identical both in Kamasutra and the MMS clippings.
Whose is this gaze that makes us disturbed first and enthused later? Primarily, it is the gaze of the artist at the ‘new-ness’ and ‘now-ness’ of the ‘new’ Indian. Secondly, all those babies are possessed with a gaze. They are ordinary and familiar, and are possessed with this gaze to look back at you. They reveal their body for your gaze and you witness your ‘now-ness’. When we come to the intricate drawings on the bodies of the smart alec babies, we see each sexual act depicted between the nayak and nayika (king and courtesan) is witness by a maid servant who is there to fan the ‘engaged’, ‘activated’, ‘released’ and ‘tired’ couple. They stand there with fans in hands and eyes focused on the couple in conjugation. She is the actual witness and she has the gaze. The eyes of the couples are either mutually locked or averted to something else.
If we go by the myth, Vatsyayan was such a sage that he did not want to breach the vow of celibacy. He did not even want to see a couple in conjugal bliss. It is said that, he made his disciple to stand on his shoulders and peep into the bed chamber of the couple and report him about the proceedings in there. So what we have in the Kamasutra text is the gaze of a sage channeled through the gaze of the disciple who even might have obviously reported about the gaze of the fanning made who had seen everything without any bar.
Who has got the fanning maid’s gaze in the MMS clippings? I would say, it is the camera that records all those private moments got the gaze in these. The camera becomes the fanning maid in Chintan’s articulation of ‘new’ Indians. The gaze of the camera is further channeled into various modes of communication till we get to see it in our own mobiles or emails. This shared gaze of the fanning maid and camera is what locates the ‘now-ness’ of the new Indians. The gaze of these is so ordinary and familiar, but when placed in a context they disturb us to thoughts. Chintan is an Impressionist of post-global scenario. His ‘New Indians’ are the gentlemen who go to Grass to eat a lunch with camera, mobile phone and all those gadgets make them feel good, new and now.
|
