March '23
The era of remixes and artistry through curation is in full swing- it passes us by like tiny fishes do, when we immerse our fingers in a gentle stream of water. A myriad of thinkers, from the West and East have understood the importance of collage-making, putting one around another- because -once the colonial thought was finally challenged, a task emerged at hand- the task to replace the singular canonised approach of archiving and classifying history, art and philosophy to one that was inclusive, non-hierarchical and yet distinguished material based on some criteria and quality.
The structure had to be reimagined with more space, dimensions and an openness that was oppressed under the rigidity of an unmoving sort. Cinema halls intervened our lives and made it acceptable and even rewarding to sit in the darkness for 2-3 hours straight and share a show of visuals, sound and story with a group of strangers.
Now, as the digital sends us to customised dark holes online, where we spend most of our time and energy- especially since the unprecedented disruption with Covid-19, artists are forced to reimagine the ways they approach their practice, especially cinema. With processing times being significantly reduced in the digital era, the more time one spends making a movie, the guiltier they feel- especially independent filmmakers.
But really, what are we heading to? Once an idea is executed, what is next?
As conscious residents of Mark Fisher and Zizek’s late-stage capitalism, the description of which can be explained with a simple example of a ceiling fan- we are rotating so fast, we appear to be unmoving— we have to address the lack of newness in the arts of 21st century.
As Fisher says in his lecture, ‘The Slow Cancellation of the Future”, “21st century is 20th century distributed through high speed internet.”
What does the word ‘art’ evoke in us now?
Is it images, paintings, sound or vessels? Is it poetry or a leaf moving in the current?
To start a conversation about art is to activate one’s invisible exoskeleton of likes and dislikes that has been formed keeping in mind the emulsions of emotion that was experienced when consuming it.
Most conversations occur inside the heads- although words escape through the vocal cords and lips make an effort to aid their movement, the moving image inside the two conversing heads may disturb the registering of what has actually sufficed, eluding both the humans involved.
These flashing images, though often interpreted as they are, resemble the noisy trains at a railway station. They are a filter to help one remember what has occurred rather than the image itself.
Quite like Llewyn Davis struggling to hear the voice on the other side of the payphone when a train arrives - we must strain our attention at what requires it, not necessarily what demands it.
It is a reference track, knitting itself in the fabric of real so we don’t miss out on our own selves being present, the inability of us to get out of this body and keep ourselves in the equation when recalling or thinking.
A chair has been moved in my neighbour’s house. It takes me away from the structure of thought. The night has grown on the small city, hardly anyone awake at this hour.
Art is closer to the flow of water. It is not absolute but that does not mean it is not distinguished. Flow of water is not water, or ice, or vapour. It is simply the flow of water.
There is a massive difference between ‘easy’ and ‘simple’. Most thinkers, artists and filmmakers I look up too are not spectacle based and don’t produce works of grand gesture- but simply convey an idea, an emotion, a concept in a very well thought of manner, executed with their eyes completely open- be it Rajula Shah’s documentaries, PS Vinothraaj’s fiction debut Pebbles, Madushree Dutta’s video scribbles or Deleuze’s criticism of Oedipus that addresses the grave mistake Freud made of having his patients sit in a chair when they could just take a walk and break his own theories- all of them are precise and very, very simple.
While easy executions have a sloppiness to them, simple ones distinguish themselves from such works. In the Global bazaar where one can buy anything and everything- it is still hard, I found, to get and work with analog cameras and devices.
In her book Analog (part of KEYwording series by Madushree Duta and Ines Schaber), Rajula Shah puts it poignantly-
“Analog will prefer to grow even if it means that it must subsequently grow weaker and die out when the signal to sound ratio is turned on its head.”
Though she refers to the analog signal and not the form, is it possible to say the same about it as the use of analog machines diminishes, and we move away from it for ‘easy’ executions?
Is it possible that digital is not better than analog but just different from it? Are we inclusive enough to include what does not necessarily include us?
We have had innovative work arise from digital as well as analog, and here we stand at the furthest juncture humans have ever found themselves in, trying to make sense of Newton’s laws that refuse to apply the moment we take our feet off the ground and Einstein's theories that only make sense while up in the air. Quite like analog and digital, the dialectics we have been dealing with demand a unique synthesis for the 21st century.
If I take someone else’s exact place by standing on the impression of their shoes on the ground, the movement I make to reach that place, the change in sun position, the change in the wind’s rhythms- all will be taken into account and I would have just made a movement in regard to me, and not the other person.
The layer of skin between me and the outside world gives way to a distance that we often forget to keep in context when executing an idea. There are organs, spaces, bones, muscles and skin between myself and the outside and I must keep it in my ideas and their fruition.
Movement is not three still images. It is them and the spaces in between them.
Everything on earth
is
reducible
to an atom,
barring
Movement.
According to Fredric Jameson, we live in the times of great curators and not great artists.
I’ll take a step further and say, being an artist has always been about being a great curator-critic, and it is in 21st century that this process stands stark naked in front of those who consume art- for they are not mere spectators anymore but participant in the work being presented to them.
It’s demanded of them to be worldly, to crawl outside their body and meet the creators halfway. With the accessibility to visuals around the world, the processes of the most mainstream and the most obscure are readily available to everyone- those in search..
Of course an artist fabricates, quite like a scientist does.
It is impossible to invent in line with where we are positioned in the infinity of the universe if one is not curating and discovering artifacts of what has been & what is, everyday.
Artists of this era are ones with transparent skins, there are no magic tricks— not ones that cannot be understood and have their mechanics hidden, anyway.
The peculiar mix of self-doubt and narcissism we feed on excessively everyday through our phones tends to avert our gaze from the world, and keeps it constantly on ourselves.
While an old handycam picked off of an instagram seller gets its tape stuck at times, it keeps me busy in it instead of myself. The outward movement of analog and the inward movement of digital where a part of my mind and body play the circuit- many possibilities of opening up arise- more than I had ever felt unravel in front of me.
Artificial intelligence researchers are not sure if AI has a bias towards humans, because we feed them all the data, or if it is biased towards itself because it is, in fact, itself.
Unlike for us, its creator actually exists in a physical form- with evidence.
Will it be fair to compare our push and pull with God to be the same as AI’s with us?
Is there a future that’s not been thought of, but been worked towards- in our current state of universal disinterest in the image of it?
The analog signals from the Hi8 tape paste themselves in the smoothness of a pen drive, to be further uploaded into the cloud.
The video file has been through a few movements.
And so have we, as we step into the now.
Oshee
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