In collaboration with Independent Curators International (ICI), New York
Supported by Sir J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai

December 12 to 14, 2011 | 9:30 am to 5:30 pm
Sir J.J. School of Art and Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

The Mumbai Curatorial Intensive, developed and implemented by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York, will be offered in Mumbai (India) in collaboration with the Mohile Parikh Center (MPC), Mumbai.

This three-day event is a forum on curatorial practice focused on contemporary art and geared towards the emerging professional curator. The program is for 15 individuals who have been selected by ICI and MPC through an application process. The purpose of the program is for the participants to receive an introduction to curatorial practice in the field of contemporary art, and to set up a foundation for future curatorial work. Through the program, participants will engage with current curatorial thinking in a critical environment that provides an international context for understanding contemporary art and exhibition-making today.

The program will consist of two days of seminars during which the selected participants will attend closed-door lectures and discussions with experienced curators from ICI, and other prominent professional curators invited from Asia and Europe. On the third day, a public forum of two panel discussions will be held, featuring professional curators from Asia, Europe, and North America, who will give talks on pressing curatorial issues.

This event develops directly out of the successful prior collaboration, “What Is Curating?” an intensive hands-on series of workshops organized by ICI and MPC in December 2010. These events bridge a gap—because as of yet, no formal long-term academic training programs exist for this field in India, where the contemporary art scene is highly active.

February 13 to 15, 2006 | 10.00 am to 6.00 pm
Godrej Dance Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

Concept Note | Prashant Parikh

The contemporary visual arts today literally span the entire globe and for the first time perhaps have begun to address global themes (or themes of global import) rooted in local forms. This conference takes this exciting development as a starting point to see what artists and others in the present-day art world have to say about one of the central concerns of the planet today: how multiple cultures in a globalizing world can coexist.

There are two levels at which the theme of the conference can be stated.

The first simply is to attempt to address how people from different cultures and with different values both within a country and across countries can coexist and live together peacefully and productively. There are very many definitions of “culture,” especially by anthropologists; I mean simply the set of practices that make up the life of a more or less “homogeneous” group of people in a society: these practices include the group’s entire life activities, but I want to emphasize those aspects that take on an institutional form, whether economic, political, religious, or social. Today, as perhaps always, both collaboration and conflict are present in large measure; one essential difference from the past may be that of scale. So the theme of the conference, a little more pointedly expressed, is: how can groups with potentially incompatible values live together productively? How does our contemporary visual art reflect this aspect of the human condition today?

At the second level, I will try to state the theme in slightly more conceptual terms that may also be a little more specific. While the societies that make up the world today form a complex system, it does not seem too far off the mark to say that their dominant aspect is that they are largely liberal, democratic, and capitalist. While other forms, like communist or theocratic states and military dictatorships, also no doubt exist, it does not seem inaccurate to say that the dominant characteristics of the world system have been shaped by the former attributes.

Conceptually, this was the outcome of the modern liberal tradition in political and economic thought in the West, starting perhaps with the writings of Hobbes, and going on to Locke and Rousseau and John Stuart Mill, not to mention Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Marx. This tradition has continued to this day, most recently in the work of Kenneth Arrow, John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, Robert Nozick, and Amartya Sen. It is largely to this body of political philosophy and its elaborations in economics and law that our world owes the institutions that constitute our liberal constitutional democracies and our modern way of life. It has given the world, most centrally, the freedoms we enjoy, at least in theory, secularism, at least partially, growing prosperity for many, at least in principle, and in many countries, a safety net in the form of a social security system. Whatever its imperfections, and there are many, it does appear to be the most successful form of society known to man through history, even though some would argue that it was colonialism that made it possible.

There is, however, an important gap in this tradition, though there are of course isolated instances of such work (most notably, Kant), especially in our times. There is no formulation of a framework for how multiple sovereign states must comport themselves in a just order. We have a framework for a single state and its civil society, but there is no posing of the problem of what order a system of multiple states and their constituent civil societies might form to create the same freedoms, growing prosperity, and a safety net for all the states in the system, while maintaining the relative independence of each state. We can see what may be the uncertain beginnings of such a development in the growing body of international law and the international human rights movement. However, these developments are relatively ad hoc, with none of the theoretical vision and ambition that we find in the liberal tradition.

Not only this, while this tradition seemed to solve the problem of a single state and its civil society, it appeared largely to assume the existence of a homogeneous culture. In our times, this abstraction has been questioned, and it now appears that one central problem of the times is how different cultures can be accommodated both within and across countries in ways that permit peaceful and productive coexistence.

I have started with the vantage point of the modern liberal tradition as I believe it is that framework that has largely shaped the dominant aspects of the world as it is today; however, there are other traditions certainly that have shaped many parts of the world that are often quite different from and even at odds with this tradition. These other traditions and ideologies offer different ways to conceptualize these issues.

One alternative is the radical leftist view that sees the central problems of the world today, including the ones mentioned here, as stemming from and ultimately traceable to the logic of global capitalism. One key idea underlying many articulations of this tradition is the classical distinction, given a particular reading by Hegel and Marx, between “essence” and “appearance;” another is the idea of ”contradiction.” Many thinkers, too numerous to mention here, have contributed to this tradition in the twentieth century, perhaps Adorno and Horkheimer, and Walter Benjamin, and Marcuse most notably in the realm of culture. The great strength of this tradition is that it has offered some of the most vigilant critiques of inequities in contemporary societies and of anti-democratic practices. However, some would argue that it has also itself led to totalitarianisms of various kinds.

This vantage point also has much to commend it, and it could equally serve as a point of departure for us; indeed the over-simplified picture presented here obscures the many overlaps and also sharp differences between the two traditions. Just as there are significant gaps in the liberal tradition, so there are significant gaps in the radical leftist tradition. The ideas of culture generally, and more particularly, of the interrelationships between cultures, have always posed a problem for this largely Marxian tradition. Another issue for this viewpoint is of a methodological kind: do we really understand the logic of contemporary capitalism (e.g. the idea of contradiction) well enough so that when we use it in our explanations we are being adequately rigorous?

Of course, these stances do not by any means exhaust the options available today, but they are amongst the more commonly available traditions. Another broad outlook is provided by the conservative vantage point, also with many overlaps and differences with the two traditions described above. Again, there are many thinkers who have contributed to this strand, both in the West and the non-West, notable recent Western examples being Michael Oakeshott and Friedrich Hayek. Contemporary conservatives often draw upon many of the same early modern thinkers mentioned above. One typical strength of this tradition is its strong defense of individual rights and freedoms; one typical weakness is its relatively poor understanding of the social and cultural dimension of society. Samuel Huntington, in his widely read recent book, sketches multiple models of contemporary world reality, perhaps none of them fully persuasive, including his own preferred civilizational one, but they may also serve as a point of departure for reflection on the themes of the conference. His view is often characterized as a conservative one and serves as one more example of the broadly conservative standpoint.

It will be seen that all three orientations, as also others I have not considered, have problems with an adequate theoretical consideration of “culture” and cultural conflicts. As we know, this is a moment in our collective global history that rouses strong passions from a variety of standpoints. It is also possible that many will find the way I have framed the theme of the conference objectionable. But this incompatibility of frameworks and visions is precisely part of the problem we hope to address. How do we admit and accommodate other worldviews in ways that respect rational argument and genuinely democratic processes? The only other alternatives appear to be either the exercise of raw power or anarchic relativism, whether in the world at large or even in microcosms like our conference.

Thus, once again, the theme for the conference is: how do multiple states share the space of the planet without conflict and without losing their relative independence? How can multiple cultures both within and across countries live together peacefully and productively? And finally, how does contemporary visual art deal with these themes? I hope it is clear that these may well be common goals and concerns, whether we approach them from a conservative, liberal, or radical standpoint.

These are two ways of delineating the same problem and it is this problem that our speakers and artists will address in the conference. Anything that leads to better understanding even if no actual “solution” is offered is fair game. We urge participants to think imaginatively and speak frankly. It is our belief that the only starting point for such problems, as far as the conference is concerned, is through language and dialogue, perhaps the central elements of all cultures: we must solve problems of culture with the tools of culture. We do not require that speakers and artists represent their part of the world even though we have tried to bring people from many diverse cultural and intellectual traditions together.

The precise role of the visual arts vis-à-vis these themes may appear tenuously defined, but it has been left so deliberately so as to not foreclose the options and strategies our presenters may adopt. How does the art world approach such issues? Do artists, critics, and art historians produce works and ideas that relate to these themes? How do curators and museums tackle them? Can artworks help to bring out aspects of these problems in ways that other disciplines cannot? Can they offer insights that point to solutions? While the framework I have sketched is a broadly philosophical one that may not appear to connect directly with the visual arts, it should be seen more as a setting for reflection along the lines of each presenter’s discipline and activity. Some may prefer to speak directly using the language of the framework; others may adopt less direct or entirely different approaches.

The plan is to bring twelve speakers – critics, art historians, philosophers, political thinkers etc. – together with seven visual artists from as many different parts of the world as possible to create a conference where the problems of multiple cultures in a globalizing world are directly or indirectly addressed. We will also assemble as many as fifty conference attendees from Indian cities other than Mumbai and about sixty invitees from Mumbai, all from the art world of India. Thus, there will be over a hundred invited participants.

Such a large theme may seem too ambitious to some, and perhaps it is so. The hope is, however, that our participants will rise to the challenge and not only present insightful analyses but also constructive solutions to some of the problems we face today.

January 26 to 28, 2004 | 10.00 am to 6.00 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

Concept Note: Arindam Dutta and Prashant Parikh

“What is wrong with this picture?” – the phrase belongs to a genre of children’s puzzle, where the reader is asked to distinguish the differences between two seemingly similar caricatures or portraits. The question also accompanies a particularly paranoiac tableau in the Hollywood espionage film, where neophyte CIA agents are asked to sift out the anomalous (therefore threatening) elements in an otherwise normal environment. The question – and its implied structure of the normative and the anomalous – replicates itself in a slew of other contexts: MRI scans, X-rays, surveillance cameras, genomes, and advertising. In each, different modes of information are translated into the visual as the primary mode of discernment.

Critical enquiry has only recently begun to concentrate its attention on the centrality of the “visual” in a host of fields other than art. The burgeoning of para-disciplinary programs such as Visual Studies, Visual Culture, Media Studies on the one hand, and the slow but steady invasion of the older disciplines by a new emphasis on the visual, have provoked a greater interest in the centrality of vision in framing different forms of theory and practice. Even scientific research has begun to acknowledge the fundamentally “artistic” and representational framework of representation through which it carries out research.

This conference examines this new indeterminate territory of Visual Studies. Twelve scholars and artists with disparate international backgrounds in film studies, political science, art history, media studies, language and literature, architecture, history will present work both on current practices of and on the visual as a critical element of cultural politics. Papers and projects will look at how different constructs or “codings” of the visual inhere in different dispensations of power, both local and global.

The conference also seeks to initiate discussion on the disciplinary potentials and parameters of these new and older disciplines, and the prospects of practice and research in the future.

January 28 to 29, 2003 | 10.00 am to 6.00 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

Concept Note: Prashant Parikh

Everyone has a worldview. Typically, this is a more or less articulate, more or less structured, more or less abstract, more or less informed view of small segments of the world. The world as a whole is far too complex and humankind in the twentieth century has produced far too much knowledge for any single person to have a detailed and comprehensive grasp of it. Yet it is in this insuperable context that we have to form a vision of the world if we are to act intelligently and effectively in it.

There are many ways to tackle the challenge of forming a vision of the world. One route is to develop general insights into aspects of the world. Each field, based on its ideas, its materials, and its practices, affords a cluster of intuitions about the field itself, but also a way of approaching the world beyond its horizons. Art is no different and it is its unique constellation of insights and perceptions that we are after here.

One obvious way to uncover these ideas is to ask artists and critics directly. We will investigate the worldviews of artists in this conference. To elicit these worldviews, we will organize each conversation around a set of questions. The questions sometimes overlap, but they approach the same issue from different vantage points.

Questions:

1. What, according to you, is art? What is the place of art in the world? Does this role change with time or does it remain the same? How do your answers relate to Indian art? To art today? To your own work?

2. What made you decide to be an artist? What are its satisfactions? Its problems?

3. How do you arrive at a decision about what artwork to make? Its formal aspects? Its content? The process you will use? The context you will relate your artwork to?

4. What role does nature play in your art? How do you think of nature?

5. How do you see the relation between art and reason? Art and emotion? Art and philosophy? Art and science? Art and society? Art and politics? Art and commerce? How does your own work relate to these things?

6. How does your art relate to reality?

7. What is your conception of modernity? In the world? In India? How do you see the relation between art and modernity? Indian art and modernity? Your own work and modernity?

8. What do you see as the relation between “high” and “low” art? How do you see its course historically? What do you think the relation is today? In India? In the world? What do you think of the rise of visual culture/visual studies departments and journals?

9. What art of the twentieth century do you think will remain in the public consciousness at the end of the twenty-first century? Why? What do you see as the emerging trends in contemporary art in India? In the world?

10. What, according to you, are the three most pressing problems facing India today?

11. What, according to you, are the three most pressing problems in the world today?

12. What, according to you, are the three most pressing problems in the artworld today? In India? In the world?

13. What type of art criticism do you like? Why?

14. Who are some of your favorite artists? Why? How do they affect your art?

15. Who are some of your favorite writers of fiction and nonfiction? How do they affect your art?

16. Are there activities other than art that you pursue? How does this affect your art?

17. Can you identify a single unified way you adopt to view the world?

January 29 to 30, 2002 | 10.00 am to 6.00 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

Concept Note: Prashant Parikh

I considered two ways of approaching this topic: one a formal laying out of the “space” of art writing, specifying a large subset of its components, maintaining as neutral a stance as possible; the second a substantive position on art writing that may serve as a starting point for our deliberations. I have settled on some combination of the two and I hope it both maps out some of the terrain and also stimulates others to alternative articulations or refinements of the orientation outlined below.

I will start by noting the large and old split that has existed between “art” and “science” or, put differently, between the humanities and the sciences, or yet again, between “culture” and “nature.” These, and other related distinctions, are all not quite the same, but they suggest to some the presence of two qualitatively different realities that constitute our world, requiring a corresponding qualitative difference in method and approach. Perhaps the phenomenological movement starting with Brentano and Husserl and Heidegger, and currently represented by Habermas and Derrida, is the most sustained attempt in the twentieth century to come to grips with this assumed duality directly.

Against the basic spirit of this movement, I want to counterpoise the other main method, the “analytic method,” which has proceeded by very different strategies and tactics deployed through a quite different sociology, that might be characterized most generally by the assertion that there is only one type of reality and all of it must be approached by the same broad type of method and outlook, allowing, of course, for many variations of actual “technique” for the many sub-domains of this single reality. By “analysis,” I mean of course something wider than philosophical analysis.

Both approaches, loosely called phenomenological and analytic, recognize at least one empirical fact, which is the enormous success of the sciences, quite unparalleled in any other domain of knowledge, though their interpretation of this success is usually quite different. The simple picture I have drawn is just for heuristic purposes and there are not of course two monolithic mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive “blocks” of methods and movements opposed to each other.

I want to suggest, perhaps somewhat provocatively, that the analytic method is the correct way to investigate and represent and communicate reality, and that art too is best served by this approach; when we write about art, which writing is a way of investigating and representing and communicating a domain, we should write “analytically.” I put this last word in quotes because I know of no simple way of characterizing what I mean by this. I do not mean, of course, that our writing should be devoid of judgments, values, emotions, and the use of our sensibilities and tastes and subjective experiences.

I turn now to the five sub-topics; the first day is about texts, the second about their place in the world.

To start with, something about the elements of the space of writing: we have art journalism, art history, art criticism, art theory, art philosophy and, in a somewhat separate category, literary writing. These cover, I think, the full range of contemporary types of writing on art. These could be further elaborated thus:

1. Art journalism typically covers exhibitions and other events and usually involves description and evaluation. Example: A statement that x represents y.
2. Art history and art criticism are about individual works, artists, groups of artists, movements, or entire periods, and usually involve some mix of description and argument, (though my sense is that in India, much criticism overlaps with art journalism and takes on its forms, namely description and evaluation with little argument). I include in this category the notes prepared by curators as well. Example: A statement about how and why x represents y. (e.g. Rosalind Krauss on Picasso)
3. Art theory is that heterogeneous body of works that are about theoretical constructs, where “theoretical” is construed widely to include both normative and descriptive elements. This type of writing is almost exclusively in the form of argument, though there are, I suppose, texts like manifestos which are a mixture of argument and hortatory components. Example: A statement about the larger social context of x’s representation of y or about how representation in general works in a certain social context. (e.g. Barthes in “Mythologies”)
4. Art philosophy (more commonly, philosophy of art) is almost exclusively about concepts and conceptual problems relating to art and is always in the form of argument. Example: A statement giving a definition of the concept of representation. (e.g. Goodman on representation)
5. “Literary” writing, which stands apart from the categories above, typically takes some aspect of art as a point of departure for either expressive purposes or for reflection. I include in this category also the writings of artists themselves when they write about their art. Its forms are many and varied, ranging from poetry to “imaginative” essays and involve a wider range of rhetorical devices. I exclude this last category from my suggestion above to write about art analytically, though there are many examples of analytic literary writing.

This might serve as a starting point for our laying out of the space of writing and its forms, which are usually either articles or essays and involve either description and evaluation or argument. Besides coming up with categories I may have missed, we could make finer subdivisions, so we get a map of this space.

Second, the role of knowledge: I’m using the word in a broad sense to include not just concepts and theories of art, but also tastes, sensibilities, practices of looking and observing – all kinds of “tacit” knowledge as well. The thing to examine and discuss here is how we come to read what we do or acquire the sensibilities that we do. My sense is that most art writers in India read writing of the phenomenological kind, though I want to repeat that there is no easy way to characterize writing as being of one kind or another. Why is this? Again, my sense is that this choice is based on perceived ideological affinities and partly, of course, just on peer pressure. This is a sweeping statement, but I offer it as a starting point. As far as sensibilities go, this is a much larger issue that I leave completely open for discussion.

The issue of clarity: I’m all for it, despite all that Adorno has said in favor of difficulty and obscurity. To be provocative again, I think much phenomenological writing often masks somewhat simple thoughts in convoluted language; analytic writing tries to simplify ideas that are sometimes complex. This is not, of course, to say that we don’t need technical terms in art as we do in the sciences.

This brings us to the second day, where we move from texts to the embedding world.

On writers and readers, I want to start with the truism that art writers write for the artworld (a technical term in need of greater definition) more than for the general public. One would have to map out for each category of writing its corresponding market. What are the goals for each kind of writing? For example, how much does art criticism function as advertising within an art market? I’m suggesting that we treat art writing as a kind of “abstract commodity” that circulates within a market framed by the artworld and the larger world. How does it function? What is its economics and sociology? This requires that we step outside the contents we looked at on the first day and examine the “social space of interpretations.” What happens to an interpretation once it becomes public?

This takes us naturally to the last topic – the larger context, made up of the context of ideas and the context of social institutions. Regarding ideas, I’m reminded of the ancient Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times!” We live in fascinating times, where the fault lines dividing disciplines are shifting and dissolving in slow but definite ways. There is far greater borrowing of models and methods, of ideas and metaphors from one another, and this will undoubtedly result in the forging of new paradigms for knowledge. I will leave open the issue of the institutional context.

I want to consider two further substantive suggestions: one, that much art writing is implicitly information-theoretic. If this were to be made explicit and writers were to consciously adopt an information-theoretic stance, art discourse would benefit immensely. The information theory I’m advocating is not just the old quantitative communication theory of Claude Shannon, but rather a new, as yet nascent, development coming out of the cognitive sciences that is both qualitative and quantitative.

In any case, this perspective is far from absent in art. Gombrich, amongst others, is very conscious of the information content of aesthetic representations. The basic idea is relatively simple to express: write about an artwork as if it were a field of “information” with logical relations of various kinds amongst its components; consider the artist and the viewer both as part of this field, consider also the larger context of the artwork as part of the field – none of this is to be left out, but rather treated informationally, no differently in principle from someone extracting information from a computer database or, more to the point, from investigating how and why the apple fell on Newton’s head.

The second substantive suggestion is that many of the insights of phenomenological writing be examined by recasting them in analytic terms. This would force writers to think through their claims with a rigor and clarity that is missing in much phenomenological writing. It would reduce needless obfuscation, and weak arguments could be strengthened or the conclusions simply discarded. For example, Derrida in “The Truth of Painting” discusses the debate between Meyer Schapiro and Heidegger on the matter of van Gogh’s shoes, part of whose argument (if he can be interpreted as offering an argument at all in that piece) can be recast in analytical terms thus: Heidegger claims that van Gogh’s painting was about a pair of country shoes (call this proposition p), Schapiro claims that the painting was really about a pair of city shoes (call this proposition q), and Derrida asks if it was really about a pair of shoes at all (call this proposition r) thereby purportedly undermining the distinction between p and q (or pair of country shoes/pair of city shoes). When expressed thus, the logic of Derrida’s argument becomes clearer and can in fact shown to be valid if Derrida is right that the painting does not depict a pair, by expressing p, q, and r in terms of their component parts. Indeed, this is a common type of argument structure, going back at least to Socrates (e.g. p could be expressed thus in a “first-order language”: “about (painting, a) and pair (a) and country (a)” where ‘a’ stands for the two shoes in the painting. Since the middle conjunct “pair (a)” is false if Derrida is right, the entire sentence is false. Similarly, q is also false. Since both p and q are false, the distinction between the two and the debate between Heidegger and Schapiro is undermined, if Derrida is right that the shoes do not form a pair. Of course, this is what Derrida would like us to think, that the debate is undermined. But both Heidegger and Schapiro could come back by saying that the shoes forming a pair is not germane to their debate and that what they are really asserting is “about (painting, a) and country (a)” and “about (painting, a) and city (a)” respectively. Many of Derrida’s moves are inconclusive in just this way.). A further advantage beyond clarity of extracting the argument form from the argument is that the form can be reused in other contexts more easily. (Note: I should say here that it doesn’t matter if I have read Derrida correctly or not – whatever that might mean in Derrida’s own ludic terms – my point is that such analytic recasting can be of immense value.)

To close then, what I suggest we do over the two days of the symposium is to create a map of the terrain of writing about art. The exercise is a “meta-level” one: it is not only to articulate one position or other, though this is part of it; it is also to identify alternative orientations for each of the sub-topics. For example, within the phenomenological method I have cited above, we could point to Husserl’s reductions, Heidegger’s “thought,” Adorno’s negative dialectics, Habermas’s ideal speech situation, Derrida’s deconstuction; all these are ways of treating the world dualistically, restricting the empirical analytic sciences to some narrower sub-domain. My suggestion is that while we are of course free to espouse our own positions, we also adopt a partly neutral stance that enables us to identify and describe other positions. In a word, our goal is to have at the end a conceptual geography, a map, of the space of writing.

January 13 to 14, 2000 | 10.00 am to 6.00 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

Concept Note: Avani Parikh and Prashant Parikh

We have invited ten “critic-curators” and “artist-curators” who have emerged over the last decade to participate in “imagining the future” of Indian art. The exercise is essentially a curatorial one where the speakers will creatively construct a future scenario and “history” for Indian art in the next century. Typically, a curator takes existing objects and places them in a physical and conceptual setting. In part, speakers will do precisely this with emerging art, but through the medium of slides and perhaps other such means rather than the actual objects. This freedom from the actual objects has some benefits and some costs. One loses the physical space in which the objects are arranged and loses the vital interaction with the actual object, but one gains perhaps in conceptual freedom and one is also able to deal with a wider range of objects without the usual logistical constraints and their attendant costs. This latter benefit is not insignificant because it makes possible a truly national and possibly even global “show” relatively easily.

Of course, the idea is not simply to extrapolate from the present, but rather to look at the wider setting that is likely to emerge over the next several decades, the forces that are likely to prevail, and then situate the art that is emerging today in this setting. What are the problems that Indian art will face and how will it respond? We will see a lot of slides of current work, much of which many of us may never have seen, and the speakers will use this work as a starting point for their exercise.

In keeping with the increasing realization (more recently in India) of the greater creative role of curators in the making of art in the current context, our speakers will also propose to current and future artists possible contexts and ideas and forms and materials that they might address and work with. The essence of the exercise is to tell a story for contemporary art and take this story either descriptively or prescriptively into the future. By story we don’t necessarily mean a loose concatenation of events and figures or even ideas, but also include various modes of structuring or intervening in this practice. The ten presentations should result in a multi-perspectival and multi-linear look at contemporary art and its possible futures.

As is also becoming increasingly clear, the stories we tell reveal as much about where we stand in history and about our concerns and hopes and desires as they reveal about their objects, so that at the end we should not only come away with some insight into contemporary art and its future, but also, if we are lucky, into ourselves. We see the speakers not so much as seers themselves – they are as limited as anyone else when it comes to looking ahead – but rather as facilitators and nodal points in what must basically be a network of collective effort. This conference, more than any other we have had, is intended to be a fully participatory effort and we urge everyone to come prepared to invent the future that will ultimately invent the race.

To give some structure to this effort, the speakers will take up three questions, an experiential one, a conceptual one, and a speculative one. How do we engage with contemporary art, and what can a curator do to nurture, articulate, expand, and inflect and direct that set of experiences and understandings? Secondly, what and where is contemporary Indian art, what stories can we tell about it, and what means do we use to understand it? And lastly, where is Indian art going, and where can we make it go?

A conversation amongst the panelists at the end of each day will provide an opportunity for explicit dialogue and discussion of these three questions.

It is not a coincidence of course that we take up these questions in the year 2000, a time not only for thinking about the future, but also for reflection generally and for constructive and cooperative action.

January 14 to 16, 1998 | 10.00 am to 6.00 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

Concept Note: Avani Parikh

This conference tries to bring together three important strands of contemporary thought: analytic thought, continental thought, and Indian philosophical thought.  We want to apply these frameworks to the problems of understanding art, art practice, and curating and exhibiting art.

Our aims are twofold: first, simply to make the assumptions, commitments, organizing principles underpinning the frameworks we have identified clear and transparent to our audience, which is made up of artists, critics, and primarily the Bombay art world; second, to create a dialogue between and among these paradigms, of a kind and quality that might occur anywhere in the world, not just in India.  Of these two levels, only the first is intended to be bound to India and Indian practices in art and criticism.  The second level indicates why we have as many foreign participants as we do.  We wanted a fully international conference not constrained by geography.  We hope thereby that our audience will benefit from the full range of thought available today.  Indeed, the writings of many of our speakers are already familiar to many in India.  In addition, we would like to think that such a conference may not occur in the West, and that we will have played an important role in bringing such opposing frameworks and ideas together.  We hope our speakers will take this to be an event of significance for their practice as well, providing as it does an opportunity to engage with the art world here, and also to consider the problems raised by contemporary Indian art.

It is perhaps possible to see such a program in the context of current globalization, and indeed such an idea may not be inapplicable.  However, it is worth pointing out that discussion in India has always been quite internationalized.

Our first task was to identify the broad frameworks, or indeed meta-frameworks, operative today.  Our choice was analytic, continental, and Indian thought.  To be sure, there are other frameworks in existence, but these seemed to be of special significance for art theory and practice.  The next problem was what to call them.  “Model,” “framework,” and “paradigm” were considered, “meta-model” and “meta-framework” being found too unwieldy, and we settled upon “framework” as the most neutral of the three choices.

We turn first to the problem of distinguishing between analytic and continental thought.  As is well known, both concepts are vague, are increasingly less tied to geography, and overlap and crisscross in complex ways.  However, it is still possible to make a pragmatic distinction between them for our purposes.  Indeed, we are using the distinction as most people use it, out of convenience, to broadly identify and tag methodologies.  It should not be mistaken for a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive partition of contemporary Western thought.  It should also perhaps be pointed out that, while some blurring of the distinction between the two has occurred of late, this by no means implies that the distinction has collapsed.  On the contrary, making a distinction in the context of this increasing blurring may help to clarify the various components that go into contemporary aesthetic discourse.

We have further divided continental thought into three strands that are also neither mutually exclusive nor collectively exhaustive.  Many speakers fall into more than one category, but we hope they will be predominantly one rather than the other, or at least assume such a position for the conference.  Culturalism, in particular, is itself not as easily identifiable as psychoanalytic or poststructuralist thought, comprising as it does the mix of orientations found in “Cultural Studies” departments, including perhaps, especially the critique of difference.

It should be pointed out that the various strands in continental thought can be accommodated, more or less, within analytic thought as well (poststructuralism or marxism, for example).  Indeed, this is perhaps part of the blurring that has occurred.  The differences that then arise, between, say, analytic marxism and continental marxism, might make the differences between analytic and continental frameworks more transparent.

Indian thought can be assumed for our purposes to be more or less independent of these developments, though even here there are overlaps with Western thought.  “Indian philosophical thought” is being used to stand for the various philosophical systems that originated in India in ancient times and continue to be developed in present times.  Indian aesthetics was a part of this development, and speakers will draw upon these sources in their presentations.

This brings us to the second triad in the conference, the three days of the program.  This division is more or less self-explanatory, or so we think.  We were especially keen to connect the frameworks to curatorship, at the risk of force-fitting some presentations.  It has also enabled us to keep a simple and uniform format for all three days.

There will be chairpersons from India who will chair the six morning and afternoon sessions and roundtables of the conference.  They will represent contemporary cultural discourse from the point of view of the different arts in India.  Their presence will help to relate some of the discussion, especially in the roundtables, to art in India.

In any case, the program is not intended to be taken literally.  The eighteen slots in the program are better thought of as sites for exploration and dialogue.

It is possible to pragmatically demarcate two levels in the program within each of the three frameworks.  The first level is the subject matter (the end of art, late capitalism, interpretation, curatorship etc.), and the second is the various frameworks (analytic thought, continental thought, Indian philosophical thought, each with their subcategories).

This distinction gives us a slightly more detailed way to state the goals of the conference.  The first goal is to focus on the second level, on the relevant framework, and then to develop arguments involving the first level, the subject matter, in terms of the underlying framework.  We hope speakers will make their frameworks clear, and the relation between framework and argument clear.  Secondly, we look forward to a dialogue at both levels, framework and subject matter.  This, we hope, will generate some reflection upon the foundations of theory, at a time when theory is being examined critically in the arts.

Perhaps we can start the dialogue by identifying what is common to all three orientations.  Our suggestion is a more or less muted rationalism, although each framework works with substantively different notions of logic, reason, and rationality.  By “rationalism” we mean a kind of apriorism.  Ultimately, our guess is that this is where the stakes lie, with different conceptions of reason and argument.

We have not meant to exclude empiricism, but have assimilated it to the three frameworks.  Pure empiricism is most likely to find expression on the third curatorial day, if at all, and we hope our speakers will not find this overly inconvenient.

Conversations with Artists:
M.F. Hussain with Dnyaneshwar Nadkarni
Jehangir Sabavala, K. G. Subramanyam, and Ramkumar with Abhay Sardesai
S. H. Raza, F. N. Souza, and Mohan Samant with Narendra Panjwani
Tyeb Mehta, Akbar Padamsee, and Krishen Khanna with Sumitra Srinivasan
Laxman Shreshtha, Mehli Gobhai, and Bhagvan Chauhan with Amrita Jhaveri
Bhupen Khakhar, Arpita Singh, and Nilima Sheikh with Veena Kotian
Rekha Rodwittiya, Surendran Nair, and Ravinder Reddy with Niyatee Shinde
Atul Dodiya, Anju Dodiya, and Nataraj Sharma with Chaitanya Sambrani

January 14 to 17, 1997 | 10.00 am to 6.00 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

Concept Note: Prashant Parikh

The conference is structured around the concept of a phenomenology of Indian art. The same object is viewed from different vantage points: the institutional context, the issues and concepts, and conversations with artists. The topic is vast and not everything can be covered of course, but much of the material has been selected from the point of view of taking stock of the past and looking forward to the future of Indian art.

Institutions:

Institutions form the context of art, the framework within which art is created and viewed, bought and sold. Primary among these is of course the nation itself. The project of the nation was intimately bound up with the project of art in the first 50 years. It is not clear if this linkage will continue, and if it does, in what way it will. The next context is the social topography of Indian art, the groupings and dynamics of different art movements in various parts of the country. The impulses driving these movements have been largely external rather than internal, reality-oriented rather than intramural. Museums and galleries provide the context in which art is viewed and disseminated, and perhaps the primary concern here is to build up wider publics that take Indian art seriously. Apart from news, publications help to create the intellectual framework in which art must reside. Here we need more educated writers familiar with the intellectual history of art and ideas. Demand will follow supply. Lastly, what should be the role of the government? Is its activity a help or a hindrance? In the 80’s, art boomed commercially. Will this trend continue?

Issues:

Issues form the discourse of art. They concern what artists and intellectuals must grapple with. In India, they involve three dimensions: tradition, modernism, postmodernism. All three dimensions overlap and intersect. Indeed, their occurrence is often simultaneous. We take up the uses of tradition first. Following this is the difficult problem of Indian modernism. Next comes the question of skill and originality and appropriation, an issue primarily of postmodernism. The progressives and the avant-garde, the periodization of postmodernism, art and politics create another cluster of issues. As you will see, these issues crisscross the canvas of Indian art, implicating one another from multiple perspectives.

Concepts:

Concepts are the distilled essences of issues. At times, the line between an issue like modernism and the concept of modernism appears thin. But the emphases are different. Conceptual analyses take principally two forms, historical and formal. I myself incline towards the formal, but it is the historical approach that has dominated the discourse of Indian art. In this discourse, the roles of artist, critic, and theorist need clarification. The human figure and figuration generally has dominated Indian art. What lies behind this realism? Beyond that, how does it happen that an image comes to represent an object? Why does a human figure represent a human being? This question in the philosophy of art is rendered more urgent by the tradition of the figure in Indian art. In light of this, we discuss social realism. We then move to abstraction and expression, two concepts central to all art. As with literature, interpretations of art abound. How are they legislated or does anything go?

Conversations:

The informality and accessibility of the conversational form suggested the last day. We see enacted before us a synoptic history of Indian art.

February 23 to 25, 1996 | 10.00 am to 6.00 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

Concept Note: Prashant Parikh

The goal of the conference is twofold: to explore the situation of painting today and to examine its context of postmodernism. One way to conduct this study is to look closely at specific problems that arise in this context. The problem of fictive space is one such problem. The transformation of works of art into texts is another. One problem comes primarily from art, the other primarily from the discourse about art. In both we see certain changes at work, changes that imply the emergence of postmodernism. The note ends with a partial theorization of postmodernism itself. This draws upon Wittgenstein’s idea of family resemblances.

July 6 to 7, 1995 | 10.00 am to 6.00 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai