dialogue with a foundation student

Yesterday I received this letter from a foundation student with some very interesting questions on art for that I don't want answer but have a dialogue... Identity of this student is withheld.

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> Just a few thoughts and questions on Art, I thought you might be able to discuss  What does art essentially do?

dear xxxxx,

I don't think I have answers to any of your questions or otherwise let me put it like this that   I do not understand answers anymore? I am not sure.

 There is this story of Buddha. One day Buddha was sitting with his disciple Padmapaada at one of his chaitya grihas. Then one of his follower turned up to ask some question to him. 

He asked Buddha   " Buddha, is there God?" 

 Buddha politely replied " yes there is God"

The person looked puzzled and went away without saying anything further. After a while another follower came and asked "Buddha is there God" and this time Buddha replied with an affirmative no.

He said " No there is no God"

 That person also looked puzzled and went away. By evening one more person came and asked Buddha " Buddha is there God?"

Buddha calmly told him " I don't know",

That person also went away puzzled.  But by then Padmapaada couldn't control his anxiety  and asked Buddha " Buddha my lord, the knower of all, I know you won't lie then why did you give such a contradictory answers those three?". Smilingly Buddha told him " I did not answer you Padmapaada, I answered them. The first man was confident there is no God and he wanted a confirmation from me - so i told him there is God. Second person was sure there is God, he also came to me for confirmation- So I told him there is no God. The third person was unsure of whether God exist or not but he was confident I will have the answers- so I told him I don't know. The fact is no one should remain in their confortable belief and expect reassurance from out side when there is an enquiry. One has to evolve with that enquiry as there is no one definite answer or solution for any one question or problem. Subject may be the same but enquiry can be different so are the answers.

So when you ask me what does art essentially do? I don't have answers, as my enquiry of art is different from yours. I certainly do not want to suspend the baggage of my 47 years of enquiry on your 17 year shoulder. My enquiry is history for you. Done it and may be over as historical validity of a subject relies upon the priorities of the explorer than the factual development.  

So you should expand and explore your query especially when it comes to art.  Since Art by practice is an act of human imagination that need not confirmative to time (but essentially an utilitarian one).  Keeping this in mind may I request you to rephrase the question what does art essentially do to why do we need imagination ? Probably you will have your resolve

> As far as I understand, one of the means of contemporary art is that, it instigates the ‘viewer to experience a particular line of thought, even if it maybe abstract. It is a method for reaching out, connecting yourself with someone else by creating the medium to allow them to experience, to share that experience with you.

Let us look at like this,  when you look at the mirror what do you usually see

An image? A reflection?  An aspiration? A manipulation? An idea? An understanding,? A negotiation?  The beauty?  or the fault?

Who is the viewer here and what is the subject and who is the creator?  What is the experience here, who is sharing it? And who decides the objective?

Will it remain the same next time when you look at the mirror keeping the wonderful phrase of zen “ you never step into same river again” in picture?

If you could resolve these questions probably you will widen your scope of understanding where many of these issues will come up. (Remember during the making even cave art was contemporary.)

> From what I understand, Design helps you focus, narrow things down, put a frame around it. It requires for you to find your target audience, understand them, and then cut, copy, paste and edit out what doesn’t work and put in replacements until time finds better solutions, be it utility or aesthetic.

There is this interesting story about Mullah. One day Mullah went to meet  a lawyer. He explained the case in detail to Lawyer.  After hearing the brief,  lawyer told Mullah with confidence that “ there is not even a case here Mullah, it is an hundred percent winning shot.. don’t worry I will take care of this..”  hearing this hurriedly  Mullah got up for leaving.  The lawyer was shocked and asked him what happened Mullah? It is an easy win!! To that Mullah dejectedly replied “ forget it … I briefed you my opponents case…”

So where do you think the solution lies? in the process  or in the approach?

Does  process defines the approach or approach defines the process?  If you reverse a process wouldn’t it be a design and if you reverse the approach again wouldn’t it be a design?   Do we have to always understand target audience? What does the word “manufacture” means?

>Is Art made to pertain to a target audience?

> How else are we to justify the space it is displayed in?

Let me ask you another question …can you design imagination?  What is the relevance of space in imagination? Can you be separate from your act? Can you separate audience from performance?  Is performance is the art or the rehearsal?

>The kind of crowd a gallery caters to in comparison with a Public space. A virtual space, a personal space?

I would like to take you to one another scenario; at home, conventionally in middle class, we divide the space into verandah, sitting room, dining room, kitchen, bedrooms and washrooms. They are public, personal, Private or virtual in nature.  What happens to the family member who is passing through these spaces many times a day?  Probably your question and resolve emanate from there.

>Does it work as an eye-opener to see certain things we have chosen not to see. Planting a thought process, or rather creating an opportunity or environment to explore that.

May I ask you to go back to Mullah story

Does communication of these ideas become art or are they just the form of communication?

Have you been to India Pakistan boarder ?  It is an interesting space.  Between two enemy states lies the no man’s land and between these nations one man’s freedom becomes another man’s threat and one man’s martyr becomes another man’s terrorist.  In other words in this no man’s land one  becomes martyr and terrorist simultaneously.  What is art here? , what is communication? and what is information here?

Is Art the medium to reach out to people or does the creative manipulation of a medium become art?

To make noise out of silence is one, to make music out of silence is another, but to make art out of music is simply to add another layer to the complexity of silence to bring out the idea by complimenting it, maybe. So does manipulating a medium become art or the experience created by the manipulation of the medium become art. Hence if Art is merely a perspective, does everything become art?

Is sugar  the sweetness or is it the cake made use of that sugar? If both of them are  not then what is sugar and what is cake?

>Then what really is the role of an Artist?

Why do we look at mirror?

> Hope you are having a good holiday, sorry to bother you with this now, its just that I've been really restless.

You are welcome with such botheration any time.  To be frank  with you I am happy that you are disturbed with such pertinent questions for that I have no answers. Probably that is one reason we all PRACTICE, which involves all forms of enquiry and no definite answers.

But hope you would have noticed by now  that I haven’t used any artistic or art theory argument to build this  dialogue with you. I resorted to Indian way of explanation -“the narrative decoding”. This is perhaps one answer I would like to try –

Since in art practice, theory never lead to  art; but art  practice leads to theory, So our theoretical understanding should always explore alternate method in  art Practice. Otherwise it won’t be art; it will only be a regimented assembly line production.

All the best

designs does not solve

Yesterday I had a chance to read an English translation of an Italian design paper that discuses design as problem solving in approach; an idea  survived more than a century since Bauhaus and ülm.  After reading that usual stuff one always find on design,  it astonished me,  how ideas by sidestepping the time constraint contextual relevance of an argument, are turned into myths and thereafter anointed to unquestioned axioms in society.

Existence of an individual in a society evolves through one to one, one to many and many to many relationships and its prioritisation.  The need of human life and its problems arise out of this complex positioning, where individual and society are evolved as a complicated priority. 

Our life is constituted by Individuals  by acting as individual and society  simultaneously and  projecting one above the other  based on contextual necessity. History of human efforts proves that this complex relationship between ‘individual, society and priority’ actually mothers all human designs problems and ideas. Unfortunately this is a problematic terrain as  the one to one, one to many and many to many relationship  remain  a juxtaposed reality where one prioritisation imbalances the other two.

 Problem get many fold, as “many to many” relationship remain a completely indefinable constituent,  where individual can only be a subset to the totality.  In other words, prioritising one constituent over the other by addressing its issues with some possible solution will only culminated it into another problem because by then the other two components would have become inconsistent with the solution,  as the needs of each of the other two relationships and its objectives can be different,

For example “love” was one such design solution invented by humankind to tackle their problems of relationships and if one objectively analyses this design, one will find that the same solution also unleashes one of the  biggest problem in human life as well.  For instance take the examples of religion, society, community and relationship that are founded on the principles of love.  They unfortunately become the subject of segregation and separation in humanity. Despite so many   innovations and solutions have unfolded in human history, in reality our problems have only compounded or sustained .  In other words problem cannot be separated from any of these design solutions.

One pragmatic question arises out of this situation is that if such is the case, then how have the human society progressed as civilisation so far thousands of years?

 The simple answer may be that  it did not progress through solving problems but rather it progressed though a participatory evolution where problems are  contained a value addition.  It does not envisages to solve the problems as Design gospel “Design is a problem solving process" approach, rather as an effective design it evolves as a “value addition” in every problem to counter balance as evolutionary correction.

If one look around, none of our designs,  whether  it is  organic or constructed has ever solved any  problem of ours.  It has only brought a value addition to the existing system as an evolutionary necessity. Our entire contemporary designs, be it industrial or visual is a value additions to the existing system. They don’t solve problems, but they participate in the system to bring out "necessary" evolutionary modification- THE VALUE ADITION – THE DESIGN reiterating the point
"Design is not problem solving. Design is participatory evolution."