What ehr should art do?

It happened five years ago. We were given the task of founding a department of programming/performing arts at the Cité nationale de l'histoire de l'immigration (CNHI) in Paris, France's latest national museum, one devoted to the history of immigration in France. There was a good amount of debate - from the scientific committee, from the historians who had devised the project, from the civil society bodies whose untiring campaign had led to the birth of the museum, from funding institutions (the Ministries of Culture, Education and Social Cohesion, notably) - on the exact role of art, especially performing art (felt to be something of a loose cannon), in such a museum. 


Museum International, a journal run by UNESCO, invited each of the different departments of the CNHI to write about their activities and goals in a special issue dedicated to emerging museums. Patrice Martinet, artistic director, asked me to write on behalf of our department, and this is the introduction I handed in. The piece went on to record the thoughts of two of the artists we had invited to make new work, choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and playwright/theatre director Mohamed Rouabhi.

There is a lot of talk right now about what art should or should not do; about what its ambit is and what its code of conduct should be, as though it were a young, fractious student. I wanted to remind myself of what we had wanted to nurture in that fledgling museum, what we had spent our days and nights defending during two years.

"The Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration does not exist.

What does exist, actually, is scores of Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration.

Like the elephant in the Panchatantra, which was identified by four blind men as rope, pillar, fan and snake respectively, this project impels myriad visions. There are at least as many as the people involved in its creation, directly or indirectly, and – after its opening in April 2007 – more likely to come from the general public, the media, the powers-that-be … the list will be endless; as will the definitions, the expectations and probably the criticism. Perhaps the greatest challenge faced by this institution is to subsume these multiple particles, all the while allowing them to thrive, and emerge as a cogent structure whose bedrock is its very plurality.

In the pages that follow, one gets glimpses, to take an analogy from another field, of what the light reflected from one face of this highly refractive chunk of hard, crystallized carbon could give – when cut and polished. Because that is the process it has to undergo: a diamond left to itself is just a shapeless abrasive lump.

Remember, this is just one facet of a whole. One vision. Of what the credo of an arts & programming wing should be in a cultural complex that is all at once a national museum, a research & academic hub, a vanguard for civil sector and citizen advocacy organisations, a publishing unit – all firmly focused on the issue of immigration.

But it appears that before defining content or aim, we need to rationalise the very existence of an artistic wing within a museum specialising in the history of immigration. For although museological policies over the last two decades have evolved to encompass artistic activity in a great number of historical and civilizational museums, and although the Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration – whose name itself denotes its composite nature – has more than one activity, the presence of art in the realm of immigration is still less than self-evident.

To circumscribe the role or import of art within an issue-based paradigm seemed rather parochial to us. Hence, we extend the question to defending its existence per se, as also its “functionality”.

Art exists in its own right, on its own terms. Without the necessity to justify itself, or the additional onus of purpose. Yet, throughout time, we find that it has questioned mankind, consistently jolted it into making new discoveries, unsettled societal preconceptions, ripped apart status quo and given us other ways to view the world. It unearths fragments of the past; hurls shards of an often painful present straight into our faces; and sometimes it offers terrifying or tantalising oracles of the future. It is, perhaps, above all, a reminder that nothing is sacrosanct: certainly not the sacred monster, art, itself.

That is why what we are attempting to build here is, first and foremost, an arena of free artistic expression. Where artistes can deliver their thoughts – unfettered, “unguided”; through the creative language of their choice; in the manner that seems most befitting to them – cerebral, visceral or soulful – on the countless concerns surrounding immigration; ones that are just as inextricably bound to this issue as ligaments to a bone: boundaries, belonging, uprootedness, integration, exclusion, alterity, home, identity….

An arena that will not claim to enforce one worldview. Nor presume to provide solutions. But which will try to raise questions. Innumerable questions, queries, critiques from all fronts, on all things – including the same artistic expressions that set the stage for these questions.

An arena where dissent and debate will be recognized as contributors in their own right to constructive co-existence.

A place we will visit not to learn about the Other and his strangeness, but to recognize how “other” we ourselves are, how we are all composed of Others.

It will be a nimble tightrope act in a world that is becoming increasingly intolerant of contention. To tread the fine line between criticism and censure, between dissent and divisiveness. To provide a platform for opinion that is not necessarily our own, and to voice both our disagreement with the given view and defend the right to state both.

But the idea here, at this moment, is not to perorate about what we wish or intend. If we are committed to our aim, then the first act is to step aside, and hand over this space to those whose creative ethos will contour our activity. The stage is theirs, even while it is a work in progress. If they continue to step under our spotlights, and fuel the crucible with their questions and their aspirations, the lights will keep burning in this theatre."

- Karthika Naïr

excerpts from A Crucible for Questions, first published in Museum International, N° 59 (May 2007).

The Cruellest Month

T.S. Eliot had it all wrong, you mutter indignantly. April is not the cruellest month: at least, not in Paris. It is August.

Your favourite bakery/pastry shop shuts down; actually, all your favourite bakeries shut down. Most restaurants – good, bad and gourmet – are of a similar mind, except the ones in the heart of the tourist’s trajectory. The grocer follows suit.

The local bank begins to implement “summer hours”. So does the neighbourhood pharmacy – if you are lucky enough to have one that remains open all through the month.

Machines at the laundrette are out of order and there is nobody to come and repair them.

Technically, all these essential services are supposed to follow a rota system that would leave at least one open at any time of the month in every neighbourhood; but this policy seems to have met the fate of most technical manuals — at the bottom of tottering piles.

Buses and metros decide to ply at almost half the usual frequency — during peak hours.

News bulletins are filled with chartbusters from 1949 for want of current material. And when news there is, it is usually a litany of gory murders, kidnappings and arson in every other village in the country leading you to wonder if you should flee to safer environs, like atop the Anak Krakatoa.

All your doctors take off on vacation and the locum gets the heebie-jeebies at the thought of a disorder he can’t spell. Worse still, the doctor’s stand-in secretary has just stepped out from another dimension (possibly the one harbouring socks vanished by washing machines): she announces that since she cannot identify you on her database, you cannot possibly exist. Would you like an appointment on November 30^th, she enquires.

The Internet/telephony service-provider you hired for the office at a very steep price responds to a crisis from his deckchair in Croatia: oh, it is a hardware problem, he confirms, impossible to solve long-distance. Could we wait until the 27^th of August?

If the house agent has also taken off for a month – along with the concierge and every other housing union representative – leaving only the Great Grey Spirit of the Seine to come to your aid when domestic calamities like possessed plumbing or crashing range hoods seize the day, there is strong immediate threat to continued sanity.

Then, as the rant – usually made to another, fervently nodding Parisian – reaches fevered pitch, you stop abruptly as the other interjects, almost despite himself, “But it is so nice to see the city almost deserted, isn’t it?” Deserted? A fly on the wall might ask. Deserted, with hordes of tourists from every cardinal point thronging the city, for once transforming Paris overnight into a polyglot capital where you are almost as likely to trip over tendrils of Japanese, Bangla and Flemish as run into thickets of French? But, yes, deserted. Because Paris without Parisians – however populated it may be with denizens of other climes – feels deserted. Gorgeously shorn of our collective high-octane irascibility, of the unrelenting sense of hurtling through time towards yet another deadline and of the need to withdraw into oneself lest you tread on an inch of someone else’s space.

A strange thing happens to the remaining Parisians, the ones who choose to spend August here. Whether from indigence or ill health or indolence or overwork is immaterial: you opted to remain here, and the consequences will be palpable.

You expand: take up more space on earth. Breathe outwards. Smile enviously, later indulgently, at tourists. Drop the near permanent half-scowl or the equally mandatory blank gaze donned in the metro and the street. Dare to ask your formidable postman if he enjoyed his vacation. Stop at Gare du Nord to watch a newlywed Japanese couple have their photo session in front of Thalys trains coming from Cologne, Amsterdam and Brussels. You respond to the casual speculation of a fellow Parisian – also unused to this strange new skin of voyeur and flaneur – on why that couple would celebrate their new life at a railway station. You catch yourself saying softly, because it is a place where journeys begin, refuting her unconvinced suggestion – a last-ditch attempt to retrieve the Parisian cynic’s garb – that it must be a photo shoot for an ad campaign. No, you respond, they are too jubilant for that, too indifferent to perfection.

And despite all the attendant discomforts and dangers of absent bakers, plumbers, pharmacists, electricians and doctors; despite exasperation at unreliable metros, a part of you is content and grateful. Deeply grateful to generations of workers and activists and politicians who – against the received wisdom of the day (and of today) – fought long and hard to make compulsory paid holidays a reality for the entire working population. Content to live in a corner of the world where the right to leisure is recognised and defended for all sections of society, although the murmurs against it, especially in the corporate sector, are crescendoing along with complaints that this kind of image diminishes the country’s credibility in the international arena. It may not behove Parisians to be overtly appreciative of their benefits, but, in this, you just cannot keep the carapace on.

You wake early, and watch the sky shed layers of night, patch by uneven patch. You recognize day shivering inside, still a little tender, and you feel something close to kinship? You are resigned about the weather, not unhappily so. Facebook statuses are no longer a tirade about the cold. Instead you post a lost and found notice in the hope that the prodigal will come home. Lost: a summer. Prematurely born, small but sprightly. Blithe and noisy. Blue, white and green with a few streaks of amber. Finder will be well rewarded.

Yes, Paris in August can be a rare and wonderful beast. More faun than unicorn, though: it tries you and teases you and then, in small and imperceptible ways, transforms you.

More on that later: you still need to scour the city for an electrician.

Through the Looking Glass

June-July have a certain solidness about them, usually, that is quite comforting. There’s travel on the cards, usually to new destinations; the weather, while predictably unpredictable, still fits into a certain graph (I mean, you are never snowed in!), oscillating between a throbbing, fevered heat and unremitting rain and, sometimes, touching Gräfenberg spots of liquid sunshine and endless skies.

It tends to be a tough time at work because the theatre/performance season is ending and there are mere weeks left to scramble for co-producers and book tours and find extra funding. It is often the “Oh, I want an elephant on stage” moment when your dearly cherished artist can spring surprises on you, surprises of the 150 000-euro variety. Electric. That’s how it feels. Yet, with a lovely undercurrent of anticipation: the team put up with extra pressure because in a few weeks, we won’t see each other again (well, not for another two to three weeks), and, for once, travel will not involve looking after other people’s visas and ensuring they have functional alarms or vegan/halaal/no-carb meals on transcontinental flights. Besides, that piece with the “elephant on stage” – you know it has all the potential to be extraordinary, the artist is passionate about it, and his vision becomes yours.

That’s usually: this year, time slipped on some sunshine and slush, and regained its footing a little gracelessly – with one foot in the past and another in the future. And place, after having smirked at that little rough-and-tumble, crumbled at the edges, had its midsection vaporised and then reappeared with some grafted parts. Served it right for being so superior. But, what about me?

I went off the radar. Not just the blog-radar (very new, still unfamiliar: prose!) but the writing radar. And tried to figure some of it out. What else do you do when time and place feel like primeval ooze … oh, not because they are savage or fearsome but because they were porous and phantasmagorical and shapeshift with a panache even Mystique would envy.

I. The Red Queen

One evening, Paris – after eleven years of being more home than any spot on the globe, despite (or because of - scary thought, that!) the inordinate boisterousness, the strikes, the elusive plumbers and the lack of saffron-flavoured rasmalai* – turned stranger. No, actually, it mutated into a scarily recognisable celluloid borough, straight from Thomas Harris.

I got stalked.

Of course it is fatuous to imagine that one lives in a haven of peace and sanity when statistics clearly declare otherwise, when newspapers and radio stations shout out with graphic precision the levels of violence and perversion rising each day. Not just in distant, deserted hamlets or behind the postcard-pretty copses. But just here - in a neighbouring district, or on a street you frequent. And, yes, to people like you and me. Without “provocation”. Without notice too.

But it tends to be too dramatic, too – well, cinematic – to believe in. Unlike being mugged or accosted by drunks or desperate drug-addicts – all of which we navigate in a metropolis with enough regularity to acknowledge and beware. But stalked. Huh-huh. I guess that is just that tiny bit beyond our ceilings of imagination. Until it happens.

There’s something inexpressibly eerie about being the focus of concentrated attention. Venomous, unblinking attention. Maybe because you are looking madness in the eye, maybe the instinctive knowledge that rules of rationality don’t operate for the stalker, or the brain going on overdrive, looking for all options of escape. Tube exits, street corners, shops with twin doors, cabs. In, out. Up, down. The mental running, even as you force yourself to maintain a steady pace. The running out of options.

There is the memory of hate: steady, unswerving hate that is directed at you. Random hate. Its aftertaste lingers. Like malaria, I suspect it won’t leave: it can rise up when you least expect, in places you felt thoughtlessly secure before. I look over my shoulder now. In supermarkets. On the street. In restaurants. And I can finally grasp why espousing the right-wing security overdrive must be such a temptation.

This is still my city. But I can see how swiftly it can morph into another being. Like everything else, you could say.

II. White kNight

There is this land called safe. Oh, this safe is on another continent, an intangible one, unconnected to stalkers or muggers or snarling immigration officials or stamping, jostling crowds in buses on rush hour. For two entire decades, the first two ones of my life, it was the El Dorado I had sought. By my late teens, after eighteen times in surgery, the place I felt safest was hospital, so, with infallible adolescent optimism, I thought: wouldn’t it be just dandy if I could chose a career that would unfold within the hospital premises? Anything – occupational therapist, counsellor, babysitter, hair dresser for chronic patients – would be fine, preferably, with accommodation on campus.

My surgeon blanched when I shared that insight with him. Maybe the Buddha’s father had done the same. He muttered something to the effect that life would be unhealthily lopsided, which sounded totally illogical to me: life had always been lopsided and unhealthy: this might actually even things out a bit. Empower me to volitionally enter a place I’d dreaded the first 16 years of my life and that I considered a refuge since, so alien did the outside world seem then.

It must have been just after the time they wheeled me into the wrong operation theatre (my roommate, born with a limp, was to have her left leg extended; I had to have an oesophageal dilation) that I decided that hmmmm, no, hypothetical safety was not a priority anymore as my very real leg took precedence, and while I didn’t – and don’t – enjoy being just an inch or two away from midgetism, surgically lengthening my limbs had never been a desired solution. My roommate arrived at a similar conclusion about having endoscopes and balloon dilators thrust down her chest, incidentally.

It’s an odd thing, safety. We find it in the funniest of places and times. The last time it arrived and belatedly settled down for the night, just before daybreak, was during a really bad bout of spasms, far away, in a city where I have not really had a medical safety net after kindergarten. It was a bad episode, the kind where breathing, staying halfway-conscious becomes such an effort that letting go – choking, throwing up, blacking out – looks deceptively attractive, even if some tiny watchman on a rampart of the brain knows otherwise. The kind where all medication seems held up somewhere else, maybe in some other dimension, quite indifferent and ineffectual, like a stage manager I’d once met in a Mediterranean theatre who kept extending his broom over the same square foot of stage, and flicking it from time to time. Why are you even here, I’d wanted to ask him, and it was what I kept screaming inside my head to the vast quantity of chemicals in my system.

Yes, odd, then, that a steady, unswerving gaze can keep you alive when nothing else is working. That a pair of hands can coax breath back.  That a voice can tether you to an earlier, and later, world with some semblance of normality. That even in the midst of brain-numbing pain, knowing someone is there – even if there is little he can do other than prevent you from knocking your head on the wall – and breathing with you, actually retrieves sanity. Pain can quite literally drive you out of your mind.

The saddest, oddest thing, though, is just how incapable I am of finding the right words to say just what it meant to be safe. Momentary as it was. Thank you would be so inadequate. How do you thank a part of yourself, almost your lungs or thought? Would you say, thank you, dear breath? Or attempt to explain it doesn't matter that the safety wasn’t physical or real since it removed none of the dysfunction; what matters is it was immediate, vital, with the meaning the French give to the latter word: literally, generating life. How do I say that in the worst moments to come, I will go back and hold that fleeting sense of safety, of rootedness, in the palm of my hand. And when life ends, even though that safety won’t be there, its memory will. There is no bigger gift you could give me.

III. The Hatter

On a flight from Delhi to Trivandrum, I slipped out of my 38-year-old skin and the confines of Indigo’s gelid aircraft (whose attendants are doing a fine job in saving the planet by scrimping on heating) to meet my 13-year-old self in Shillong, a much-loved city in my childhood, the only place – out of roughly a dozen – I wanted to put down roots and live forever. It was a time when forever was a believable notion, much like Narnia a few years earlier.

The time machine that powered this journey was Anjum Hasan’s remarkable collection, Street on the Hill, which I had been gifted a few days before. I read it on the five-hour flight. And then reread it, poem after poem. Over and above the precision and quiet, very quiet, beauty of the poems, what struck me most was their fidelity to a specific, usually indescribable, time and place; their ability to capture a certain wabi-sabi with just a throwaway phrase, which wasn't throwaway at all, but poised and agile: balletic.

Anjum Hasan returned part of my childhood: the best bit, the Shillong years, with the noodles and music shops and the "hills in our blood" and the oak doors and the endless array of windows with white veils and awakenings – and, most of all, one of my favourite schools. I do not know whether the school she refers to in some of her poems, in particular, in Coming of Age in a Convent School, is actually the one I went to, or if there were other schools in Shillong that experienced similar, perhaps parallel realities but the resemblances with names and memories were startling. Much of that evocative, effortlessly memorable poem sang to me. I remembered the sex education class with the films in the library that she weaves into the poem. I remembered also Sister Monica, whose verve and forthrightness had been such an impetus. And the end, the end of the poem, marking the advent of adolescence, made me smile through the icicles in my teeth; it was the only thing which had irked me about that lovely convent, after a lifetime of attending co-ed schools and growing up with a handful of male cousins constantly around the house:

“This is the year I realize there are only,

only women in the entire school building,

and am astonished at the thought.”

* there is a much longer list of "becauses" for Paris being home, which one day - when I can keep it short, simple and coherent - will be divulged on this blog. Walking across the Villette at midnight in summer is one of them, perhaps the most inexplicable one.