‘I feel an energy of war around Charlie Hebdo protests’

http://www.newsroompost.com/150748/felt-energy-war-around-protests/

More than 3.7 million people participated in the demonstration against the recent attack on Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical weekly newspaper. This mega demonstration was led by many world leaders including French President, Francois Hollande, top representatives of Russia and Ukraine, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas. London, Madrid, New York, Cairo, Sydney, Stockholm, Tokyo and other cities in other parts of the world too swelled the streets in protest.

During a conversation with a few artists spread across France and those who participated in the demonstration, interesting perspectives emerged. French actress, Laetitia Eido and Director and Producer, Maxime Potherat discuss the meaning and ramifications of these attacks withnewsroompost.com.

Newsroompost.com – As artists, how do you see these attacks?

Laetitia – The demonstration makes it feel that it is a new problem, that something bizarre has happened. But it is not a problem that has happened now. The fear of being attacked was always there. This need to suppress always existed. But what has happened is that one realizes now that ‘Oh wow! It is real, it is happening right here, right now.’

Maxime – My English is not very good. So, I will pitch in only when I have to say something important. It is difficult to have fun now. What has also happened is that somewhere the freedom to speak and say and express suddenly feels hit. But it is also important that now everyone realizes that it is a world problem. For me, it is not about France alone, it is a world problem.

Newsroompost.com – How do you see the protests?

Laetitia – There is a huge support which should be the case. People are speaking out, that also is good. But what is also scary is the slant these protests are taking. Suddenly, it is somehow about Islam which is not the case. There is massive confusion of issues. What are we protesting for and against what? No one is clear. And those who are clear are manipulating it.

Newsroompost.com – And when you say, someone is manipulating it, who do you mean they are?

Laetitia – There are all sorts of people with hidden agendas. They are confusing issues. I went to the manifestation just to show solidarity. Suddenly I hear multiple voices. For some, there is the question of Jewish infiltration and how jobs are being snatched. For some, there are issues of all kinds of foreigners from different countries taking away our resources. So, you see, Charlie Hebdo protests are no more about freedom of expression. There is a muddle. The government is manipulating it to launch offensive against nations. The various groups and factions are manipulating the movement for their own interests.

Newsroompost.com – So, it is not about freedom of expression you feel?

Laetitia – It might have begun like that- even the offensive. To clamp on those who wanted to say something other than what you wanted to hear. But today, ironically, you can not even ask what the movement is about? You have lost the discretion to express what you believe in.

Newsroompost.com – Could you please elaborate?

Laetitia – Sure. Let me begin by asking, why are so many world leaders here? If it is about solidarity, then there is the Indian Prime Minister as well who expressed solidarity in front of global leaders during the recent meet. It is not innocent, these people being here. But because I have said it, by stretching my statement further, suddenly I will be branded an anti-Semitic or anti-Islam or whatever. Gradually, I will be against so many things for people that I would no longer be able to explain that I am just against extremism, in general. Lot of people over there are not there for the right reasons.

Newsroompost.com – What is the scariest part between all that you said and all that you feel?

Laetitia – I feel an energy of war around Charlie Hebdo protests. People are just ready to do anything to seek justice – without understanding what it is that they are fighting for – collectively.
As long as you have this feeling for terrorists and extremists, it is fine. But can you sustain a long fight with violence and negative energies? There is a saying in English, right, that an eye for eye makes the whole world blind.

Newsroompost.com – What are you planning to do now?

Maxime – We just want to continue. We just want to speak against these attacks and many more of them, time and again. Respect is the most important thing in this world and at no cost we should lose it. It is important that we do not get scared and keep talking about what is going on. To not lose one’s voice.

Laetitia – I am an actress. I am in my profession because I want to understand human soul. I know that for me, it is about finding my center. I want to make peace with myself first. I know that this realization is deeper than demonstrations. And it is also the most frightening thing to do because not many, at the moment, are willing to take charge and move out. This first step is very hard. To work on oneself, is the most difficult thing to do. So I will do that.

Newsroompost.com – When you say that Laetitia, are you not just evading the issue to go back in a shell?

Laetitia – Ok. Let me try and explain. This was a recent case. There was this 15 year old girl in France. She was not very religious in the way we loosely use the term religion. She posted something on her facebook wall which went along the lines of “one day my mistake will be forgiven.” Now some terror outfit brainwashed her into believing that she can do so many things to seek forgiveness. The route they suggested was to join the group in Syria and become a nurse. She goes to Syria, becomes a nurse, marries a man from turkey and somehow, one step after the other, becomes a ‘jehadist’. Later, she realizes her mistake and confesses that she committed a grave fault. I believe this self realization is essential. It is along this line that I said that I want to find my own center. Because you know, just like anywhere else in the world, there are people sleeping in France, right across your very own street and are ready to become a martyr.

http://www.newsroompost.com/150748/felt-energy-war-around-protests/

Mirza Waheed’s ‘The Book of Gold Leaves'

Mirza Waheed’s The Book of Gold Leaves is the second novel by the author. Both of his works – The Collaborator and The Book of Gold Leaves – retell the story of Kashmir. However, the architecture of the re-memorizing of Kashmir is different in both.

The Book of Gold Leaves is a novel with the skeleton of a love story . While a passionate romance blossoms between Roohi, the sunni heroine and Faiz, the Shia paper machie artist – and perhaps the protagonist, on this skeleton, Mirza creates his art. He retells the story of Kashmir in the 1990s and recounts, through the personal narratives of Roohi, Faiz, Farhat, Khan Sahab, Mr. Koul, a tale of sorrow and pain that Kashmir was forced to become. Sometimes, in the middle of the novel, one would actually be forced to ask – is Kashmir the protagonist in this book?

Mirza questions the Manichean dualities of propaganda and ‘truth’ by incorporating voices and stories that are shouted, muted, heard and discarded. The sheer intensity with which each episode and event in the lives of the  two main characters unfold, makes the novel a clenched fist for any reader. One just does not want to let go till the tension eases and some nerves are frayed. It is this overwhelming feeling that makes this book so deeply political and passionately poetic at the same time.

While Mir Zafar’s household, Khan Sahab’s household recount the horrors of those who stayed in the valley, Professor Koul’s story resurrects, albeit in minority, of those who left. Perhaps, the author should have fleshed out a lot more on the Kashmiri pundits fleeing the valley. Perhaps, because the beautiful craft increases the expectation of a reader, the novel could have taken a step further and talked about the struggles of a pundit in a little more detail. However,  in conversations between Professor Koul and the army officer, Mirza narrates the futility of the word ‘choice’. Later, as the novel progresses and Faiz gets irrevocably sucked in by the ‘other’ side of Kashmir, ‘choice’ seems more as a mockery than anything else. It is then that perhaps one would want to forgive Mirza and redeem him of a slightly unfinished, left-out retelling.

What is absolutely striking about the novel is that while Mirza navigates through the tough historical realities of the 1990s Kashmir, he never loses perspective of a Kashmiri tale. The culture, art, way of life, geography, society, human interactions and beauty of the valley is explained and recreated as beautifully as a painting.

By showing a rebellious love affair solemnized, albeit silently – in the bonds of matrimony – between two radical Muslim groups, by portraying women smoking with men, by etching that fraught landscape when Roohi walks right in the middle of the sanctum, prohibited for women, in the full glare of male eyes, Mirza does something that is difficult to articulate in words and too poignant to just let it seep in sans expression.

It is this ethereal and dream like – yet real – quality of Mirza’s book, that makes it so political and so literary at the same time.

The dreamy ideal of ‘falaknuma’ that Faiz always wanted to paint is the ideal that brings in hope each time it begins to escape the reader. While with themujahids and familiarizing himself with guns and bombs, Faiz thinks offalaknuma, while his half painting punctuates Farhat’s, Faiz’s sister’s life, in his absence – the painting, this art, this half, unfinished project – makes the journey for the reader a little hopeful, as if in a dark tunnel guided by that one sliver of faint light. Falaknuma becomes symptomatic of the hope that allows one to wade through the violent history and the traps of ‘zaal’ that the novel talks about.

The Book of Gold Leaves has all the makings of a literary artefact. The nuances of the tale, the making of the teller, the layers and layers of said and unsaid and the equally silent layers of half muted histories and stories are what make this book a must read for anyone who wants to understand Kashmir in totality. It is one of those unputdownable emotional tales which come with an unfinished project like that of Kashmir.

Will the pundits return? Will those who died and picked up arms fulfil their individual falaknumas? Will ‘the book of gold leaves’ preserve all that needs to be chronicled and painted and created – with the same delicacy as perhaps the book, how Mirza has done?

You might not get all the answers, but this book overwhelms with the very idea that there is are infinite possibilities in questions.

Waddell’s ‘A Yank’s Memory of Calcutta’

‘A Yank’s Memory of Calcutta’, an exhibition of 60 gelatin photographs of Calcutta by Clyde Wadell is being hosted by the Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata from 8 December’2014 -24 January’2015.

Waddell’s photographs capture the eccentricities Kolkata in the early twentieth century. Away from the general tendency of artists, authors and litterateurs to slot Kolkata as a city straddling either of the two extremes of civilization – poverty or riches, cultural richness or defunct abject human condition, Waddell’s photographs give a sneek peek into the city living between these binaries. This uniqueness of his art, makes Wendell perhaps the only artist who has captured the essence of Kolkata so well.

Waddell was a Chief Photographer for the Huston Press before entering the army. He worked in the India-Burma Theater during the World War II as a part of the south east Asian front of the allied forces. In November 1943, Waddell was attached to the Public Relations Staff of the Southeast Asia Command. He served the Supreme Commander Admiral Lord Luis Mountbatten as his personal press photographer. Beginning in Ceylon, between 1943 till February 1945, Waddell accompanied Mountbatten throughout Southeast Asia visting many battle-fronts, hospital stations, and other war-afflicted areas.

In February 1945, Phoenix Magazine was formed. This was a 24 page weekly picture magazine, sponsored by the combined U.S. – British command. Waddell took leave of Mountbatten and resumed his life as a news photographer. Waddell was granted a leave after his return from the Singapore operation. In want to any assignment during that time, Clyde began clicking pictures of the erstwhile Calcutta. He ventured into some of the remotest, out-of-bound areas of Kolkata (and even on top of Calcutta’s Howrah Bridge) to click pictures. By the end of this passionate break from work, Waddell was flooded with requests from America and Britain for copies of his photographs.

The photographs at Aakriti reveal the responses of Clyde Waddell to a city experiencing a historic clash of civilizations – the east and the west. The poignant gaze of a western male on a city ravaged and plundered by the colonial exploits of Europe does not escape the ideological moorings of the images and scenes Waddell captures.

The album carries an introduction by N. Chas Preston and was dedicated to the GI agents.

Aakriti hosts the exhibition from 11 am-7pm.

"I have a problem with people using their popularity for political gains"

http://www.newsroompost.com/153313/zee-jlf-good-forum-writers-beyond-language-barriers-ravish-kumar/

Ravish Kumar is the senior executive editor at NDTV India. As a TV anchor, journalist and writer, he has created his own niche on social media, Hindi electronic media and in the hearts of people. This year the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival(ZEE JLF) 2015 will witness the inauguration of his latest book, Ishq Me Shahar Hona. As an invitee to the world’s largest free literature festival, Ravish will participate in two discussions on the 24th of January.

In a conversation with newsroompost.com, Ravish speaks about his latest collection of short stories, or nano stories, his ideas on politics, literature festivals and the readers/audience.

Newsroompost – Your latest book Ishq Me Shahar Hona would be inaugurated at the ZEE JLF 2015. What is this book about?

Ravish – It is a collection of short stories about two lovers in a city who interact with each other and in the process recreate their own cities. When we migrate from one city to the other, we adapt to and adopt the cities. So, inevitably we form a relationship with the city. I migrated from Motihari to Patna to Delhi. Each time I used to go back, I was told ‘not to become the city’ and not to ‘become of the city’. Values, habits, ideas changed over time in Delhi. The injunctions of coming back home before 5pm, not working for night shifts etc broke in the process of adapting to the city. This book deals with these processes of adaptation, adoption and migration. It is about two lovers who explore the city and in the process, their own selves.

Newsroompost – So, how do you look at the city in your book?

Ravish – The image of a city is very private in this book. This book creates a personal space for two lovers within urban space. The lovers talk to each other using city and its various components as metaphor. So, that is city in this book. Very personal. Like, a Bihari boy goes to Lajpat Nagar and is fascinated to discover momos. He eats them. Later, he gives the vendor athekua. Like, a boy from Karawal Nagar falls in love with a girl from South Ex. They talk about their own Delhis. So, it is an interaction of all these recreated personal cities for very different characters in this book.

Newsroompost – Do you think something like this has been done before? How do you see the journey from your first book Dekhte Rahiye to Ishq Me Shahar Hona?

Ravish – I am not a learned man when it comes to literature. This was not a work that I accomplished as a project. I write on blogs, twitter, facebook. In fact, this book is a collection of my writings on facebook. When facebook had a limited space to write about, there were a few lines I used to scribble. This book is a collection of 7-8 lines written on many of those posts. Dekhte Rahiye was a collection of my blog posts.

Newsroompost – Many writers participating in ZEE JLF or otherwise are not very happy with the way literature festivals are organized. As a Hindi writer, how do you find yourself in the space these festivals provide?

Ravish – I have been going to the Jaipur Literature Festival over the years. It is extremely encouraging to see that Hindi and regional literature have been given equal respect at this forum. There was a session of Maithili in the festival sometime back. The first Maithili newspaper was published from Jaipur under the patronage of the royal house. Many maithili brahmins from Bihar migrated there. And all this could be known because of the discussions that ensued there. We have acclaimed poets like Ashok Vajpayi  attending the festival. Even Vinod Kumar Shukla has been duly honoured at the festival. So, I think it’s a good place for writers beyond language barriers. But yes, I agree, that literature festivals are literary melas these days. Meet people, authors, readers, publishers alike like you meet someone at melas. But then what do you do? That’s how it has become everywhere. A writer should get an opportunity to move out of his serious cocoon. What is wrong in a little bit of pompousness?

Newsroompost – Can I navigate a little bit into politics?

Ravish – Yes yes. Ask.

Newsroompost – How do you see the upcoming Delhi elections, especially after Kiran Bedi’s entry into the BJP?

Ravish – It is a test of the public. Like many others, I am disappointed with the way political discourse has been reduced to hollow political sloganeering. There is, in fact, no debate. It seems personalities are being launched as marketing products – in all the parties; AAP or the BJP or anyone. Kiran Bedi comes with an experience. Kejriwal came with his own set of experience. But what are you trying to sell and present? All of them, each one of them, are selling administration as governance. What do they think? That people have no sense of judgment? Look at the hoardings all over Delhi today. It is shameful. Crores are being spent on buying that kind of space and for what? It is unfortunate because if we see zero political debate in Delhi, where at least we have a decent educated population, what do we hope for the country? Can we even do that – hope? So, I think, this election, more than anything else is a test of the public.

Newsroompost – I know you have said many times before that you don’t like hearing this, but the fact is that you are almost a celebrity. You connect with the masses and raise pertinent issues of concern. Do we see Ravish in politics?

Ravish – In one word, no. I will tell you why. I have a problem with people using their popularity for political gains. Though yes, some have done wonderful work as well but I cannot. I like understanding people, knowing them, meeting them. It is a challenge. I fail sometimes. I do some very bad shows at times. But whatever it is, it is this work that has given me this identity and I respect that. For me, the love and bond with people is more important than anything else. People have loved me a lot. They trust me a great deal. And I respect these emotions people have for me. Politics is a serious business. Karyakartas in a party serve and struggle for ages to get to a place where they are and aim to be. For me, it is wrong to use my currency and snatch their position just because I am popular. And am not popular because of my politics but because people think I did good work in whatever I did.

Nesroompost – Because of all that you said about politics when talking of Delhi elections, do you not think a person like you will do some good in politics?

Ravish – I don’t trust the public. If you say, I might do good work, I would also need people for whom I can do good work. I don’t see those kind of people. Do you see anyone protesting about the kind of ridiculously lousy posters everywhere? Look at the amount of money that is being used in elections by everyone who is contesting. Do I have that kind of money? Where will I get that kind of money from? Also, the person that I am, if I do not like anything in a hypothetical party I join, I will be the person to call a press conference and say that such and such is wrong. I am a creative person. I will do something else after I leave what I am doing. I don’t know yet what I will do. But I will do something. As to your question, no I will not join politics – in the ideal state that we are talking, as of now.

http://www.newsroompost.com/153313/zee-jlf-good-forum-writers-beyond-language-barriers-ravish-kumar/

‘Why should we blame only men?’

http://www.newsroompost.com/147009/blame-men-dr-alka-pande/

An art historian and writer, Dr. Alka Pande is a Consultant Arts Advisor and Curator of the Visual Arts Gallery at the India Habitat Center, New Delhi. Dr. Alka has delved deep into various forms of art and has written with care on issues ranging from art to culinary delights to body – androgyny, sexuality, gender and much more. She is one of the invitees at the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival this year. In a detailed conversation with newsroompost.com, Dr. Alka talks candidly about art, literature, politics and her intimate engagement with each of these concerns.
Newsroompost.com – Thank for this appointment, Dr. Alka. In your passion for curating exhibitions from across the country, you have touched upon so many facets of Indian artistic sensibility. Would you elaborate, what is it that drew you towards this art of curating art?

Dr. Alka Pande – We are all a product of our lived experiences. My mother was a trained singer from the Gwalior Gharana. I learnt dancing from Yamini Krishnamurthy. So, I was exposed to art at a very early age.

Newsroompost.com – You physically learnt various art forms and were exposed to mobile art – dance and music, then went on to study history, specialized in history of art, submitted your research on art; therefore, becoming more niche and more focused. And then, took up this task of curating art. What was it that drew you towards the mobile to the absorbed and felt and then a static representation of these various art forms?

Dr. Alka Pande – Art is all about the theory of colour, of joy, of beauty, isn’t it? All these drive the engine of art. And all these aesthetic experiences are shared. Also, in an inclusive country we live in, these forms are no different from each other. They inform each other and are but multiple representation of the same essence – the same rasas. It is a retelling, reinvestigating of the same themes in different formats and different ways.

Newsroompost.com – It is interesting that you talked about an inclusive country. In the current context, you would agree, won’t you, that the political atmosphere in the country is not very open to this idea of inclusiveness? There are voices that want films banned, sentiments that get hurt at the slightest pretext, and then issues that are far from being discussed in the mainstream discourse. There is same sex love, there is article 377; there is the third gender, there is political discrimination. In such a situation how inclusive do you think India is?

Dr. Alka Pande – You cannot do away with truth and what exists.Ardhanarishvara has always been my favourite concept. And it is an Indian concept. It talks about equality. Shiva which is staya and sundara. What is truth is God and is beautiful. If you look at it, it is life. Similarly, shakti is powerful and feminine and encompasses motherhood. The more I researched, the more I understood the nuances, the more I got exposed into believing that this is the idea of India and this is beauty. And both these forces coexist. However, much you would like to curb this truth, the fact is, it exists and will continue to exist. India is inclusive. Because at the core, it is non-judgemental. It does not prescribe what to do and what not to do. A concept like the Ardhanarishvara can exist only in this country. So, yes, I do believe that we are an inclusive culture.

Newsroompost.com – But do you not think that the kind of appropriation of this idea of Indian culture, which is going on in so many different ways, by so many different groups, makes survival for artists and writers like you difficult? Because, you talk of Indian culture in the most historical and ancient sort of way. You talk of issues that are better not raked up, according to some groups.

Dr. Alka Pande – You see, I am wearing black track pants because it is convenient. But that does not mean I am less Indian and that should not mean I stop living my values. I know of my textiles, my sarees, my brocade but as a woman who has to run and work and manage home and office, I cannot keep managing my pallu all the time. But at the same time, I like touching feet of elders. It is the manner in which you say things that are different.

Newsroompost.com – So, where do you think we went wrong? As a historian, how do you explain the change in this narrative about culture?

Dr. Alka Pande – I think it was the Victorian prudery that took it away – the idea of a cosmopolitan, international Indian which was informed by so many Victorian ideals which changed how things were being said.

Newsroompost.com – You are a curator and not averse to the market forces interacting with art which in some ways makes people in certain camps uncomfortable.

Dr. Alka Pande – How does an artist survive? Why should an artist always be poor? One has to erase stereotypes. Money liberates an artist. It helps him/her create more and better work.

Newsroompost.com – As a historian, when you see the decades gone by, how do you conceptualize development?

Dr. Alka Pande – Educate the women. The rest will follow. Women are born leaders. Enlightened women educate a nation. Sensitize them.

Look at the country today. Look at all the major NGOs and other slow beat sectors. Who heads them? They are all women. You may create lot of money and exclude lot many from your narrative. These are the people women work for. Women are basically nurturers. They have an inclusive world view. So, educate them. The rest will follow. And when I say this, I am being gender inclusive and not feminist.

Newsroompost.com – With the women question, I was going to ask you, are you a feminist but you answered that already. So, let me ask you this. Why is it that the feminist voice in our country today is so preoccupied with body and sexuality? It is liberating to talk about it, but in one sense, also limiting and is increasingly becoming repetitive and therefore, likely to be taken less seriously – by even women.

Dr. Alka Pande – And how is it about the body?

Newsroompost.com – For example, in the name of sexual liberation, pouting for a facebook or an instagram or a twitter picture, putting up the body for display on an exploding social media platforms where invariably, you have a male gaze judging you and appreciating you with all the nuances of patriarchal parameters.

Dr. Alka Pande – Look, there are three basic needs to life – food, sex, shit. Why should we blame only men? And am sure, you understand what i am saying, without myself being misunderstood. At 20 to 30 years of age, it is all about body. And it should be, unless you are a saint. Body is an integral part.

Newsroompost.com – Well, then to go back to my question, why can’t women writers accept it as a part and parcel and/or as you say an ‘integral’ part of life and move on to talk of things other than just that? I say this, because as a nobody, when I pick up women’s writing in India especially, I find the ‘canon’ bursting with almost everyone talking of an assertion of sexual freedom, as if all battles end there.

Dr. Alka Pande – Well, what else do you talk about when day in and day out this is what you face? Your tits and pussy are stared at the first thing, when you move out in the open space. Despite donning western outfits, why is it that you and I are covering ourselves with scarves and carefully blending the attire to suit as a dupatta. You might not be talking about it verbally, but we all are doing the same. Fighting it out. Women are wired differently. They are more vulnerable because of their bodies. They can be raped. Even men can be. But men don’t have to bear children. Therefore, for women, their bodies are associated with shame. That is how it’s revealed to them. Also, youth today, especially women, are talking not much about the body as they are talking about sexuality when they seek freedom. Look at what Meena Kandasamy is writing about.

Newsroompost.com – Glad that you brought her up. I was going to mention her works primarily among others. Also, with respect to the recent revelation of her traumatic relationship and divorce.

Dr. Alka Pande – Yes, she is a dalit woman writing of her lived experiences. I was glad I was born and brought up in times I lived in. It is very difficult for women like you these days.

Newsroompost.com – Do you really think so?

Dr. Alka Pande – Yes. We had less stress, less choices. Men, we married to, were more responsible. Today, men have far less commitment. Men are too busy screwing women and asserting the demands for working wives – all in the name of feminism. And women are busy talking about other women tagging them as sluts and whores and bitches. So, there are these dual lives and dual struggles that inform a woman’s life today. We had much simpler times.

Newsroompost.com – You are articulating it so well. But, I did not have to fight for going to school or college or working or living alone as perhaps your generation did.

Dr. Alka Pande – But we had a different life then. Today, everything is market driven. An investment banker girl with a pay check of a lakh a month will any day be more desirable for a guy than a freelance writer and artist with no fixed salary. This shift is important to be understood. Earlier, it was believed that only women made these calculative choices. But today, men do this too. Also, a rich, successful, alpha male today will always have women lined up for him according to his choices because not all women are as free and empowered as the others are and are happily ready fall in the traditional trap. So, women like you, today, have to fight these dual battles – day in and day out.

Newsroompost.com – So, what do you think of relationships today, then?

Dr. Alka Pande – It is about education and economic empowerment. Love is all crap. Ultimately, it’s about power and money. If you bring in money at home, your husband, parents – all will respect you. Also, neither the rich nor the poor women are bound by morals encoded in love. The poor have no option but to succumb to pressures and survive and the rich women can buy whatever they want. It’s the middle class, which is lost and confused and struggling in this grand narrative of love and its morality.

Newsroompost.com – Thank you so much for your time, Dr. Alka.

Dr. Alka Pande- I enjoyed the conversation too.

http://www.newsroompost.com/147009/blame-men-dr-alka-pande/

It takes all kinds of artists to change the world: Ellie Cross

http://www.newsroompost.com/146422/conversation-ellie-cross/

Ellie Cross is an artist from Seattle. After a formal training in art, she got interested in using art as a medium and a tool for curating solutions in order to create a better and just world. Ellie has worked in almost 10 countries and worked with local communities in Malaysia, Thailand, Guatemala, India, El Salvador, Ghana, Nicaragua, Tibet, Cambodia and the U.S.

Ellie, along with the local teams at all these places, created mural paintings on wide array of themes like environmental concerns and sustainable development, gender injustice and a strive towards equality, crippling poverty and art as a medium to learn and express, human trafficking and being salvaged from flesh trade among many others.

In a skype conversation with newsroompost.com, here is what Ellie revealed about her art and her commitments:

Newsroompost: Ellie, thank you so much for joining us. Art, in India is not considered a lucrative vocation and artists abandoning everything and embracing just art for their livelihood is a very brave step. You are from the US and have worked a great deal in various continents and countries. Do you think this kind of marginalisation when it comes to looking at art and giving it its due is a universal phenomenon?

Ellie Cross: Of course, yes. Art is not really a lucrative career option anywhere which is unfortunate given the immense possibilities within art. But i feel, one should follow one’s passion most definitely.

Newsroompost: You have done so much within such a short span of time. How is it that you fund your activities and your work? You were in India for a fair bit of time, for example.

Ellie Cross: I work for a bit, save, travel and work again. This cycle continues to run me and my passions. In India, i was teaching for three years. So, that kind of kept the kitchen running and allowed me to do my work.

Newsroompost: Your concept of marrying social commitment with art is a very beautiful and unique concept especially in times we inhabit where art either exists for ‘art’s sake’, is abstract or is vociferously polemical or political. How and why do you see art as this medium for social change?

Ellie Cross:  Art was always my calling. I knew that come what may, i will invest all my energies in art and work herein. It is so wonderful how art grapples with realities all around. You know, you don’t create anything anew. It is all interrogated by what you see around, what you feel and how you respond. Therefore, for me , it is almost impossible to dissociate art and reality or social commitment as you put it. Therefore, art has to and must invade meanings and help create something for a better world.

Newsroompost: So, you feel that art is political? Do you think art should send out messages for world – from the eyes of the artist as poet P.B. Shelley said that ‘poets(artists) are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.’

Ellie Cross: You are right. Art can not be a vocation in vacuum. It is very political. In fact, i personally feel that art should always be coupled with acitivism. That it should and must pave way for what’s happening around to what should happen around. Having said that, i also feel that it takes all kinds of artists to change the world. One common formula does not fit in all. Only activist artists can not be credited with the beautiful changes that we see or will see around. So, to go back to what you said, ‘art for art’s sake’ is also important just at Shelleyian idea of art is.

Newsroompost: Ellie, you have worked in 10 countries and have interacted with so many people, cultures, realities, responses and art forms. What do you think has been the most challenging situation by far? And what do you think are the challenges common to working in a dynamic space like this?

Ellie Cross:  Cultures, as you said, are different.  They created a beautiful dichotomy in my work space. On the one hand, it was amazing to know and absorb so much working with communities in all these different spaces. On the other hand, there was this huge language and cultural barrier that needed to be dealt with – broken and forged – before taking up the work that i envisaged. It took up a large part of my time, to form relationships with people that were conducive enough to come together for work.

Art, the kind which i engage in, is all about community coming together for a common good or goal or reason, or however you put it. For me, creating that condition to be able to create something new was the most challenging. Language, in that respect too, creates a problem.

I remember, in my first project at Mahim, Mumbai, i was so ennerved by the sheer size of population that came up that it was difficult to imagine completing that work(chuckles)…but we did.

Newsroompost: Ellie, you worked in India for a year. How do you see our country and what did you think of its potential, as an artist and acitivist?

Ellie Cross:The one thing which absolutely amazes me about your country is the sheer connectivity within communities. It is a culturally connected community. So, the kind of work i tried to do in India – its potential is huge and unique.

Look at this. The murals in slums and railway stations of Mumbai are now a community asset. It is great to discover that the community took care of its own creation by adding fresh layers of paint to it at regular intervals. That is the reward for community, its power to own and appropriate its space. So, in terms of potential, it huge – this kind of an ownership that incidentally happened through art there.

Newsroompost: Isn’t it similar to your experiences in Tibet?

Ellie Cross:  Yes, it is. In fact, Tibet showed me a microcosm of understanding art and how and what it means. I went to Tibet with a preconceived notion. I was cynical and thought that the western influence is consuming the Tibetan world and that it needs protection and preservation. But i was amazed and humbled to find how beautifully they had appropriated the western world view to their own advantage. Tibetans, being the smart people they are, are not just using art forms to preserve their culture but armed with the western ideals are forging new and creative bonds.

Newsroompost: What are issues that are close to your heart. I know you have worked a great deal on various issues and concerns, but what is that one thing that resonates with your commitment?

Ellie Cross:  I went to an all girls college. So, for sure, feminism is important to me. But i also feel quite strongly about environmental concerns.

Newsroompost: At the risk of asking you a very political and therefore a personal question, Ellie, i hope you do see some problems that are generated by the US and that has made this kind of ‘grappling with art for a better world’ a necessity. As an American, how do you see this politically?

Ellie Cross:  I disagree to what Obama has done in many ways. However, one has to understand that the real problems are structural – Obama or no Obama. Within the US,  immigration reforms, prison reforms are very important and need immediate attention. And you are right, the foreign policy of the government which is, by and large, based on aggression, is deeply problematic.

Newsroompost: What projects are keeping you busy these days?

Ellie Cross:  I am working on a poetry book that makes use of illustrative art and am working in Chile for murals called Window on the wall.

Newsroompost: Ellie, thank you so much for this beautiful conversation

Ellie Cross: The pleasure was all mine.

http://www.newsroompost.com/146422/conversation-ellie-cross/

Family matters and the unreliable maps of memory

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/bookbeat/family-matters-and-the-unreliable-maps-of-memory

Ira Singh's The Surveyor is a coming-of-age narrative trying to negotiate the realities of a recently decolonised nation. Weaving a panoramic view of social, political, literary and personal histories of the mid-20th century India through the characters of Ravinder and his daughter Natasha, Singh tries to grapple with the contradictions and binaries overriding generational shifts in the novel.

Ravinder joins the Survey of India as a cartographer at the historical junction of India's independence and the subcontinent's partition in 1947. Much against the wishes of his father, Ravinder marries an Anglo-Indian, Jennifer Robbins, and is blessed with two daughters, Anushka and Natasha. Natasha, the protagonist of The Surveyor, inherits the passion for cartography and reading from her father, Ravinder. In The Surveyor, she creates a cinematic portrait of her life, from households scattered in small towns, to the larger world of the city. The novel in that sense is Natasha's cartographic exploration of freedom and a search for her identity.

The almost sombre existential questions in the worlds of Ravinder's parents, Ravinder and Natasha, are negotiated in violently contradictory fashions. There is a fiercely savage grip on tradition and religion on the part of Ravinder's parents, Ravinder's own absolute rejection of ritualistic tradition and unstinting love for cartography and finally, a calmness shown by Natasha as she makes her peace with the bits and pieces of these previous lives that she encounters. And through the novel, one begins to gradually align oneself with the natural simplicity of being.

Memory and the act of surveying, remembering and chronicling form the essence of the book, in terms of plot, structure and form. A free narrative shift of physical location from Punjab to Dehradun to Delhi is akin to cartographic curating. It denotes moving on as a snap from one world to the other. Indeed, the strength of the narration lies in the organic tectonic shifts that Natasha's story takes. While lost in the rich dream-like narrative sequence of Dehradun and its hills, a reader reaches the end of a chapter. The very next moment, a chapter starts off in an upmarket Delhi space, jolting the reader as it quickly absorbs her into its enchanting fold. From one chapter to the other, one feels the narrative sliding away into wistful pasts, transporting the readers into a world of sharp images and moments punctuated by elegiac pangs.

The moments of lengthy, lisping almost relaxed recounting of details — as simple as remembering the almost forgotten Cherry Blossom shoe polish and Pears soap — have the ability to transport a reader to the real world of lost fantasies and memories fast fading into oblivion. The Coleridgean Kubla Khan experience of imagining and feeling a part of that makeshift dream which The Surveyor creates is so sensuous, delightful and rich that one genuinely wants that imagery to continue — without even a punctuation marring the effect.

Long, well knit, carefully carved and chiseled phrases and sentences mark the length and breadth of the novel. The preciseness of each word, the force of each phrase and the sensibility of each sentence is indicative of a careful craft.

Perhaps it's the conscious decision of the author to use memory as a trope to interrogate various themes. Memory builds up the story. Memory constructs characters. Memory conjures up historical and political details of Emergency years. Memory constructs and deconstructs the larger notions of nation formation, re-formation and deformation. This flirtation with memory glosses over a few important details of events in history, but one can see that this is mostly by design.

The novel could have said a little more about the time it encapsulates. Just as each character in the novel is well rounded and well formed, so could each moment in history and politics have been crafted. Perhaps, that is the limitation of memory or this kind of memorisation. Through cartography, memory, fleeting landscapes, polyphonic voices and a language rich in historical allegory, The Surveyor provides a dream-like experience. But like a lot of dreams, it also ends up being vague at certain places.

Dreamy, brimming with lingering memories, intense, rich and fleetingly sensuous, Ira Singh'sThe Surveyor is a recommendation for anyone who lives life with simplicity, honesty and adaptability. It's a book that seeks resonance in (and provides nourishment to) all those who search for their identities in their homes, families, work, solitude, desire and freedom. Ultimately, though, it's also about the price one pays for these things.

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/bookbeat/family-matters-and-the-unreliable-maps-of-memory