To See is to Change: Discussion, Day 2
Duration: 00:38:21; Aspect Ratio: 1.366:1; Hue: 38.581; Saturation: 0.070; Lightness: 0.306; Volume: 0.254; Cuts per Minute: 1.356; Words per Minute: 101.078
Summary: A Parallax View of 40 Years of German Video Art.
Over two days, ten artists, critics and enthusiasts present a "recuration" of the
40 Years of German Video Art, a collection being circulated internationally by the Goethe Institut. These respondents brought to the archive their own urgencies and preoccupations, and suggested that this "package" is not a sealed entity, and can be re-read as a history of encounter and entanglement between disciplines, geographies, schools of thought, agents and artforms.
A package in this form this suggests a certain stability in the category "German video art". At the same time its circulation opens up the material, and its context of production and thought, its "Germany", to review by diverse and sometimes unsolicited sources. It is our good fortune to be able to promote such activity. Sehen heißt ändern, to see is to change. For more:
http://camputer.org/event.php?id=45The 2-day screening program was held on 14th-15th November, 2008, at Jnanapravaha and Gallery Chemould in Mumbai.
...(preparations before presentation)
German
Video art
Queen's Mansion, Chemould Prescott Rd, Mumbai
South Bombay
Jitish Kallat : What a fantastic and layered presentation, with tons of imagery to kind of go back and sort of disentangle. And, from that perspective of this effective use of language, I was just wondering if you had comments on the previous session and Kabir's slight suspicion on language as a tool and its effectiveness to provide an amateur, or even a post-production amateur to practice. I mean to me its an extremely valid tool - language, and so I was slightly uncomfortable with an extreme suspicion of language and I wonder if Rana has a point of view there.
Language
Kabir : Can I quickly say something before Rana can start.... I am suspicious of language when language is saying what the work is. I am not suspicious- I think language is a profound tool, its not....... I dont think moving image work ,when one talks about moving image work...- Talking about moving image work, and moving image work, are two different things. They are related, but they are two different things. And my suspicion is, when moving image work is reduced..- when the... perception or the thinking is that moving image work can be reduced to language,- thats my suspicion. Its not language that I have a... Language..I'm not suspicious of, per se.
Writing
Rana Dasgupta : I think that...I certainly am concerned, as I think of the ideas, with any attempts to substitute for an existing piece of work in another form. And if I kind of resorted to the form that I use today, its because I get enornomously bored by my own voice ..when I try to say things which are incredibly obvious to everyone in this room, who have already seen this image and no further elaboration is required. I think it is .. I've done a little bit about writing and I think it is a fundamental problem with our writing and sometimes..in the film writing.
The functions that control the motor movements involved in complex vocalization and object manipulation are very close to each other in the left hemisphere of the brain. It was maybe that there was an evolutionary connection between the language-using and tool-using abilities of humans and that both were involved in the development of the speaking brain.
Rana Dasgupta: When one is responding to a work in another medium, what is essentially coming up is a new work. And its interesting really, when one takes that responsibilty seriously and reproducing work, or often simply describing the previous work. I think personally I would like to be more excited by the things that people say about art for instance... and sometimes the argument is so grave in their execusis(?), that it totally transforms the way you look at the image... you've never seen it like Mriganka had mentioned. That's quite a rare experience for me,- the usual experience is that the descriptions about catalogs,... is they tell me something 'I would see anyway, I want to feel the art', that's also very disappointing.
The functions that control the motor movements involved in complex vocalization and object manipulation are very close to each other in the left hemisphere of the brain. It was maybe that there was an evolutionary connection between the language-using and tool-using abilities of humans and that both were involved in the development of the speaking brain.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'The Tool-Making Source" Origins of Language' by George Yule in 'The Study of Language', 2010, pp. 5
...
Ranjit : One thing is certain about these thoughts.. there's the smallest moment in Augustine's (?) where he talks about the nature of explanation and the formulations that .....
Ranjit : I dont really think that there was, or generally, is an attempt to reduce the work to language in that sense..... unless its in the really crudest possible efforts in that direction. I suspect what all of us or anybody who writes about the arts is doing, is to provide context, or to think... In no case, to really substitute the work with the structure of words .So I dont know if we can arrive at a general critique of language as applying to non-verbal, pre-verbal or non-discussive forms all we are concerned with particular uses of language, reductive uses of language.
...
Kabir: I would respond completely,... between 2002 and 2004, I was invited by the art department in UCLA as a Visiting Artist. I spent about 9 months over there. And I saw a very strong face of conceptual art. And it really made me.... start thinking about this, about these artists and its quite interesting and I went back to (?) and on my way ..and I asked myself howcome in cinema, there hasn't been the 'conceptual art' kinds? So, this is not to.....I dont mean not to polarise this but I think that in the atmosphere that we have around us is also a feeling that somehow ideas are important, and it doesn't matter which medium you work. And that gets opposed to a kind of facility with very technical things within the medium. That..sort of polarity also is very, very suspect.
Kabir : But I don't know if artistic practice is... happens one way,- so you have ideas, the medium is not important,- I dont know. Or medium is terribly important and you create ideas. I don't think either of the things is true. So when I am thinking of language, I am thinking as a practitioner and not the actor talking about the work- I think,- the serious writer about art. I think every artist has been deeply inspired and influenced by the writers about art. So that's not (?).
...
SA: It's very rare that you read a text about a work of art, a critical text that, you feel allows you, spaces to relook at the work again. Because often... I mean the historicizing is extremely important and thats critical to... its needed to make a work just as the artist, the critic.. all of us here ...I mean most of the artists, how do they respond to catalogue texts? Ranjit, Nancy I would like to know ,or if you can share some of the relations you've had with artists in writing the texts or you know... How do you approach this and work with the artists or without?
Art practice
Nancy : Well as a practitioner, one thing I have to be certain about that in our practice (mine and Ranjit's) we are not taking dictation from the artists, its not what is called an open art system where the artists gives you quotes and then you in a way put them into words which is the derogatory manner in which the artists are seen in India where they are reduced to within India. Art practice tries to illuminate the work of art, and illumination is brought about through various strategies and context. We write different kinds of text depending on the ocassion, so you could have a catalogue essay, you could have a theoretical text where the artist's work perhaps just appears shallow and there is this very different kind of orchestration going on. So you get this idea of taking one brush and trying all kind of writings. When you write for a newspaper its a very different kind of writing, you write for a catalogue essay, its different kind of writing, a theoretical text or historical one, the one which actually luminates a culture perspective is yet another character. And when you are writing about a work of art, you create another work of art. Atleast that has always been the way I look at it. Through your writing, you create a parallel work of art. I mean that should atleast be your highest ideal. And many a times its not just the people who read the works, read the essays or the artists, the artists themselves say that there were things that they have not even thought existed within their work.
SA: So thats....... a very personal relationship.
Nancy : Its very complex because then what happens speaking here as a practitioner, sometimes the artists start repeating what the critics have already said and that becomes the official narrative, which is also interesting to see I mean they dont do it purposely it is something subconcious because its like you have really touched nerve within the work and perhaps they relate so much to that criticism or reading that they start repeating it. And then it becomes a kind of official narrative where everybody starts looking at the work from that perspective as well. So perhaps Ranjit would like to add.....
Ranjit : I willl try to make this joke...As a poet, over the years I have stopped reading literary criticism, and I have started writing, and I deplore it. But as an art critic, of course I pursue criticism. Sometimes you have to see how to meet these two peculiar conditions. If I think what type of criticism I read its often by writers.
Literary criticism
Ranjit: Or as Rana has been saying, maybe we should talk about that you and as Nancy said also that, probably the best way of reponding to an art work is really to craft your response in such a way that you bring to it also an enriched and amplifed expression of your own which is artistic, and which has features that are clearly artistic. By which I would think of certain instances of meaning, put somethings such as intutive shadows of things which play across what you're saying. And very rarely do we have that. There is lots of criticism is not genuinely work of imagination, you dont feel that there is an engaged imagination at work. What there is, is a clumsy effort at representing the intention of the artist, or categorizations and label, which I think is also endless. I mean so long as we see that a certain kind of terragraphic shorthand is important, to..- so we are all in the same age so to speak- and that becomes a bludgeon. And there I share your expressions completely as well, where one is producing a verbal constructs that completely cut against and ruin what is going on in the artistic imagination. Well I've said enough.
...
As composer and critic Lehman Engle put in his book 'The Critics' a criticism is a studied evaluation over time of an artistic effort and a review is an overnight reaction to a play, concert or exhibit. It follows that the critic is an expert in one area of artistic expression, and the reviewer, more likely, is what newspapers call, a generalist, able to comment on a variety of arts.
Most critics are experts in their fields and when a play or musical composition or film has general acceptance as work of enduring quality, it is usually the collective opinion of the critics that places it in that lofty category. Therefore, it is the critic's role to assign an event a place in history. Reviewing that effort for the next day's paper is a smaller aspect for the critic's occupation.
To summarize, a review is at its most basic, a report with an opinion, but the reviewer can also bring so much background to his or her observations that there can be a critical aspect to it. A criticism is an expert's evaluation of an event, incorporating similar and dissimilar events to back up the writer's judgment. Or, a criticism might be an overnight reaction to a major artistic occurrence, differing from the review only in the writer's approach.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'The Critic, the criticism, The Reviewer, the review' by Campbell B Titchener in 'Reviewing the arts', 2005, pp. 1, 3
'The Tool-Making Source" Origins of Language' by George Yule in 'The Study of Language', 2010, pp. 5
Audience Member 2: I mean because we are talking about artists and their shared relationships with writers and critics... And so on sort of a more personal note. I was thinking how obviously there is an interplay between senses, so even though we are talking about looking at visuals, we are also thinking of sound, smell and I think the relationship we're sort of creating these hierarchies when we are saying that we are demolishing a visual by sort of talking about it. But on the other hand one is always excavating imagery through language, which is what I think as far as my interactions with some writers have been with whom I consistently like to share my work, I think its really like journeying along with the artist sort of a constructive exercise where your excavating ideas together which I would really like to make a point about. Its highly valued when one can build further from the existing ideas. So I think while we can speak about how words can really take away from the core ideas of the artists' intentions, they can on the other hand play a more constructive role .
As composer and critic Lehman Engle put in his book 'The Critics' a criticism is a studied evaluation over time of an artistic effort and a review is an overnight reaction to a play, concert or exhibit. It follows that the critic is an expert in one area of artistic expression, and the reviewer, more likely, is what newspapers call, a generalist, able to comment on a variety of arts.
Most critics are experts in their fields and when a play or musical composition or film has general acceptance as work of enduring quality, it is usually the collective opinion of the critics that places it in that lofty category. Therefore, it is the critic's role to assign an event a place in history. Reviewing that effort for the next day's paper is a smaller aspect for the critic's occupation.
To summarize, a review is at its most basic, a report with an opinion, but the reviewer can also bring so much background to his or her observations that there can be a critical aspect to it. A criticism is an expert's evaluation of an event, incorporating similar and dissimilar events to back up the writer's judgment. Or, a criticism might be an overnight reaction to a major artistic occurrence, differing from the review only in the writer's approach.
'The Critic, the criticism, The Reviewer, the review' by Campbell B Titchener in 'Reviewing the arts', 2005, pp. 1, 3
------------------------------------
...
Audience Member 3 : I just wanted to say thats very nicely said Ranjit what you were saying. You know I think the problem with a lot of writing on art, any kind of art, anywhere in the world- What I find missing you know there are two things- doubt and vulnerability. And the thing is that the artist always works with these things, works through these things... Sometimes conquers them, sometimes doesn't, sometimes is crushed by them and the person who writes on art needs to have same things as there in the processes. Because otherwise how will you.. you know that core we are talking about its not a... and as you rightly said the problem is when the core is violated. So what does one do with that core? One can only hover around it, one can only kind of approach it, there is really not much more you can do then that. Its like what they say about the Oracle and the Delpha and they say its a lovely sentence,that the Oracle and the Delpha just indicates, does not explain, does not tell you how. It just indicates. So that is what's missing.
Audience Member: Just in response to Kabir's and I think what Devdutt was trying to say that he lost a point but just confirming to what Kabir's talking about, I think what I really understand by the whole idea of writing and language and both the words, photography or cinematography as Bresson had said "Cinematography is nothing but writing in motion, and photography is writing....
Mriganka:- I am saying when you construct your thoughts to the screen, language becomes the intermediate, so maybe at that point the whole idea of pace or rhythm.So that was the medium attempt, to all those thing ,people like.... whoever believe....many people have been trying these things .The perception remains with the language, the dominance is not there its missing. But at the same time also we see people like Godard they say they dont even make films, its for essays,- mostly its novels. Like in history of cinema they have novels like you have written a movie and seen. This is just a comment.So what actually Mani did he say in his workshop,..he invited the students and told them don't write your thoughts, as in the usual way you write your script and then go and shoot or write a concept. So don't write it,- You take your concept in front of the camera, take your soundtrack and put it in the timeline, because the way your speaking it the rhythm and the pace... and that becomes your guiding track for the whole movement. I think thats the point which is not being talked about, that hasn't been contextualised in relation to writing .
Cinematography
...
Conceptual tools
Subuhi: Actually I think you tried to make a very very interesting point about doubt and vulnerability and why is it that when critics write they try to disguise or they try to hide it, they perhaps feel compelled that their writing must come along some kind of qualitative...or have qualitative voice, which of course they are making public. So seems there are distinctions drawn between critics and reviewers, and also what we expect in a sense really convinces them. Its interesting because reviewers ,atleast from my little experience as linguist writing, critical writing or reviewing, everybody has some kind of conceptual tools and there's this concept of a lay person that ...I mean it could be anybody, that could be someone here today or the reader of a newspaper they may or may not have tools or the perception of tools. I dont mean to say a thousand things.....but....... its a good question. and my thing ..to you... is sense and emotion- how does one bring that into critical writing. Is critical writing the space for that? Do they respond well (?)several critics writing on art. What I find sometimes at discussions, and not this one in particular, is that there is senses, emotion from which comes immediate response which is coming from some space that is...not showered with fury...is missing.
...
Rana Dasgupta : ... I find myself... out this discussion and if I want to know what I am thinking about usually and I just` listen to you I would find my self saying great I don't know so..
Capitalism
Ranjit : That makes me sound like Alexis (?) say a general secretary or president very wicked. But to respond to this, there comes a point,.. maybe in Bombay and not elsewhere, a point in these discussions where everyone agrees to blame the Times of India. I'm very keen that we should not do this because its a completely degenerate way of responding to serious questions. Can't undertake operations. All you can do is enquire into what is going on with yourself and your community. That is why I think vice in a procedural survey the distinction to your critics and regulars is important. I dont see my habit in both and I completely refuse to believe that there is something in the monster of capitalism that tells the viewers to be idiots. I mean they probably are idiots to begin with. So I dont see why you should blame capitalism. So the point is, before the conceptual tools of any kind comes to... which connects with ........ .Theres something more important than conceptual tools to begin with, which I think is a certain preparation and a certain receptivity and I think that maps on to doubt and vulnerability. Everybody has their own ways(?), critics have their own ways(?) too and I think its precisely that preparation, that receptivity, that sense of intutive connect with what you're writing about that prevents men from arriving at relevant notions into which you're just going compel or whatever you're looking at. I think whatever sins your reviewing are simply the sins of haste, lack of preparation, lack of receptivity, habit. I think in general critics would work from preparation and reviewers from habit.
film critic
Ranjit: I think the distinction is really terrible when it comes to cinema, where for some reason reviewers of cinema seem to suffer from the same problem of the kinds of cinema they keep reviewing. There's haste, there's lack of reflection and so... for instance the emphasis turns to what we are looking at. Now we are looking at a completely different domain, I mean what amazes me about the many weeks of discussion that we had internally as a committee, and these two days we've had, is the way these works challenge us to develop new concepts. And I respond completely to Rana's presentation, because it looks at..I sort of saw.... it was pulse-beat or breath and I was trying to explore some of these questions from the point of view of breath, poise, pulse, and what you've talked about- flash,- the quickening interruption in your narrative and we are in some way working towards notions that have no names yet.
critics
Ranjit :And I think this is the most productive possible space to be in for critics. I think its Frank Stellar who talks about the space between the viewer and the painter as his working space, I think its working space and thats the kind of space where we are testing our ideas, we are looking at even completely of the wall things.Rana's presentation put me in mind of certain notions of suffering, kind of what sorts of enlightment are you being given when all you're continuities are broken down in a moment. What happens with logic of wafted images that seems to connect in an intuitive way the flashes. And its moments like this when you review your whole critical factors and you renew it. So this is some kind of epigram maker, because the true function of criticism is really selfless, in some general way. And when people forget that criticality and self-criticality of the writings is just totally diminished .
Rana: I agree...
(laughter)
....
Audience Member 5 : .....I'm not being picky or something but I can't let it go... Which is that when we say someone shroud and Deleuze. I think part of the problem often is that the understanding of some of the....I mean deleuze is not a critic, he's a philosopher firstly. But a lot of people like him who've written about the arts, actually their writing is incredibly emotional. So as long as one knows that, and one is not necessarily talking about that..I'm just trying to understand what you're saying.., are you saying Is everything which is not accessible is therefore not emotional?..I just want to make sure that you don't get mixed up because we are the critic. Suddenly I'm thinking -...because I'm reading (?), who is also extremely emotional. I mean there are many names, I'm sure all of us can think of.
...
Writing
Kabir : I think writing can produce an opaque richness of ideas that can have a dynamic relationship to the work of art. So, that is completely in the domain of language and writing and so on. In films, the moving image work- that has been very rare. I'm not sure why. In film school which is from film theory department and which I'm friendly with people who are doing their PhD's in film theory, many of them are important film theorists all over the world,- and my teacher is an acclaimed film thoerist, Dudley Andrew, and once when I was speaking with him after I had graduated and on a visit asked him,"Dudley what do you think of Bresson's notes on cinematography?" He said" thats what we call a spiral truth. Here is a very beautiful theorist saying that he says over....pieces...written over a 20-25 year period the film maker has produced, all of a crisis. Because he says- 'what I feel inside and what comes out when I am working are so unrelatable'. I've been through the pain, and sadness and trauma because what I feel inside and what comes out in my work are so vastly different. And there was a long 6 year period when he doesn't make anything and starts thinking all over again and these notes begin there and continue over a twenty year period. So I think it's what is happening when? I think its which aspect of the mind is working where- this is a powerful relationship between preparedness and spontaneity, between conceptual tools and a gestural doing, I believe that area is not coming via the area that language comes.
...
Kabir : Yes...Perception .. because its a recognition... this is true for all things,for dancers, musicians, it's very true for musicians- they do and then see as opposed to see and then do, which is not to say when they are done with the music they dont go back and think. So its that kind of... give and take that ....I don't mean to pitch them against each other, or create a hierarchy.... Its a question of what and when.
SA: There's tea and snacks...
Ranjit: I think its the kind of conversation we should really continue.... I've been rolling around this for a number of years...
.with the more I hear of neuorology, the more I begin to wonder if we are confronted with some emotion that is deterministic. And I don't want to mislead what you're saying, but..you seem to be on the brink of something that is slightly deterministic as to what neurally can be done by people specializing in certain aptitudes and dispositions.
...
Kabir: I'll just say...its not deterministic.
Rana Dasgupta : I would give some very quick response to this. Its my own discomfort suspicions towards over-rigid distinctions between aspects of human sensual experience. I find, when the act of history, individual histories for instance history of war, art or (?) construction of oneself in a group ,you always think (?) partly perhaps because my own inspiration as a writer of fiction comesby now from outside my domain, it comes from visual arts, from films..and also music. And what's the respect these things occupy are different as rhythms in ones' life and one may resist for a while to talk about these things whatever they might be. I think the idea that there is some fundamental communication and exchange between these areas of experience and that should be part of our reception of them in the real world, is something that is personally important response to art. The idea of things are locked away into their own compartments and are not available to give other disciplines, or a contemplation or discussion, or like co-operation, is to me some sort of fossilisation of these things.
(applause)
Pad.ma requires JavaScript.
