“Formulating Dialogical Art”: 2015 Ila Dalmia FICA Research Grant recipient Noopur Desai

Noopur Desai talks about her newest research project archiving recent public art interventions in major cities across India.

The Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) has announced doctoral candidate Noopur Desai as the 2015 recipient of the Ila Dalmia FICA Research Grant. Desai’s project Formulating Dialogical Art underscores the value of archives for the future of Indian contemporary art and visual culture.

Noopur Desai. Image courtesy the artist.

Noopur Desai is a doctoral student at the School of Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Deonar, Mumbai, where she works on disputed notions of public space and how such notions inform art discourse and art practice in India. Desai’s grant project for The Foundation of Contemporary Indian Art (FICA), Formulating Dialogical Art: An Archival Project of Public Art Interventions, builds upon her dissertation research to focus on the cross-section of aesthetics and politics in post-1990s social activist interventions in India.

She received an MA in Art History from the MS University of Baroda, Vadodara in 2005 and a BA in History from Fergusson College, Pune in 2003. Desai participated in the archival endeavour, Publication Project, with Asia Art Archive between 2011 and 2015, in which she gathered and examined art writing and criticism written in Marathi, the official language of Maharashtra and Goa in western India. Desai has also worked as a researcher and programmer at numerous arts organisations and institutions throughout India, including Jackfruit Research and Design (Bangalore), Devi Art Foundation (Delhi), Vadehra Art Gallery (New Delhi) and Mohile Parekh Center (Mumbai).

Art Radar spoke with Noopur Desai about Formulating Dialogical Art, her research process and how she defines terms such as ‘public space’, ‘archive’ and ‘public intervention’.

Prajakta Potnis, 'Tracing a Disappearance', 2011, in "The Fluid City" co-curated by the Mohile Parikh Center and Art Oxygen (Mumbai, India). Courtesy the artist.

A birds-eye view of a shrinking lake in Thane city surrounded by semi-permanent residential structures. Prajakta Potnis, ‘Tracing a Disappearance’, 2011, in “The Fluid City”, co-curated by the Mohile Parikh Center and ArtOxygen (Mumbai, India). Image courtesy the artist.

Researching the public space

Congratulations on your receipt of the Ila Dalmia FICA Research Grant. I wonder if we could begin by discussing your background: where were you born and raised, and how did your path bring you to an interest in public art?

Thank you so much! I am very happy to receive the Ila Dalmia FICA Research Grant, and it is exciting since my research work has been acknowledged by one of the important institutions working in the field [of] contemporary Indian art.

I was born and brought up in Pune, a culturally active city in the state of Maharashtra in a family of social activists. Being exposed to various social movements in Maharashtra, I also became part of a couple of activities including a street theatre group and performed in various parts of the state. My participation in this group led to a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the public space. As a kid, I was surrounded by various kinds of spectacles in public space through festivals and ritualistic practices and was curious about the politics of culture that these practices transmit and play upon.

Also, my inclination towards the arts ushered me to pursue a Master’s Degree in Art History from MS University, Baroda after completing my Bachelor’s in History from Pune University. As part of my Master’s Degree, I worked on the dissertation titled Rethinking the Popular in Cultural Practices: A Case of Varakari Sampraday (citing cultural politics), which examined the contemporary cultural politics that have constructed the visual culture – including film imagery, posters, hoardings, calendars, public sculptures, etc. – of Varakari Sampraday, a vaishnavite bhakti cult.

The literature produced by the poet-saints from this sect did carry an element of resistance towards caste hierarchy to a certain extent in the pre-modern period. But, there has been a process of appropriation mediated via circulation of newer imagery in recent times. As I was tracing their processional path as well, I engaged with multiple notions of the public sphere and public space during my research process.

My engagement with public spaces grew more while I was working with the Mohile Parikh Center (MPC) in Mumbai and was part of two public art interventions titled The Fluid City and Land (of) Mine that were co-curated by the MPC and ArtOxygen. While carrying out these interventions, we had to deal with various kinds of public, their responses, their anxieties, local politics, possibilities of dialogue, issues of territoriality [and] accessibility, which set me thinking about the nature of our public spaces and how it is shaping contemporary art practices.

Anupam Singh, 'Ghar', 2012, in "Land [of] Mine", co-curated by the Mohile Parikh Center and Art Oxygen (Mumbai, India). Courtesy the artist.

Art students participating in an activity where they are making drawings about their idea of home, security, permanency, migration and shelter on raw bricks. Anupam Singh, ‘Ghar’, 2012, in “Land [of] Mine”, co-curated by the Mohile Parikh Center and ArtOxygen (Mumbai, India). Image courtesy the artist.

Archiving public art interventions

As a part of your grant project, Formulating Dialogical Art: An Archival Project of Public Art Interventions, you will be archiving public art interventions in India. Can you talk about this further? What will this project entail?

Formulating Dialogical Art is a one-year project supported by FICA where I am planning to document and archive various public art interventions that took place in major metropolitan cities in India, including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Kochi. In the urban context, the public space has emerged as a volatile space post-1990s with the processes of globalisation, liberalisation as well as communalisation. There are artists and artists’ initiatives that are responding to these concerns through innovative approaches. One such approach is by either encountering or collaborating with varied publics.

This has questioned the very definition of art and the logic of art practice. So the idea is to locate the shifts that lead to this transformation, as well as the art discourse that is shaped through these transfigurations. While tracing the histories and genealogies of public art interventions, I also plan to examine important theoretical questions to public art in India, including urban geographies, censorship, spectatorship, representation, aesthetics, artistic processes and also critical writing about public art.

What do you hope to accomplish with this project?

Apart from building an archive, the idea behind this project is to try and consolidate the concept of what we mean by ‘public art’: its various forms, gestures and myriad approaches. While doing that, I would like to come up with a possible analytical framework that would help critically understand this complex notion of ‘public art’ and its aesthetics as well as politics. It is also important to fathom the concept of ‘publics’, its plurality and what role does public art exactly play in contemporary art practice. It would entail different perspectives on possible experimental models through my conversations with artists, curators and participants/audiences.

Also, in the context of metropolitan cities in India, dialogical art or participatory art has emerged as a compelling art practice which offers a lot of possibilities in terms of understanding the methods and approaches. This project will help me formulate a comprehensive and augmented framework for understanding public art.

After digging a patch of earth at Azad Maidan, Mansi placed herself there and invited people to throw soil on her. Mansi Bhatt, ‘Bulldozer Yatra’, 2012, in “Land [of] Mine”, co-curated by the Mohile Parikh Center and ArtOxygen (Mumbai, India). Image courtesy the artist.

Art and public space in Mumbai

You have been working on public art interventions for some time as part of your doctoral dissertation research. What was the impetus to take up this topic and why did you choose Mumbai as a site of study?

As I mentioned earlier, I have been engaging with the public space through my research and programming work for some time. My PhD research is mainly focusing on the notion of public space and how it shapes the art discourse around it. Mumbai has a layered history, from a set of islands to a colonial city, from a working class, industrial district to a global finance centre, from a cosmopolitan city to a city that was transmuted due to communal riots, from a city of multilingual identities to a city of parochial politics. These varied aspects of the city have always enthralled me. They are present through reminiscences in various forms in public spaces and in the public sphere.

Mumbai has been a centre for modern and contemporary art practices ever since the establishment of Sir J. J. School of Arts in the mid-19th century and other visual arts organisations thereafter. Today, the city has a vibrant art scene and also the infrastructure for it with many private galleries and other such spaces for contemporary arts. In [the] last couple of decades, various spaces have been activated through art projects including studios, old abandoned mills, heritage precincts, public museums, and so on and so forth. This has obviously contributed to contemporary art practice, sometimes moving away from the commercial concerns.

The earlier mentioned economic and political shifts have paved the way for polarisation in terms of culture, economic status and identities, which has emphasized that public space is an unstable notion. So one is bound to ask questions about how artists are engaging with these situations, and how is their art practice being shaped by these changes.

Also, Mumbai is the city where I lived for the longest duration after my birth place and have been engaging with it in many ways through literature, daily commute, rallies, art projects, photography stints and so on. I am looking at the city of Mumbai through certain case studies. Those case studies include Kalaghoda Festival, an annual festival of the arts in South Mumbai, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, a museum of colonial collection that engages with contemporary art practice, and other projects such as Guggenheim Lab, World Social Forum and other public art interventions in the city. So I am looking at ‘public space’ as an institutionalised arena of discourse as well as a site for production and circulation of discourses.

Disguised herself, Mansi Bhatt is walking towards Azad Maidan after her travel on a bulldozer. Mansi Bhatt, ‘Bulldozer Yatra’, 2012, in “Land [of] Mine”, co-curated by the Mohile Parikh Center and ArtOxygen (Mumbai, India). Image courtesy the artist.

The research process

Could you explain how you go about your research? What are the processes involved in a research project of this kind?

I think the research process begins much before you actually formulate the research question. All these experiences, readings and conversations, have shaped a vague idea about my research. For example, I read Meera Menon and Neera Adarkar’s book One Hundred Years, One Hundred Voices: The Millworkers of Girangaon: An Oral History a couple of years back. The book captures personal stories and memories of workers’ movement, shutting down of textile mills, transformation of the city from an industrial centre to finance centre, displacement of residents and destruction of cultural economy, complex politics of linguistic and regional identities and [the] rise of right-wing politics.

These testimonies in the form of anecdotes render [the] history of the city and its recent form and shape the city [is] now acquiring. It also created a base for [an] understanding of the historical context of the city and also the post-1990s which I am more concerned about in my own research. So the process had already begun. I am currently reading on various aspects of my research including public space, public sphere, various models of dialogical art, notion of public/s, post-liberalisation condition in metropolitan cities, and so on and so forth.

It also involves interviewing artists, organisers, curators and also audiences. Their perceptions give a lot of new insights into the topic. So I have also started these conversations with people in Mumbai. Of course, I have some questions or points in mind, but more than structured interviews, these are ongoing dialogues with people which help me gouge deeper into my questions. My research also requires [an] interdisciplinary approach in visual studies, so I do readings from art history, sociology, economics [and] politics, but also I feel the need to borrow theories and terms from other disciplines like political philosophy, visual studies, anthropology, performance studies, architecture, cultural studies, etc.

Of course, the research process depends on the kind of project one is working on. For example, my research project with Asia Art Archive had [a] slightly different way of approaching it as it was an archival research project.

A pyramid created by performers mimicks Gokul Ashtami, a local festival while ridiculing the growth of high rise structures in the city. Tushar Joag, ‘Hypohydro Hyperhighrise’, 2011, in “The Fluid City”, co-curated by the Mohile Parikh Center and ArtOxygen (Mumbai, India). Image courtesy the artist.

A public art archive

I’m interested in your decision to focus and use the vehicle of an archive. What form will the archive take? Will it be physical, digital or both? Who will have access to it and where will it be located?

The archive will be built as a second phase of this project. It will be an online archive of various public art projects, interventions, critical essays, photographs, video clippings, field notes, stories, etc. open to the global public. Firstly, I feel that documentation is very crucial in [the] case of public art interventions, which are ephemeral, process-oriented and sometimes long-term. Secondly, archives play a significant role in the constitution of a public sphere and also create alternative forms of participation, collective writing, creation and production.

Since I am going to work on documenting and collecting information about public art interventions for a year, it will be a solid chunk of collection, which needs to be available to people for research, reference and reading. So an online archive will be an easily accessible platform that could be used by anyone from any geographical location, especially artists, researchers, curators, writers and other cultural practitioners. In addition, since the project is supported by FICA, all the material will be available in their Reading Room in Delhi for researchers and students in digital format.

Why have you chosen to build an archive? What is the importance of archives for the history of visual culture in Mumbai and India specifically?

Public art is a form where artists employ different materials, forms, techniques, technologies [and] strategies, so it demands a different set of interrogations. As I have mentioned earlier, these interventions cannot be simply captured and preserved through images like other art objects; video documentation of the process, interviews with artists, participants, spectators, curators and critical writings contribute to a wholesome understanding of such projects. The idea is also to develop systematic ways of documenting and archiving these projects, which may not become part of the public sphere due to their temporal, ephemeral and also non-commercial nature.

There are archives containing historical material, periodicals, newspapers, images and gazettes that have played a crucial role in visual culture research, but as you may know there are a very few archives dedicated to visual arts and visual culture in India. So I think it will be a significant contribution to [the] contemporary art field, as it will capture and preserve the recent history of one of the contemporary art practices – public art. I am also interested in looking at how archival practices are instrumental in shaping art practice and visual culture once it becomes an active site. Also, it will be a way of intervening into the processes of knowledge production and also contesting the dominant trajectories of contemporary art that are being produced and circulated. The archive will evolve with time, which could also become a site to develop new projects in future. Furthermore, I feel that archiving is a creative process that would allow me to apply imaginative ways of compiling, classifying and annotating the data.

Kids from Mankhurd slum looking at the water signage. Sharmila Samant, ‘Mrigjal – the mirage’, 2011, in “The Fluid City”, co-curated by the Mohile Parikh Center and ArtOxygen (Mumbai, India).
Image courtesy the artist.

How exactly do you define a ‘public intervention’? Can you offer a few examples of the interventions you have orchestrated or witnessed in your practice?

For me an art intervention refers to an act of entering into a location, space, situation or an artwork in an attempt to question and alter the existing understanding of art practices, stir the present state of affairs not only in the art field but also in the social, cultural and political context of a particular locale.

Here, I would like to talk about two projects that I was part of. Both these projects were conceived by the artists as part of “The Fluid City”, a public art intervention co-curated by the Mohile Parikh Center, where I was working at that point of time, and ArtOxygen in Mumbai. “The Fluid City” was a project that addressed the issue of the paradoxical role that water plays in the city.

In her project Mrigjal – The Mirage, Sharmila Samant collaborated with a geologist/water diviner looking for hidden underground water bodies. She placed signs indicating the existence of water. At one of her sites, she along with her collaborator traced the water in a slum area near Mankhurd. As she found the water-bodies there, she decided to convert those simple signs into art objects which were then sold to raise funds for the community. Considering that the slum was facing water scarcity, these funds were later used to build wells as per the community’s proposition. Samant has been closely involved with the community for a very long time through various actions and her rapport with the community lead to the constructive outcome at the end of the project.

In the same project, there was another intervention that panned out in a way that it charged up the setting but was extremely stimulating for all of us. Tracing a Disappearance was an intervention-performance conceived by Prajakta Potnis where she had planned to retrace original boundaries of a lake in Thane, one of the suburbs of Mumbai. Her performance was about drawing a thick line with chalk powder on the surface of the earth which, though seemed like a simple, harmless act, eventually turned out to be a very volatile one. People feared that her action would displace them from their semi-legal housing, which is now encroaching upon the shrinking lake. The performance was stopped after the local political goons threatened the artist and organisers to break their equipment. This whole incidence raised a lot of issues about our notion of art, art language and its communicability, the ambivalent ground that we have to deal with when we enter a public space, questions about representation, identities and also issues of development in the context of a metropolis.

A water diviner/geologist with his forked rod and other equipment looking for traces of water in a slum area. Sharmila Samant, ‘Mrigjal – the mirage’, 2011, in “The Fluid City”, co-curated by the Mohile Parikh Center and ArtOxygen (Mumbai, India). Image courtesy the artist.

The concept of ‘public space’ is nuanced and often politically determined. What is the context of your public interventions? Who is contending with whom over what?

Yes, public space is a nuanced concept, and not at all homogeneous. It is crucial therefore to see how it is produced and interspersed with, what are its determinants, parameters, what does it instigate. It is a product of historically specific material, conceptual and quotidian practices and at times is a concrete abstraction as put forth by Henri Lefebvre. In one sense, it’s a institutional, architectural, physical space, and in another sense it’s a geographical, social, political space. It could also enter into virtual space or mediatic space.

I am looking at the social and political context of these interventions. As I mentioned earlier, my focus is on the last 25-30 years after the process of liberalisation begins in India. The frenzied development in these metropolitan cities, city planning and aspirations to create so-called ‘smart cities’, changing patterns of consumption, privatisation of various spaces, coming of surveillance systems and, at the same time, the simultaneous process of communalisation of spaces, growth of sectarian politics, linguistic identities, parochialism, encroachment on basic right of freedom of expression have all contributed to create a complex understanding of art that is being produced in these contexts. So my focus is not on ‘commissioned’ works that are generally considered to be installed to revitalise or regenerate city spaces.

The complex situation in these cities does invoke questions of democracy, who the public is, what their roles in the process of these interventions [are], what art language do the artists employ, how curators deal with these circumstances, are there any spaces being created for a mutual dialogue, how are critics engaging with these modes of practice through their writings, does the community allow these interventions or reject them, what roles do authorities play in terms of permissions, censorship, etc. So the contestations are at multiple levels and are layered.

Prajakta Potnis is drawing a line with chawk powder on the road while tracing the original boundary of the lake. Prajakta Potnis, 'Tracing a Disappearance', 2011, in "The Fluid City", co-curated by the Mohile Parikh Center and ArtOxygen (Mumbai, India). Image courtesy the artist.

Prajakta Potnis is drawing a line with chalk powder on the road while tracing the original boundary of the lake. Prajakta Potnis, ‘Tracing a Disappearance’, 2011, in “The Fluid City”, co-curated by the Mohile Parikh Center and ArtOxygen (Mumbai, India). Image courtesy the artist.

Asia Art Archive Publication Project

You recently completed another archival project with Asia Art Archive, Publication Project. Can you tell us about it?

Publication Project was initiated by Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong and was conceived as an outcome of their “Bibliography of Modern and Contemporary Art Writing of India” project started in 2011. The bibliography project compiled an extensive online resource of art writings in 13 different languages of India from 19th and 20th centuries. The next step in the process was the conception of Publication Project, which focused on four Indian languages including Tamil, Bengali, Hindi and Marathi where they approached me to look at art writings in Marathi. The idea was to explore how art writing in various languages has over the last century attempted to make legible the changing field of modern art, its regional specificities and its changing geo-political contexts.

I collected articles, interviews, symposia, biographical notes, diary entries [and] exhibition reviews published in various mainstream periodicals, little magazines, leisure magazines, etc. during my visits to archives and libraries, including Vishrambaugwada Vibhagiya Shasakiya Granthalay (Periodicals Section) and Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad (Pune), Mumbai Marathi Granthasangrahalay and Sir J. J. School of Art Library (Mumbai). After my constant discussions with the AAA team and editors, I decided to focus on the writings from the 1960s and 1970s, since this period produced new cultural imaginations through the articulation of regional identity with the formation of the state of Maharashtra, beginning of Dalit literature and movement, and emergence of the little magazine movement, new forms of poetry and theatre.

A migrant worker at a brick kiln preparing raw bricks with an imprint of Ghar on them. Anupam Singh, ‘Ghar / Home’, 2012, in “Land [of] Mine”, co-curated by the Mohile Parikh Center and ArtOxygen (Mumbai, India). Image courtesy the artist.

The final outcome of this project was a research paper titled An Enquiry into the Regional Modern: Mapping the Notion of Navata or Newness in the Art Writings in Marathi Periodicals (1950s-1970s) that was presented in a two-day colloquium titled “The Art of Dissemination: Writing Cultures” conceptualised and organised by Asia Art Archive in collaboration with the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta in February 2015. Asia Art Archive is now in the process of translating some key texts, which will be published in the form of a dossier soon.

Rachel Chamberlain

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