For those who don't "get" art

 Come Venice Biennale every year, across the world and more such, many popular fora get flooded with jokes on art and how many sensible, common people with little or no education in fine art (or aesthetics) don't get what's happening. It ends in whimpers from many within the art community and outside. I've been dealing with this question myself and in this post, I will address two issues, one of personal taste and the other, what you should look for in art.

Just a line before I start. You might be curious who I am, what my authority on the topic is and so on. I also find it useful to explain my vantage point because it will help you empathize and stay with my argument. I have received formal education in literature, psychology and media studies and my first encounter with (fine) art theory was in my graduate programme. From then on, I studied visual art, theater and performance and cinema. As you can see, most of these disciplines that I've had the chance to dip my fingers in, have been accused of bull shitting. In other words, it is a common claim that many people do not understand what literature, poetry, psychology, media theory, cinema and visual art produce. So, basically this question haunts me every single day while I try to produce research on these subjects and make truth value claims. I am/was as skeptical as you might be at some point.

Setting the ground:

Have a look at this: I'm Sick Of Pretending: I Don't "Get" Art | VICE United Kingdom
Is this how you feel? Does this post echo your sentiments and also reflect the rubbish you encounter at art galleries, fairs and museums? Good, then we are on the same page. The student here claims to be an art student and has done all kinds of things to participate in the contemporary art culture but simply fails to "get it"! This tells us that she, just like you and I, has a personal taste. She has an opinion on what is pretty and what is ugly or what moves her heart and what doesn't. This is true for all of us. Most of the times when someone calls you Philistine (a person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts) you quickly bounce back and say, "I know what's pretty and what's not." The question to be asked is, is all art pretty? Not necessarily. Does art have a function? Of course it does. Art can heal, it can inspire social change, it can educate people (the language of the image precedes the written word in fact), art can earn money in modern societies (so it can feed people too) and art can be as dangerous as 'the bomb'.

If you are wondering why I am talking of personal taste and the function of art, most of us go to look at art and ask these questions. We ask why red and blue, why metal and glass, what is this object trying to "do" and what is its meaning (in the functional sense; like bridges are meant to connect, food is meant to feed and art?). Of course, these questions come after your first impression (where personal taste comes in). What I am asking of you is to ask a more abstract question of art. And, this is my strategy to know "good"/inspiring art from bad/pretentious/uninspiring art.
Disclaimer: Just like you may not appreciate beer, different cuisines, the complexity of a new sport, dance or find a cultural ritual absolutely absurd, anything without a historical context can seem bizarre. So, before you write it off, read up a little around it. For example, Marcel Duchamp's Fountain or Rauschenberg's Black Painting may seem unworthy of being masterpieces to you. However, if you knew that Duchamp deliberately used a urinal to make fun of high art monopoly and Rauschenberg wanted to explore nature's essence by simply painting a canvas black you might warm up to them, no? I could go on about what makes us like popular art (different for everyone) but will save that for later. 

So, to give you my final strategy to engage with art works or performances, talk to the art. Ask the art object if it represents or acts. Simply put, in my opinion, a photograph of a woman rubbing money on her vagina is of less artistic value or maybe none as compared to video of women in burqa and hot pants in France walking on the street to oppose the Hijab ban.[5] If you see, while both instances seem like "shocking" acts by women, the first may not be disrupting, talking back or breaking stereotypes and its shock value merely relies on the nudity element or the obvious statement it makes. The second instance becomes interesting for me, not because of what it has inherently but for what it does to the society around. That is, to me, the crucial line between inspiring and 'dead' art. Of course, people make pretty, shocking, new things that may not be performing this disruptive function. And, you can like that too.

If you liked my argument but wish I could substantiate it with more examples, let me tell you about John Cage and his piece 4'33''. John Cage, a famous music composer produced a 4 minute piece which was completely silent. Yes, you would ask - where is the music? Use my strategy, ask what the piece/artist is trying to do, not what it seems like (not music or noise or silence). What Cage claimed his piece was trying to do is to assert that any sound is music, including the sound of silence.

Apologies for the longish post, but I hope this gives you more confidence to walk into a gallery and ask again - is this art?

Paradigm shift

I was wandering in CP, looking for the next metro exit when I saw a gathering of people. The moment my eyes lifted from their feet up to their shoulders, the Starbucks logo in green, surrounded by more green lights left me in a state of surprise and mischief. I almost pied-piperly scurried towards the sign and stood there, not understanding much. In front of me, some guy was announcing how truly Indian this Starbucks shop was going to be. Behind in the crowd, a drunk beggar was mimicking him to our delight. A layer behind, hawkers had set shop, selling balloons and cheap coffee.
All of us were just standing there, mocking for a second, wanting to go inside another - what they call a spectacle. I couldn't decide how to feel about the inauguration of a coffee shop. I wanted to laugh but I wanted to go in. I felt guilty, foolish, elated and the sense of having arrived. To draw a Rushdie analogy, I knew no child born after this moment was going to escape Starbucks in her language. Imaginary crackers lit up the sky in my head after having experienced a moment of collective history making. I know, dramatic.

This reminded me of my mother. One day I found her box of old toys; wooden blocks, wooden train set, tops and Vicks puzzle pieces. Yes, the Vicks medication brand. Each puzzle piece had four 'cough' demon faces. The evil creature that is supposed to represent phlegm in red, blue, green and yellow. I was so amused and dead sure that no one else would have this puzzle set. Mother said she got it from Santa Claus as a kid. She told me how, back in her days Santa Claus gave actual gifts in toy stores. She also got a Coke top. I couldn't fully imagine everything but in that moment I knew that this moment defined her as a person. That was her time.
Volker Schlondorff made a short film for the omnibus "10 minutes older". It was called Enlightenment. The film really changed the way I thought of time and also fed into what I believed as personal time. Basically, it seems to me, that in the act of living and in the things we consume we inhabit a time. Though we keep changing all the time, at some point we get fixed in time. We stubbornly use X over Y (also known as nostalgia) and sometimes we celebrate A over B (a function of our modern time over the past time that someone older than us inhabits). My Starbucks moment was this precise encounter with my moment, rather the end of it. It was like reaching the horizons of my time or a break. Some day, years from now I will be telling a baby that there were no Starbucks in this city and that people gathered to see the first one open. Much like how electricity, telephone, the first car, mall and so many more landmark moments just like my mother's Santa Claus and Vicks puzzle.
I am really struggling to pen this but I hope you get what I am saying.

Analogy

Long distance affairs are like a song with a beautiful, steady melody. There is a song because there is obvious melody, something consistently sweet in there. Peaking in little bumps time and again, week days are for silence, heightening the melody's haunting, soothing effect on you. And, at times it feels like the song is about to reach a crescendo, culminate. That is when you will know whether it is a song of victory or despair. But, instead, it just softly climbs down and continues to haunt you. You could choose to leave the room, in which case the melody is over for you. Or,  you could choose to stay and be tortured in sweet agony for an indefinite period. You could wait.

Post depression post

Edit: I am not emo. This is more like 'Hero' by Regina Spektor mood.

"Power to the people, we don't want it, we want pleasure 
And the TV's try to rape us and I guess that they're succeeding
And we're going to these meetings but we're not doing any meeting  
And we're trying to be faithful but we're cheating, cheating, cheating" 

Edit #2: This post was supposed to start this way: Like a rolling stone, for all wrong things known, like a bum without a home. An academic forlorn. Like a mossy mossy rolling stone. That's to show you I am tired of rootlessness and fluidity already. This is the prelude to my anti-globalization rants. Read on.

It's been a few days since I started my journal writings titled twenty days to apocalypse. Actually, since the beginning of this year I've been waiting for one. Don't ask me why. No, it's obviously not because I am depressed or superstitious or have nothing to do or had a few rough days. I don't even know what depression means anymore really. Everything around is mildly depressing in a grainy, white noise sort of a way. I am sure the time has come to coin a new word of this state of being. I am writing this on a rainy December evening in Delhi. You can imagine how that pushes the apocalyptic feel just an extra bit. It's probably also about December that I start craving clean slate.
You can take this as a dedication to all those who had predictable careers and snugly stuck in a regular desk job. Most of those who know me, complain that I am rarely seen or encountered in meat space, that I am around but never really and to get me to be somewhere means accepting I will join in only halfway. I've often even complained about time-turners not being invented just as yet. I've also complained about the absolutely illusory notion of good luck and always being on the wrong side of it. It's like there are five dates in every calendar month where everyone is free or wants to do an event or discuss something important. I can obviously not be at all, except I am no celebrity and hence my absence translates from callousness to snobbery to simple inability to contribute to "useful discourses of the ever changing world". Sometimes I hate you, Foucault. I hate the fact that these 'discursive interventions' were so powerful that everyone from marketing analysts to socialites lapped the vocabulary up and then throw their money at you only if you can present to them exciting observations of societal change.
I'll tell you why I think you are safe if you chose a conventional career. I am sure it's a grass-is-greener scenario but hear my side out. Have you ever felt existential crises as a regular breathing exercise? Ever imagined a Gutenberg world, of relentless publishing machines? Felt like you cannot take the next breath without justifying it first to yourself and then humbly (in apologetic parentheses with aptly referenced sources) to the whole society that seems to have suddenly discovered its potential political-ness? Every position is political and has disruptive potential. Yeah, you didn't even know that earlier and now that you know you are a stakeholder in cultural, economic, social, ethical and falafel way. So, I have to take your smelly shit and examine it to every thread. No, if you are an engineer reading this, you'll think I am talking about social media type statements. I am not. I am talking hardcore academic and worse, my recent experiences with art practices.
So, basically what happens is that you become the mother of jaded with two permanently grey hairs and even before you see an art show you hate the artist's guts. You can only think about how he fooled someone to get their money and trust me, an entire graphic novel of his "playing the field" floats past my eyes. Obviously, it's so uncouth to bitch about the world's exploding potential. That's why I am not writing a research paper on this. If you ever spoke to me on a day when I am more awake than asleep, I'd make the most disgusting faces at your every sentence. There's no way you could talk to me without upsetting me. Obviously, it's a part of your postnational, coerced global, techno-euphoric and all such portmanteau being. Even your being born and fully blossomed into an offensive individual professionally excites me. That's where I get my fodder.
If I go to America, they smirk. If I have a heterosexual boyfriend, they pitifully smile. New addition: if I buy a lomo camera I am a hipster. Worst, if I leave my text left or right aligned, it inspires terrible political jokes. That's why saying I am depressed will immediately throw me in your lot - the non observers.
What does this world look like then? I'll give you my own version of the Brave New World. While learning psychology I'd learned about the different stages of coping with stress. This is a world in its burnt out, lower level functioning phase. Being happy is naive, having a problem is not enough, having a bizarre problem that seems to dangle on the threshold of paradigm changes is the best bet. It's a post gay, post queer, post depressed, post Che Guevara t-shirt, post national, post digital world.  I can hardly utter that I see nothing new. I am waiting for the day someone says nothing is new and just proclaims a worldly TIME OUT with a T sign. Does this all let you breathe? Maybe you haven't even come across such acute anxieties because you've always aspired to actually reach America and get a house and have a baby. I really wish there were more of you.
So, before you all can jump on me and say this is all pervasive and nothing new, I am just going to say it's my quarter life crises moment where I cannot decide between desirable and undesirable. But, I cannot stop, I must continue investigating the undesirable because that's what a career in academics means. Btw, we call this feelings stuff 'affect', just in case some of you are cornered in a social science debate, this should save you.

"It's alright, it's alright, it's alright" ('Hero - Regina Spektor)

Twenty two - the year of repeating

"Trust me, it only gets better from here...", said he as I declared the onset of twenty two. You wouldn't believe, I've re-read my own writing over and over so many times only to wonder why I started writing in a particular way and why I stopped. I usually look for answers in circumstances but in this case I haven't found one. On the other hand, since the last post I've grown quite a bit. I've grown almost supernaturally in self consciousness.

It's how you are peeing one day and realize there's something so different about your nose and that day onward your nose has never gone out of sight. It's right there between your eyes. Or, like a really late late funny feeling one gets while uttering a word that one has spoken forever. Try saying 'schedule' almost twenty times with consistent pronunciation and not feeling embarrassed even once. (You can either say it the American way or shee-dewl it. Eww.) Another, I really don't know how - you know when people start discovering the books or music that you used to love a few years ago? You know you've made that journey but they won't listen to you. Everyone has to make their own journey I guess. Similar with Murakami. (I hope you who made your journey before me, are reading this one.) From Kafka to Sputnik to Dance... I had dismissed him so wildly until I read the running book. Note to self - never write something/someone off completely.

In fact, similar is with oneself. I still remember miserably sitting through a lot of drawing exams desperately wanting to make something good on paper. It just didn't happen. There were some who used to draw brilliantly back then. But age is not a bad thing. Suddenly, over the past few years of growing I feel so much more capable of facing the world. I can draw with definite control over the lines now. You must try it, really. Revisit things you couldn't do well as a child and do them well now. That will make for a much bolder future. That way one sheds baggage. I've been doing similar with singing, running (thanks to Murakami, btw books *do* inspire, you have to have faith), drawing, clicking pictures and telling time (I am almost there on this count). A few years later I hope to be more confident about cooking, shooting in video and writing, perhaps. 

I do get angry these days too, I've had fits of nothingness in the recent past. All due to the new experience of getting a full time job. Maybe I don't digest new experiences without absolute resistance. I've also discovered the word that describes me best in such situations - awkward. Lesson? Endure it, like really, hear each drop of nothingness, stillness, resistance, failure and confusion fill you and flow through you. As father says, "Nothing is too big. Ever." Sure, as I often say, these experiences take bits of us away, like Horcruxes that will never return (especially the breakups) but is there a better way? I don't know. Right now I just feel ready to take in more. Defense points - 100. 

There is so much more I can go on writing here. The last would be language and visuality (note to self: always end notes on joyous realizations, academics affords plenty such!) It's good to be studying visuality in times when all you say (metaphors, similes, analogies, even forms like poetry or prose or travelogues) is basically just word pictures. Can we say anything without drawing a picture of it? I know it's corny but we've been instagramming in words ever since! Such is the power of optics in language. Twenty two has begun. 

[Note: I have obviously omitted my profound thoughts on marriages, relative happiness, the dilemma of being eaten away by ambition and the thickening of one's fat + skin as one ages and a strong urge to have children. You've heard enough of that if you've met me recently]

(Photo: 'Fleeting joys' by me, featuring the apples of my eye aka Coolest Cousins)