Uncategorized « Fleeting Senses

Well, thanks for publishing about me. It is high time people get to know about me, how important a person I am – they should learn to be scared of me, eventually. They better be scared of me otherwise I will start rattling, and drop names – authors and titles alike, just to let you know how literate I am, and how unlettered you are.

I belong to the elite, and I have no guilt of being called an ‘elitist’ – although I openly claim my allegiance to Gandhi, this is one area of disagreement I still have with Gandhi and his egalitarian ways (If I were to meet him personally, I would have persuaded him to come off with his mask, like I have done, as he was constantly supplied by a very rich patronage to keep him in poverty!). Anyways, the Ceasework(s) programme just can’t help being inspired by Gandhi, although I have to enforce my own interpretation to his ideologies for the programme to become commercially successful and viable. I just use his name, as he’s more famous than I am (winks). At the same time one must remember that corporations like Ford have neither the time nor the discerning skills to understand Gandhi’s voluminous writings, so I make it easy for them to understand when I write our grant proposals to them.

I will let you in on a little secret of mine – I masquerade as a powerful man. This is an image I have built up over the years, after many stressful sessions of schmoozing. I like people perceiving me as such; it helps me enormously in my business (I will come to that later). This power of mine is solely based on information (as opposed to knowledge, mind you!). It helps me to drop names and scare people. Unlike Nietzsche and Foucault who had once talked about power deriving from knowledge, I have my own ingenious philosophy, which is more up to date with late modernity – times that all of us now belong to, where information is the key (you do not need to know much these days to win quiz contests, just read those magazines written in journalistic haste, and bang! you’re there!). This necessity of building a powerful façade comes from my childhood insecurities.

Back in my college days I had to bear with huge amount of embarrassment being an ignorant bloke as I was. But, thankfully back then I didn’t have to work in a bookstore wearing red, blue and yellow coloured clothes, selling books to equally ignorant college blokes who didn’t know anything about books, like me. Being ignorant at the same time as being earnest, I only used to play around five-star restaurants and swimming pools, and went window shopping near the Oberoi Grand Arcade. It was here that I met Mr. Ghosh, owner of the bookstore at Oberoi Grand Arcade. Through him I learned about various authors, and slowly I started picking up titles he referred me to. Not that I read all of them, or finished reading most, it was just a means to a bigger end. It got me interested in the publishing business, and helped me pick up the skills to position myself and pitch my ‘company’ as a reputable institution/ publishing house in the market. I realised how important it was to be known as a powerful man, to have that kind of an aura – this, in order to usurp all the rights of talented but desperate artists in the local market. I promised them goodies that included exposure to the glocal market and of international distribution of their published works (again, I dropped names relentlessly to make an impression, it’s all about marketing you see!) – to this, they readily agreed, but not without some disgruntlement, for they had to give up all their rights for publication. This meant, they could not go to any other (bigger) publishing house, which would have been commercially more viable compared to what we were offering – we were paying them peanuts (chuckles). So I paved the way for making substantial profit only through overpricing. The surplus was mine, all mine. I ironed out the residual regrets they might have had in renouncing their rights by simply throwing my weight around. I made them believe that their work was not so great to be appreciated by the masses, esoteric as they were, and that the bigger publishing houses wouldn’t even consider publishing them. Everyone soon toed the line. Before I realised, I had all the major artists in my pocket, and having been a lighting boy and fond of theatres (back when I was 16), I enjoyed the proximity this business now heralded to have my own puppet show, with all these major but desperate artists around (loud chuckle).

Aug

the plebian, the profane

By Siddhartha Hajra Leave a Comment

Categories: Uncategorized

Tired of watching photographs. Any photograph. Colour or monochrome. Documentary or surreal. Plastic art or digital. Film or photoshop. Tired of pseudo-experimentalists making tall claims to art. Tired of people trying too hard to be unique. Tired of people taking photographs too seriously, going gooey over banality. Irritated on being force fed with deluge of the banal imagery diet. Imagery that is devoid of any soul and that which is just another piece of mechanical reproduction of the world around us.

It was so much better back in the days when there were real masters, with real talents. The days of no gimmickry.

Really makes me wonder what is the limit to all this? Where does one draw the line? When does one reach the saturation point? Where has all the simplicity of vision gone? Mind you simplicity here is referred to elegance of vision. Yes, whatever that means.

I am numbed and nauseated by the sheer thickness of this heavy image downpour. It is so heavy that my tired eyes have given up seeing the good from the banal, sadly. The really good photographs are only mimicry of the masters and the plain ones just plain. But good mimicry is still good, as there lies the potential for real change. But where is the good mimicry, tell me?

Hip shots, not-looking-through-the-view-finder-shots, a wino-grandish outlandish shot, wishy-washy shots, a parkish-like light and shade rendition, an erwitt-like humorous capture, a kalvarish surreality, a pinkhasovv copy here, a webb copy there, desperate blind street shots – hoping to find rhythm in the scattering of the masses – shots spilling all-over-the-place like bullets sprayed indiscriminately on unsuspecting masses.

Meaning is secondary, style is paramount. Gosh! Style, FUCK style, if style is just an end in itself for you! Please show me a meaningful photograph, and make my day. Something simple, something accessible.

The inspired aspiring for originality, but is so star-struck that it has become very hard for them to gyrate on to an independent orbit. The distance, if there was any, is now getting blurred and foggy. The creeps are closing in, and painting the town red with banality. The kind which is consolidated by force (of numbers maybe) rather than quality. And they are shamelessly going about it, thumping their chest, making wild calls for attention. The moronic tweaking of the sliders on photoshop, mostly unaware of the red turning magenta, yellow turning yellow-green, the greens turning a little too green, and the solarised pixels wearing a plasticky gleam, reeking of aspiration hitting the proverbial wall!

Nothing that is thrown at me seems new or fresh. Overdone, rehashed, it just doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Then there are the comments. Someone should just shut them up or ban them or just use filters of some sort!

Time for some beer and a smoke!

Aug