LOVE IN THE TIME OF DESPAIR – ART BEYOND CONFLICT
Durriya Kazi
Punjab Artists Association seminar ‘Art in the Time of Conflict” March 19, 2010. Lahore
Art is always enacted in a contested site.. either challenging traditional definitions of aesthetics and rules; or presenting new interpretations of lived and observed events and experiences; or even by taking sides in the political dynamics of its time either, as in the past, supporting those in power, such as kings and religious institutions, or revolution, or, as today, by challenging those powers by raising questions about their conduct. So one could say we have always lived in times of conflict. Society is always striving to transform itself and there are always forces that resist change, and art usually finds itself in the eye of that storm.
However if we are basing this debate on the current political conditions with its resultant wars that have spread across the whole world more extensively than the so called world wars, then I would say again the world has always been at war. It is speculated that since 3600 B.C the world has known only 292 years of peace. And in many ways the wars have been more horrific than the wars using modern weaponry: medieval battle fields were littered with those wounded or with amputated limbs caused by weapons such as clubs maces axes with perhaps only the arrow or crossbow killing or wounding cleanly. Conquerors routinely brutally slaughtered prisoners of war by the thousands.
So what is different about the present wars? I would say it is our visual access to them.. not only do we watch Baghdad before during and after its destruction, and travel with embedded journalists into battle fields, the battle comes right into our lives through the screens in our homes, or the papers delivered to our doorsteps. In the middle of breakfast or halfway through a phone conversation or homework with the children or a social evening with friends.. the infamous ‘breaking news’ shatters our chosen moments of peace. This is for those few who watch conflict from afar. Then there are those who are in the war zones: the people who flee their homes, whose children stumble upon dead bodies on mountainsides, whose shopping outings turn into a carnage of scattered limbs.
I am sure, like myself many are drowning or suffocating in the excess of these images. For the last decade or so, young Pakistani artists have heroically tried to respond to the impact of these images and events, trying to suggest ways to contextualize them, suggest possible responses, or simply recording their own sense of horror or to urge protest. There was a belief from the times of the Athenian civilization that facing grief, fear, death was what Aristotle called cathartic. However there is growing evidence that images of violence, in the political arena, daily crimes, cinema, video or computer games, are no longer cathartic, but traumatising or brutalizing. The voyeuristic appetite for disaster and death seems increasingly insatiable. The artist has to beware of being trapped into offering more to appease this anticipation. Zainul Abideen made a series of powerful sketches of victims of famine, but he was able to return to other concerns afterwards. Would Rashid Rana be allowed by the art market and the art critic to go beyond shocking socio-political imagery?
The Italian art critic and theorist, Achille Bonito Oliva, made a shocking statement at the Karachi exhibition, Islam in Sicily. He said that the crashing of the aeroplanes into the World Trade Centre was the world’s most ambitiously orchestrated art performance. This was because of the ten minute space between the impacts of the two aeroplanes, that allowed every news channel to aim their cameras on the building. This is a horrifying thought.
The internet is full of dare one say beautifully composed photographic images of war and disaster. There is even a site of artistic photographs from the battlefield taken by American and British Soldiers. Many of these find their way into newspapers, magazines and so into our physical world, lying casually on a table or in the hands of a vendor at traffic lights. As aesthetically viable images, with similar messages and intentions as art, does art need to traverse the same terrain?
My own work since the invasion of Afghanistan by USSR in 1979 has been somehow a response to the human tragedies of violent conflict and war. The most direct work was Witness in which realistic life size dead bodies made in unfired clay are left to disintegrate or be removed as an acknowledgement of the civilian casualties we forget. I meant to make these at every forgotten site of violent conflict, but I cannot. It was too traumatizing to have made them at all. And it was too painful for many viewers especially Iraqi visitors , and more so as the figures started grotesquely breaking up. I feel the need to heal, to heal myself and hopefully those who would encounter the work.
Rashid Rana said in an interview after the Hanging Fire Exhibition in Washigton "I love art history, and formal art concerns are very important in my work—but I cannot deny the time we are living in." I love Rashid’s work and I think it was very important that he made them when he did. But some part of me says that is war the only experience of our times? Are there not also farmers planting rice fields, dhabas brewing tea, young people falling in love, village women embroidering their wedding clothes, bankers going to work, musicians and singers filling the air with melody, flowers blooming on treetops .. all in the midst of this seemingly endless carnage and moral imbalance? Is it not time to acknowledge this ignored yet much larger human endeavour?
I do not suggest we return to making pretty tourist paintings, nor do I suggest escapism, or that Rashid should stop making the work he does. In fact I suggest more facets of our time, hope in the midst of despair, choices of being. There are heroes outside the battlefield who are trying to live not simply survive, and we crush their spirits daily by heaping despair, by rendering them invisible.
Curious to discover if there was a tradition of healing the human spirit in our society, I kept returning to the sufis of our land. The many mazaars of Pakistan are visited by countless people . They are the great equalizers of society, where economic class, religion, race have no hierarchy. One would think that the aulia and sufis, many of whom chose to settle in remote areas, managed to escape from the vagaries of their times, absorbed in tasawwuf and zikr, composing poems of love . But in reality they lived in times of great political turmoil and intrigue, terrible wars, invasions and massacres. The flowering of Sufism was between the 12th and 16th centuries, the times of rival caliphates, assassinations, brutal Mongol invasions that slaughtered thousands, and burnt libraries, and had to constantly migrate to survive.
Rumi was witness to the destruction of Baghdad and had to flee for his life, Amir Khusro was an integral part of the courts of 8 warring kings, and even took part in the war against Mongols in 1285, Bulleh Shah's time was marked with communal strife between Muslims and Sikhs. Yet they only spread the message of love. I am not an initiate, yet I am drawn to conclude that sufism is the bedrock of Pakistani society, whether directly through pir and murshid, or indirectly through poetry, folksongs and qawwali.
As I drown in the river of violence like Sohni on a vessel of betrayal, I look for answers in the surety of these remarkable people.
The sufis taught the powerless to sublimate, but they did not turn their backs on their times,
Baba Farid writes:
I thought I was alone who suffered.
I went on top of the house,
And found every house on fire.
Bulleh Shah says,
I would have remained silent,
It is love that compels me to speak forcefully.
Stay silent to survive.
People cannot stand to hear the truth.
They are at your throat if you speak it.
They keep away from those who speak it.
But truth is sweet to its lovers!
And he writes:
The soil is in ferment, O friend
Behold the diversity.
The soil is the horse, so is the rider
The soil chases the soil, and we hear the clanging of soil
The soil kills the soil, with weapons of the soil.
That soil with more on it, is arrogance
The soil is the garden so is its beauty
The soil admires the soil in all its wondrous forms
After the circle of life is done it returns to the soil
Answer the riddle O Bulleh, and take this burden off my head.
Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai writes
Tell me the stories, oh thorn-brush, Of the mighty merchants of the Indus, Of the nights and the days of the prosperous times, Are you in pain now, oh thorn-brush? Because they have departed: In protest, cease to flower.
And
True, the river has gone dry, And worthless plants have begun to flourish on the brink, The elite merchants are on decline, And the tax collectors have disappeared, The river is littered with mud And the banks grow only straws The river has lost its old strength, You big fish, you did not return When the water had its flow Now it's too late, You will soon be caught For fishermen have blocked up all the ways. The white flake on the water: Its days are on the wane.
Rumi writes
I'm sick of mortal kings.
I long to see your light.
With lamps in hand
the sheikhs and mullahs roam
the dark alleys of these towns
not finding what they seek.
Rumi - 'The Love Poems of Rumi' - Deepak Chopra & Fereydoun Kia
And elsewhere
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You're covered with a thick cloud.
Slide out the side.
Rumi - The Essential Rumi - Coleman Barks
Art and politics have always been yoked together, recording battles, honouring kings or revolutionaries. Art objects are preserved as symbols of civilization, plundered at times of war, or destroyed as an expression to power. In the past the balance in society was also preserved by philosophers, mystics, composers, poets and revolutionaries. Today there is a deafening silence. It is only art across the world that appears to have not given in.
I have to leave it here hanging in the air, because I am not sure yet how art can parallel the sublimation of sufis. I simply feel the pain of our times, and anger, protest and rage are simply not enough.
Like Hafiz Shirazi
Come,
let's scatter roses and pour wine in the glass;
we'll shatter heaven's roof and lay a new foundation.
If sorrow raises armies to shed the blood of lovers,
I'll join with the wine bearer so we can overthrow them.
With a sweet string at hand, play a sweet song, my friend,
so we can clap and sing a song and lose our heads in dancing.
Hafiz (Ghani-Qazvini, no 374) ' the Shambhala Guide to Sufism' Carl.W Ernst, Ph.D.
Durriya Kazi
Karachi March 2010
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