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https://theconversation.com/at-once-silent-and-eloquent-a-glimpse-of-pakistani-visual-poetry-70544 ‘At once silent and eloquent’: a glimpse of Pakistani visual poetry February 13, 2017 6.55pm AEDT Author Durriya Kazi Head of department Visual Studies, University of Karachi Disclosure statement Durriya Kazi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above. Partners View all partners Republish this article Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence. Rickshaw poetry in Pakistan.  D.Kazi ,  CC BY-NC-ND   Email   Twitter 33   Facebook 239   LinkedIn 1  Print Whose mischief created a world of beseechers? Each petitioner is seen wearing a garment of paper This line from the famous Mughul poet  Ghalib ...

THE ART OF BALANCE When society strives to transform itself, there are always forces that resist change, and art usually finds itself in the eye of that storm, challenging traditional definitions of aesthetics or presenting new interpretations of events and experiences. Today the world feels as if it is being torn apart. “We are surviving as if in a daze,” as Frantz Fanon explains it. It is speculated that since 3600 BC the world has known only 292 years of peace. In many ways the wars of the distant past would have been more horrific than the wars using modern weaponry meting out instant death. Conquerors routinely brutally slaughtered prisoners of war by the thousands. So why are the present wars so traumatising? Partly, we are lulled into a false sense of security by the increasingly comfortable lives we lead. However, it mostly happens because of our visual access to war and its effects. Embedded journalists ensure that the battle comes right into our lives through the tele...

THE AESTHETICS OF EVERYDAY Many years ago Azra Jalauddin Ahmed said to me, “Beti we have lost the grace of living.” The phrase has stayed with me ever since. As we enter deeper and deeper into the world of survival instead of living, one becomes urgently conscious of finding those clues or vestiges of that seemingly lost grace. An increasing number of people are enrolling in art schools, yet aesthetics is daily being sacrificed by arguments of economics, expediency or development goals. Of course, roads need to be expanded. If a beautiful tree is in the way, expediency demands it must be immediately cut down rather than the time-wasting exercise of careful transplantation. How annoying it is that the Katrak building on prime land that could be developed into lucrative real estate, has been listed as heritage property in Karachi? It raises the argument that it is more important to teach aesthetics than produce artists. Sports has been accepted as an important part of the educati...

THE CITY AS ART One can see the city through the eyes of an urban developer, a land grabber, law enforcement, a sociologist, a social worker, an advertiser and a number of other lenses. For an artist the city reveals itself very differently. Many artists have found their inspiration in the streets of this city, its buildings its people. Athar Jamal, Masroor Haider, A Q Arif, Arif Mahmood, more directly recording its people and places and many others such as Roohi Ahmed and Munawar Ali, tangently inspired by the mood of the city and its activities. One can also see the city itself as art. As a sculptor, where few art galleries are large enough to accommodate sculptures, I came to see the streets and bazaars themselves as art Galleries.  The metal and wood markets   with their organized stacks of wood  or  ball bearings reminiscent of a Louise Nevelson Sculpture, the hissing furnaces of Eid Gah metal market banging out tools from red hot metal, the delicat...

WHEN PEOPLE SAID WAH! INSTEAD OF WOW! Do you remember words like gapastic, loafer, chughad. ahmaq, ullu ka patha, char sau bees or 420 ? People described their spouses as begum or ghar wali instead of mer i wife, and meray shohar instead of meray husband. Language does not simply convey information, but carries social identities, cultural values, moral norms and self-awareness.   So much gets lost in the urge to be urbane, that the present is only linked to an imagined future  rather than also a carrying forward of historical cultural practices. In this confusion, people clap during qawwalis and classical music concerts as the etiquette of appreciation becomes obscured. Mushairas are the last bastion of Wah ! The phrases for expressing appreciation or daad dena  of a couplet are 'wah, wah', 'bahut khoob', 'sub'haan-Allah', 'kamaal kar diya, Sahib', ‘Sahib, zaraa misra tau uthaaiye!’ I remember going many years ago to the po...