Kochi-Muziris Biennale and some news

I haven't posted here for a while. This has been partly because my laptop melted down on me, courtesy of Windows 8.1 eating my graphics card. I had backed up some things, but not for a while, and lost the first two chapters of my next book, which caused me to go into grief mode for a couple of weeks while I frantically tried to retrieve everything I could.

While I was doing this I reflected on how different it is today from a few years ago. Much of what we do is in the cloud, my email and contact lists were safe, my book was on Amazon (although I had got a back up of the next-to-final proof-read version) my blog content was online and many of my pictures existed elsewhere.

Part of me was excited by a fresh start, a computer which is clean of everything, including software! Alerts for various things kept coming in to remind me of the ones before and I was in constant receipt of invitations to events at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, which obviously I could not go to, but liked to see.

So, how did the great art show go? This article says a lot about how it is seem in the aftermath.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/kochimuziris-biennale-is-here-to-stay/article7054382.ece#

So half a million people visited? Really? I remain open-minded about this. It depends how you count. If it is ticket sales, then the figure is likely to be accurate. If it is the number of people attending the venues, then it is likely to be wildly out, as there were so many different places to go, all accessible by the same ticket, but able to be counted as separate attendances. Plans for the next biennale are already being made, and I hope it is as successful in artistic terms as this one. It was, unlike the first one, truly international, amazingly varied and brave.

As KPM Basheer wrote:

"At a time when individual freedoms are shrinking and moral policing is expanding across the country, the unlimited creative freedom enjoyed by the artists at the biennale was envied by many visitors. The wide variety of media – metal, stone, paper, video, light and shadows, lit electric bulbs, audio and the wild imagination excited even the casual visitor. " 
That tolerance and freedom are under review in India is indisputable. Prime Minister Modi's honeymoon period is nearly over, and there are worries about the place of women in society and increasing religious divides.
While we were in Fort Kochi we visited the Teapot cafe, one of the unchanging features of a fast-changing town. The Muslim waiter who had told us that he was going to vote for Modi at the election was less enthusiastic now. "We will have to see." he said. "We have not seen much change so far, but it is early days."

Washing at the Dhobi Khana

P.S. We visited the Dhobi Khana in Kochi and found it turned into a tourist destination! The people were hard at work bashing the washing in the usual way, but also allowing tourists to try out their charcoal-heated irons. Amazing!

A small woman with a massive iron

Another feature: Risky Tours

Home again after our visit to the Kochi-Muziris Biennale

We arrived home a day late after our latest trip to India and Sri Lanka. I will not go into the misery of a delayed flight, 24 hours after a bout of Sri Lankan food poisoning. It was strange not trying to research anything, but I did do a couple of nifty visits to book shops to promote my book. They were very keen on a general, readable history of Kerala, so perhaps I shall resurrect the project and get writing again. Apart from a whistle-stop tour of the major tourist centres with our friends Karen and Mike- their first visit to India- I planned to visit the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. In the event, it was an even more whistle-stop tour of the exhibitions.

I wanted to see the art, but I also wanted to gain access to some of the warehouses which are not usually open, the main one being Aspinwalls. I wish we had had a fortnight to see it all! The organisers, mostly artists themselves, had done a fabulous job in getting together a show of such high quality in such difficult spaces against the problems which had bedevilled this year's exhibition. Add the India factor to this and I take my hat off to them. On the day we visited it was fairly quiet, apart from gangs of school children who seemed appreciative of most of the work.In the town, the general consensus was that the Biennale had not attracted much extra trade, but I hope this isn't so. Visitor numbers last year were high, and I hope they were not all school parties!

The incomprehensible title, Whorled Explorations, led to an exhausting round of trying to read the equally convoluted and incomprehensible descriptions of the artists' work. I have written this stuff myself. Sometimes the art work is made with the title in mind and then the description seems to make sense. Sometimes the work, or its antecedents, exists, and then the description has to be bent to fit the exhibition title. Mostly I had to give up reading after a couple of paragraphs before my head exploded. I had to resist thinking that it was mostly pretension, but....... Possibly some of it was lost in translation. In the end I gave up trying to make sense of the work and enjoyed it for its own sake, and very enjoyable much of it was too..

Aspinwalls warehouse had had a bit of a facelift, but did not look as though it was in a state of terminal decay, in spite of its long empty years. The art was good enough to distract me from the building, Charles and Ray Eames video being engaging enough to delay exploration for some time.

Aspinwalls offices

We had to rush off to the Pepper House before I had time to see the Anish Kapoor, and took advantage of the handy electric golf buggy which ferried us along the most unpleasant and hottest part of the road.

Pepper House

I have written about Gigi Scaria's bell before, and we had seen it from a boat on the previous day and were keen to get a close up view. It did not disappoint. The subtle metallic tones and the fall of water made it a most beautiful and restful sculpture. Here India intruded and made me sad. The photograph we took shows very clearly that a great deal of work and effort to locate this piece to its best advantage was undermined by the fatal lack of attention to detail which dogs everything in India.

Underneath the bell, where the sump for the circulation of the water had been installed, there was rough soil and gravel and the inevitable rubbish, not much of it washed in from the river. No attempt seemed to have been made to clear it up , or the patch of depressing grass to the side, where plastic bottles, polystyrene and unidentifiable litter lay everywhere. Did it detract from the sculpture? A little. Would it have happened at any other major art show? I very much doubt it.

The organisers had managed to put on a well-organised and world-class exhibition and I hope that the next one is even an improvement on this one, but somehow I fear that it will not gain international status until it takes more pride in its wonderful location.

Off to Kerala again!

We are in the usual chaos of packing to go to India next week. I keep thinking that I have done this so many times that it should only take me an hour or so. I remember writing about my packing in my book, and nothing has changed much.

I looked to John Murray, a nineteenth century expert:"Murray’s advice on packing initially reflected my own need to put everything into my suitcase “just in case,” but my luggage was not a patch on the Murray inventory. He helpfully divides the lists into two, one for men and one for women. I doubt whether any woman’s wardrobe today contains the vast numbers of garments essential for a visit
to India: huge amounts of underclothes including mosquito trousers for sleeping, flannel petticoats, four dressing gowns and a morning robe, forty-six handkerchiefs and quantities of thick lisle  stockings. For the long sea voyage the 3 cwt, or over one hundred and fifty kilograms of baggage
allowance did not include the furniture required in the cabin, but did include three sofa covers and mattresses and a bag with a hammer and nails. This was more like it. I thought that a hammer and nails would be useful for getting the mosquito net to stick to hotel fittings, but Murray added them as an essential for nailing your cabin furniture to the floor in case of rough seas."
A recent visit to SS Great Britain in Bristol made me rethink the hardiness of these early travellers. The cabins were cramped and claustrophobic, even in first class and I couldn't imagine where they put the furniture.
"Current baggage allowances did not faze me, but there were things which I would not throw out of my case. The medical kit, at first crammed with disinfectant, water purifying tablets, of which I used precisely none, antibiotics, medication for various kinds of internal disorder, antihistamines and so on gradually shrunk to a manageable size. It still held enough stomach upset medication in it to Mr Modi. a large ox, even though we never have had a tummy bug in all our visits, lots of anti-insect products, high factor sun screen and pain killers. James kept telling me you could get anything in India where there was little restriction on the sale of pharmaceuticals, but I had seen an Indian pharmacy where everything sat jumbled together in the heat. The mosquito net remained a packing essential. I would have relinquished my pants quicker than those reassuring white billows. If the air-conditioning worked, the mosquitoes went away, but electricity was a fickle commodity and mosquitoes weren’t the only things which menaced me in the night. Geckos and detritus from their wriggling meals and on one occasion, a tree frog, fell on us. Mice raced around the rafters in the more eco-friendly places and there were tell-tale bits of ecological stuff on the bedspreads. An empty bag went into the large suitcase to take account of purchases and to hold the dirty washing, festering in the heat, kept apart from the things I have managed to get to the dhobi."

I would now add a couple of clean pillow cases and a wind-up torch.
As well as looking forward to seeing how the biennale is progressing, I am interested to see what the people are making of their new Prime Minister, Mr Modi. On our last visit I was fascinated that everyone, Muslim, Christian or of no faith had decided that Narendra Modi was the one to turn the economy round, as he had done in Gujerat. A year in, some of my less optimistic prophesies are beginning to come about, as he divides the country via the language, proposing to make Hindi the official language of government and turning a blind eye to some of the excesses of his ultra-conservative party members. His apparent move towards Pakistan and developing relationship with the USA look good in terms of global capital, his desire to get rid of organisations like Greenpeace which upset the status quo, less so.

The Muziris Biennale is happening!

In spite of my cynicism and doomy outlook, I am delighted that the Kochi Muziris Biennale is happening, and even more delighted because I shall have a chance to visit in February. I am especially interested in the collection of old maps, but the chance to look inside the Aspinwall's warehouse and see the artworks which are the result of so much energy against all the odds.
As expected, things have not gone 100% to plan. The money promised by the government has not arrived, possibly because of the change of party after the last election. Many of the artists are seriously out of pocket and have underwritten the show.

Given the title of "Whorled Expectations" the theme is based on a period of great expansion in trade and travel, the 14th to 19th centuries, when Kerala was undergoing a huge period of development in mathematics and philosophy. The curatorial note at
http://kochimuzirisbiennale.org/curatorial-note/

is a bit high-flown for me, but I love the usual obscure art speak. Is it art speak, or the Indian English obscurity which makes it hard for me to read anything originating in the higher reaches of Indian thought?

This time, the biennale has attracted some international names known even to me. Anish Kapoor is one, but there are others which ring bells. TAlking of bells, I am looking forward to seeing Gita Scaria's large silver bell onthe front at Kochi looks conceptually amazingly like the exhibit at Folkestone's last Triennale in 2011 by A. K. Dolven,
http://www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk/artist/a-k-dolven/

His bell still stands on the front at Folkestone like a very mournful piece of jetsam. The bell in Fort Kochi is larger, silver and altogether more jolly.

See some of the artists and their work here.
http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/ZHoR9TriwRPuhE9Mt4L7YN/KochiMuziris-Biennale-Seven-artists-you-must-see-at-Kochi.html

The last biennale was a success, attracting an estimated 400,000 people to the city. Optimism is high that this year's will do the same.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a6cb253c-797c-11e4-9567-00144feabdc0.html

Kochi-Muziris Biennale

Digging around the internet for Muziris-related information I was suddenly struck by the lack of anything about the Fort Koch-Muziris Biennale. The last one, in 2012, was a great success, but this year the event, due to start in December, is not out there yet. The biennale web site has artist interviews and reports of the 2012 event, but there is no programme. The link on the website is an impressive, completely blank page, no headers or information..

I shall probably be in Kochi in February and may catch the last of the exhibitions. It is probably the usual last-minute dash of Indian planning, but I feel uneasy on behalf of the international audience and exhibitors who should know by now what they are exhibiting and where. It is no small thing to mount an art exhibition at home, let alone a flight away. After the last success it would be sad to see this going the way of all tourist initiatives in Kerala, lots of hot air, a great launch and fanfare and then a slow sink into obscurity.

Phase Two of the Spice Trail, taking in the Muziris Heritage Project was launched in February with the creation of a new government company to oversee its development. That gives me a sinking feeling in my stomach too. Again, the web is mostly silent on current developments, apart from the usual "there will be" statements about new boat jetties etc. The original sites are being promoted, but the interesting developments are those by private individuals taking advantage of the heritage concept and creating their own spice trails within the state. There is so much to see that this may well serve the interests of "heritage" and tourism in the state far more effectively than the grandiose, stalled state projects.