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

Elephant ivory out of Muziris

Evidence for the existence of Muziris is sparse but well-documented in a few fragments remaining from the time. As well as the Periplus, the sailors' notebook which numbered Muziris amongst a number of ports, the Muziris Papyrus documents a cargo from India belonging to an Alexandrian merchant. It originates from the second century CE.
The document lists pepper and spices traded out of Muziris on board a Roman merchant ship called the Hermapollon. A valuation is given of three-quarters of the cargo which fits well with the list in the Periplus of the commodities which were exported from the city.
A portion of the cargo was made up of ivory, both low-quality trimmings taken to reduce the weight of the tusks of fighting elephants, and high quality, complete tusks, often taken from elephants which had died in captivity. At this time, Africa was not a significant source of ivory, but Pliny the elder states that by his time the male Indian elephant is often born with very small tusks, or none at all. This is true today, a fact often put down to the poaching of the ivory-bearing tuskers from the forests, but it seems that the elephants of the south were already protecting themselves by genetically reducing their ivory-bearing capabilities!

Mamalapuramn Tamil Nadu

It is likely that the ivory shipped in the Hermapollon was local, the Chera kings controlling the rich forests of the Western Ghats, where the elephant thrived. The indigenous forest-dwellers hunted elephants for their meat and their ivory, which made its way to Muziris.
The trade in ivory is a complex one, and by the time of the Periplus in the 9th Century Africa had overtaken India as a source of fine-quality tusks. The African elephant has larger tusks than the Indian, although smaller tusks were often shipped from animals which had been killed to eat or in the constant struggle against crop raiding.
The trade in ivory continues in spite of its ban under the CITES convention of 1989. There are concerns that the population of elephants in some areas is drastically skewed towards female herds where the males are lacking the socialisation necessary to integrate them into the sophisticated "family" structures.

Today it is rare to see a wild elephant with large tusks. Older animals, working in temples, do often have magnificent tusks but these are getting rarer as the elephants die off.

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.