Why should LaVA spread?
LaVA [Laboratory of Visual Arts] , a show that has traveled five cities in India (so far,) spread reactions everywhere. This huge installation worked like Bose Krishnammachary's critique of the existing (or non-existent) level of contemporary knowledge that India's art institutions have to offer. The show was completely interactive and had so much of choice element that, one's experience at the show would surely differ from others'. All the Books, all DVDs here were accessible, and your experience depended on what you choose to access. Nevertheless, the show had some visual content that annotated the show. The bookracks, the big and small video-screen tables and the walls, all were designed by Bose. While the furniture pieces were rendered in attractive shapes and colour, they looked casual enough to encourage you for sniffing out all your apprehensions for those gloomy grey, dusky steel or dull wooden book storages. Bose's bookracks were inviting. These shelves had an appeal of the aesthetic positions that Bose propones through his abstract paintings.
This ‘Laboratory’ was completely designed for the user. It was not only the hardware that suited as a user interface, but the Books and catalogues, Magazines and monographs, DVDs and CDs… i.e., the software, took into account the different tastes and preference areas. The printed resources engulfed almost everything under the visual art umbrella: contemporary visual art from India, US, Europe and Asia, modern and post-modern Art since 1940s, folk art, books about film, fashion, design, photography. There were books with biographical, polemical as well as educational overtones, studies that referred to surveys and details, books that you would like to share with your friends and students, or some books that you would prefer to savor in your privacy. An equal diversity of cinematographic resources awaited your time. Films ranged from Avant Garde to popular Bollywood.
The software and hardware, both served as entry points to a worldview, a positivist, optimistic attitude toward artistic expressions. Modes might be different, it told the user, but the goal for a more livable world is unequivocal. LaVA perpetuated Bose’s inclinations in more than one ways. His belief in coexistence of varying positions and different levels of understanding, that was amply proved by his curatorial initiatives like Bombay Boys, Double Enders et al, reflected in his choice of films and books. Also, the inherent rhetoric of personal-universal choice that assumes centrality when Bose curates, worked at LaVA. Bose assumed the position of a global citizen while he provided the ‘equipment’ at this laboratory and the place, while you were in it, demanded the same position from you.
The kind of response LaVA reaped, primarily underlined the absence of institutional framework to provide a site of such a wide-ranging contemporary knowledge. Then, it also provided some answers for a more responsible attitude to knowledge, atleast under laboratory conditions.
LaVA was a utopian space that chose to remain un-institutional. It happily dealt away with the institutional assumptions of perpetual existence. Instead, it disappeared when everybody wanted to visit it once again! Presicely by its ephemerality, LaVA attained the heights of a work of art. It raised spirits, it made you dream, it helped you think, but it refused the notion of serving you and being useful to you.
- Abhijeet Tamhane.
This ‘Laboratory’ was completely designed for the user. It was not only the hardware that suited as a user interface, but the Books and catalogues, Magazines and monographs, DVDs and CDs… i.e., the software, took into account the different tastes and preference areas. The printed resources engulfed almost everything under the visual art umbrella: contemporary visual art from India, US, Europe and Asia, modern and post-modern Art since 1940s, folk art, books about film, fashion, design, photography. There were books with biographical, polemical as well as educational overtones, studies that referred to surveys and details, books that you would like to share with your friends and students, or some books that you would prefer to savor in your privacy. An equal diversity of cinematographic resources awaited your time. Films ranged from Avant Garde to popular Bollywood.
The software and hardware, both served as entry points to a worldview, a positivist, optimistic attitude toward artistic expressions. Modes might be different, it told the user, but the goal for a more livable world is unequivocal. LaVA perpetuated Bose’s inclinations in more than one ways. His belief in coexistence of varying positions and different levels of understanding, that was amply proved by his curatorial initiatives like Bombay Boys, Double Enders et al, reflected in his choice of films and books. Also, the inherent rhetoric of personal-universal choice that assumes centrality when Bose curates, worked at LaVA. Bose assumed the position of a global citizen while he provided the ‘equipment’ at this laboratory and the place, while you were in it, demanded the same position from you.
The kind of response LaVA reaped, primarily underlined the absence of institutional framework to provide a site of such a wide-ranging contemporary knowledge. Then, it also provided some answers for a more responsible attitude to knowledge, atleast under laboratory conditions.
LaVA was a utopian space that chose to remain un-institutional. It happily dealt away with the institutional assumptions of perpetual existence. Instead, it disappeared when everybody wanted to visit it once again! Presicely by its ephemerality, LaVA attained the heights of a work of art. It raised spirits, it made you dream, it helped you think, but it refused the notion of serving you and being useful to you.
- Abhijeet Tamhane.
posted by abhi at 11:57 AM
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