September 2013 - And then...

Turbulence

The other day, at a book release at our neighbouring Central University, MANUU, I heard the chief guest quote Allama Iqbal. Apparently (or so I gathered) when his son was setting off for higher studies in London, the great poet said to him: … خدا تجھے کسی طوفان سے آشنا کر دے کے تیرے باہر کی موجوں میں اضطراب نہیں (Khuda tujhe kisi toofan se ashna kar de, ke tere bahr ki mojon mein iztirab naheen).

I’ve looked for translations, and while none of them captures the nuance of the Urdu, the closest I could find is May God grant you a storm! The voyage of your life is on too placid an ocean…

Literally, though the verse reads in translation, “May God bless you with some storm, because the waves in your ocean (of self) are devoid of agitation (turmoil)”. There is the resonance with Shakespeare, when Brutus talks of the “tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; […] And we must take the current when it serves“, as well as the famous Chinese curse, May you live in interesting times!

The appositeness of the advice is something I have had occasion to reflect upon, as we pass through these interesting times. We at the UoH have such great privileges- our campus, its freedoms, its autonomy- and one cannot but feel that we should be doing something more. More what, one might well ask, so to turn the question around, is what we do enough? Just enough, barely enough or well enough? These are questions for which there are many answers, so all things considered, I think it is preferable that we have the occasional iztirab, a little anxiety, a little uneasiness. A state when we are not too comfortable is more conducive to self-examination, and thereby one hopes, to more discussion, creativity, and thereby to evolution.

But not too much discomfort, though! In the fluid case, in some ways the most interesting situation is that of intermittency, when there is smooth flow much of the time, interrupted by staccato bursts of turbulence. As much as we need the iztirab to evolve, we also need some undisturbed period to think, and to consolidate… But that is not a luxury one can always be assured of! There are enough forces at work and play both inside the University and outside it, that make this an ongoing challenge.

The images of the turbulent waves above are by artists whose work has been very inspirational: the iconic and familiar print by Hokusai and closer to home, the wave by Krishna Reddy, the great printmaker who lives in New York and who taught for many years at NYU.

Scenes from a collaboration

An exciting and ongoing partnership project between our Department of Theatre Arts in the S N School of Arts & Communication and the Wimbledon College of Arts at the University of the Arts, London is on Scenography in a digital age: a comparative study of the impact of new media on contemporary Indian and British performance practice.

Bringing together nine people, four from their side and five from ours, this project is a great opportunity for all of us, particularly the two students involved. The project leader from the Indian side is Professor B. Anandhakrishnan, Dean of the SN School who says the prime objective of the project is to develop a trans-national, inter-disciplinary discourse that will enhance understanding of contemporary performance culture in India and the UK. And, incidentally, a cross-fertilization of ideas: the image above is of the props from a scenography workshop at the UoH, done on the campus by one of the Wimbledon college students.

This partnership will investigate the impact of ‘new media’ on performance in India and the UK. It brings together two recognize centers of excellence to create a cross cultural research platform at the interface of fine art and theatre. In the UK, lines between these two approaches to performance have already been breached as new technologies blur the boundaries between established traditions. Increasingly in India, plays and fine art installations use video and digital projections that merge the theatrical and the experiential under the umbrella of performance. This project seeks to conceptualise and understand how these new mise-en-scenes are affecting traditional ways of making and viewing performance in our respective nations.

Rustom Bharucha (in his book Theatre and the World, 1993) argued at the end of the twentieth century, ‘[at] this point in time, one can say that technology has not yet co-opted the ‘visionary’ possibilities of seeing assumed by our spectators…’ . Does this still hold true at the beginning of the twenty first century?

Describing the viewing habits of European and American audiences, Arnold Aronson (in The Power of Space in Virtual World in Performance Design) says, “The increasing ubiquity of the World Wide Web and its particular visual aesthetic is what most spectators associate with performative imagery’’.

Using the ‘scenographic’ as a frame of reference, a broad term that encompasses all the elements that contribute to the composition of performance, this joint research will compare how digitalisation and electronic media have been absorbed into our respective performance cultures and begin to develop a set of criteria with which to analyse and respond to these changes. By sharing perspectives on this new materiality of performance, this partnership will contribute to a better understanding of the way each culture views the other and, in the long term, build capacity in our institutions through the development of joint masters and new PhD programmes.

The project is for 18 months and during this period there will be four seminars and a series of practice sessions focussing on digital arts and scenography. Two events will be organised by both the institutions. The first is going on now, from the 9th to 16th September 2013 at Wimbledon. Two of our students will be staying back at Wimbledon to work with colleagues there.

Great opportunities here, thanks to the UKIERI– this project is one of the select ones funded by them as a Thematic Partnership. And congratulations to the SN School on being Wimbledon champions!

Teachers Day

Greetings on the occasion of Teachers Day– to the teachers of the University, and to our many, many teachers outside the University…

The UoH has always been known for the many great teachers who have been here from the first days, Gurbaksh Singh onwards. I’m lucky that I also had the opportunity to learn from some of them when I was a student at IIT Kanpur, and knew some of them in later years as well. We have a good reason to recall Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan not just today but most working days, given the name of our Lecture Hall Complex, and the photograph of his above, an uncharacteristically informal one, also has a nice connection to the UoH.

A colleague writes on FB, “To all my teachers for all that I am today and to all my students from who I learn everyday, Happy Teacher’s Day!”. How true, and said so well- its a day to celebrate both teaching and learning!