Maybe visiting the Taj Mahal did provide a turning point in this residency, though the quiet, lush garden that surrounds it was perhaps more of a tonic than the architecture itself. Which isn't to deny that the building transcends the iconic status that it has been burdened with, exceeding expectations. Its architectonic restraint and relentless symmetry could be severe, but are relieved by the life within the stone itself, and the delicate carving. Since the Taj is always photographed without people, the most delightful discovery was how it acted as a luminously white backdrop to the saris of the many Indian visitors, astounding juxtapositions of colour that would pass unnoticed in city streets.
Joanna Hoffmann and I also visited the fort, which puts a rather different spin on the romantic story of the Taj, since the youngest son by Shah Jahan's much beloved Begum went on to murder all his siblings and seize power himself, locking his father up in the fort. All of which tells you a lot about the psychopathology of those who believe themselves eligible or entitled to rule over others, and suggests that the Taj itself might have more to do with political bling than true love.
People's ability to remain blind to what motivates them is astonishing. On Wednesday I had dinner with a woman to whom I had received an introduction from a friend in London. The whole evening was distinctly odd from the very beginning, since I had to telephone from outside the front door, after I'd been ringing the bell for 5 minutes, while a dog inside barked frantically. I was admitted to a gloomy, stifling room, and my host, stout with short silver hair, began barking orders at her two maids. A drink appeared after about three quarters of an hour of stilted conversation, when the chauffeur returned with a couple of bottles of beer. Now you are probably wondering why it didn't occur to me that I'd got the wrong day, but I'd had a text message from my London friend a couple of hours earlier, saying that she had just spoken to this lady about my visit that evening.
About the time I got the drink, one of the maids went out. She returned at about 9.30, and my heart sank when I realized she was carrying the ingredients for dinner. At the same time, the situation was so defiantly odd that I kept having to stifle the urge to laugh, and was curious to see what would develop. My host had a dachshund called Rana, outrageously glossy and healthy, and totally undisciplined. Its attention was totally fixated on the snacks placed on the coffee table, and would gradually manouevre itself within striking distance, at which point the lady would order one of the servants to take the dog away and put it to bed. Invariably, Rana would appear again after ten minutes, to be picked up and cuddled, and rewarded for his disobedience with a crunchy morsel from the table.
I started to notice that the maids would answer back their employer in a way that seemed rather familiar and, when the chauffeur came in to bum a cigarette from his boss and she practically lit it for him, the whole situation took on a tinge of tragedy. I'd discovered that the one subject that seemed to animate my host was talking about herself. Not that it was uninteresting. Her mother, she claimed, was the first daughter recorded in their family tree in 22,000 years. I did splutter and query this, but she blithely continued. Her mother's first child was a boy, and everyone muttered darkly that the curse had reasserted itself, but then, to much rejoicing, our protagonist was born. Apparently, a state holiday was declared. She was then brought up by her grandfather, a widower who doted on her, before becoming a classical dancer in Ravi Shankars entourage. A European diplomat, from an illustrious and wealthy family, smitten with her when he attended one of her performances, then pursued her for a year and a half before, at the tender age of 19, she agreed to marry him. He was 39 years older.
Postings to New York, Washington and Moscow followed, traveling the world by private jet. When he eventually retired to Switzerland, she had to learn, for the first time, how to cook. Then a car accident. He was driving. She was paralysed, in a coma, written off by the doctors. He refused to allow them to turn off the life support machines and, slowly, amazingly, she recovered. It sounds like magical realism segueing into Mills and Boon but, for the latter part at least, there was corroborating evidence and photos.
Aged 58 she was widowed, finding herself alone in a big villa. No children had resulted from this grand passion. She returns to India and, in a gated enclave, in a heavily fortified apartment, she creates this paid family, in which (unless this was Rana's role) she can act the part of the youngest child. The doctors have told her, she says, that she has a heart problem, meaning she shouldn't live on her own. A heart problem. Did she ever ask her mother, I wondered, why she'd given her precious girl child to be brought up by a grandfather? Had she never felt a need to know her mother's reasons? "No, why should I do that?"
I hope I've conveyed the tragi-comic flavour of the evening. I certainly don't intend to mock, since her derangement is perhaps caused by grief. Whatever the cause, I left feeling very uneasy about her future, since Delhi is not a city with much compassion for the weak, unless they happen to be photogenic ex-models, like the junkie prostitute who was recently 'rescued' by one of the daily papers. The ostensible reason for this long digression was the questioning of my own motives for being here. Like many other Londoners, I harbour the illusion that the metropolis consumes an unreasonable amount of my time in existential overheads. Part of the seduction of a 7 week residency in India was the idea of being able to concentrate exclusively on one project without any distractions. This has proved, naturally, totally deluded. Email means it is no longer possible to compartmentalize one's life, even if this were actually desireable. The positive side of this is the recognition that what one spends ones time doing is what one actually does. Painfully obvious perhaps, but to those who share my temperament, always willing to chastise themselves for failing to meet some arbitrary and impossible standard, a valuable lesson. The prolific exchange of emails over the last few weeks, with an electronics wizard I have never met called Mike Harrison, hashing out the details of another public art proposal, are part of the work done on this residency, not time stolen from some primary purpose. Likewise this writing. I don't know if itt's art, and these long screeds probably don't conform to anyone's idea of a blog, but it's taking a chunk of time, and helping to formulate and structure my response to this situation, as well as beginning to reconcile me to the idea of "the text", with which I have always been uncomfortable.
I've also learned something from the treacly resistance that has greeted my attempts to actually construct things, where my mule-ish nature has simply led to exhaustion and despair, as in my last visit to Chawri Bazar. It's made me somewhat envious of the hermetic, laptop environment in which the other resident artists do their imaginings. But I didn't come 4,000 miles to stare at a screen. The difficulties of this residency have simply confirmed my commitment to make work that operates on a sensual, material level.
With my face still stinging from the metaphorical gauntlet wielded by Professor Ranjit Nair, I watched one of Joanna Hoffmann's very beautiful short films. Reminding me of Melies, I realized that her dissolves and superimpositions are the visual equivalent of metaphor and that, in dealing with science, this need not be a dirty word, any more than "subjectivity". We need to articulate the space between the heart and the brain, and the individual and the cosmos, and I don't think it can left to scientists. Abishek Hazra's work appeals on a more cerebral level, transforming systems and structures of knowledge into poetic, playful narratives, a marvelous combination of ludic, Oulipo mischievousness with radical Bengali intellectualism. His commentary on Indian history and politics is always illuminating, even if his frighteningly vast reading means that one occasionally has to call for time out.
With these two as stars in the constellation by which I am orienting myself here in Delhi, my memory was directed to a piece about Mark McGowan that I read a month or two ago. I think he was in conversation with Richard Deacon, and the older artist was struggling not to appear discomfited as they discussed a work of McGowan's that had involved keying (i.e. scratching) random car doors. The economy, elegance and wit of McGowan's work lies in his manipulation of people's expectations, the gap between the real and the imagined, a kind of psychic judo.
In this witches brew, acourse of action is revealing itself, in the shape of a piece of work for the Open Studio day that springs from a direct, emotional response, entangles this with science in a devious manner, and assumes a form that engages the senses. I'm still committed to large-scale, carefully engineered work that is designed to last, where that is appropriate, but a more lightweight, ephemeral approach to other situations could only expand my practice.
