Day 3

The class started with us discussing how the blind dream, and we all shared what we found about the kinds of the dreams the blind. Narendra shared with his experience with the blind people when he was working with them in Ahmedabad. While discussing this we started to question that whether we are more blind or them? This discussion made me recall Ruskin Bond’s short story called ‘The eye’s have it’. The story also talks about how we have eye sight we still tend to miss the most obvious things that are right in front of us.

We talked about how everything is designed around us, and what aesthetics is? If it’s a conscious decisions or not? Narendra discussed with us how so many people get displaced for making a city look good, for the sake of aesthetics people without money are pushed to the outskirts and are asked to settle there.

Narendra introduced us to performance art, which wasn’t a new cause earlier in the first semester I had a course mainly based on performance art. In the course we had discussed a lot of performance artists.
In brief Narendra discussed with us a few artists and what performance art is.

After that we got our first activity- we were asked to make pairs and create performance art and thing of a concept behind it, along with how and where will we perform. While researching what struck to me and my partner Nehal was that performance art can be spontaneous. And the idea that appealed to me the most was that in performance art the audience and the artist can co-create work. So me and Nehal decided that, we wanted to something that would engage he audience.
so, we decided to come up with the idea od connecting people with a ball of yarn. We started with ourselves and we connected ourselves with a yarn my tying one end of the yarn to any part of our body and then passing the yarn around to people around us, and then they would continue passing it to the next person of their choice and like this it would continue.
we knew, that in the end a pattern would be made but we wanted to see how  people respond in this situation and how they connect themselves to the next person with the yarn. Whether to chose to pass it to the person they know and are comfortable with or do they pass it to someone with the idea of creating a conscious aesthetic pattern with the yarn.

After discussing our ideas in class we were expected to perform.
At  12:45 we started, Nehal started it and passed it to me and I decided to pass it to a friend, and this went on. It was interesting to see how everyone was enjoying this activity and how more and more people started joining in. the number od people kept increasing and the pattern that was being made by the yarn started to show, people kept tying and passing the yarn on, Some tied on their waists, some held between teeth, some wrapped it around their legs and hands and so on.

After about 15mins the yarn was over, and everyone had their own idea about, what should be done next. Some ideas that came up were move around tangled together, dance and another idea was push and pull further tangling.

Eventually everyone decided to move in opposite directions further entangling. Slowly everyone un-tangled themselves and let go.


what was the best about about today’s class was thet it wasn’t just about theory , we learned and experience what it feel s like to actually be a part of a performance art. We also saw our other batch mates performances, which was an amazing experience. We experience how suddenly our college basement changed into a new space and how people respond to such kind of art.
Altogether it was an amazing experience.

After all our performances, we went up to class and saw a few videos of famous performance artists works, which included Marina Abramovic’s work called ‘the artist is present’, we saw Yoko Ono’s ‘cut piece’ and we discussed Frida kahlo and what kind of work she does.

Today’s class has been by far the best for me.

Day 2

What personally appeals to me the most about our course is that we have a lot of discussions and these discussions are very informative and help me learn so much more and make the class interactive. Our facilitator spoke about various things trying to make the concept of, what art is and installation art is clearer. Somethings that we discussed in todays class were: How art has the capacity and ability to communicate. when we communicate, and everything we communicate needs an expression. no emotion can be communicated till you don't give an expression to it. Aesthetic gives form to inner needs and expression.

Narendra (our facilitator) also introduced to us, the idea that art is a relationship, and can be explained in 3 ways - one to one, one to many and many to many (community to community).

Somehow the discussion shifted and we were asked to find out whether, blind people have dreams or not? When I looked it up, what I found was- blind people do have dreams from their past visuals and experiences. And those who were born blind can dream with other senses, for example they have audio dreams. They can hear in their dreams.
Soon, the discussion was about faith, and how faith plays a key role in your lives, how it’s the base of almost every relationship and is related to everything that we do.


We learnt about minimalism and how it is about expressing the expression with minimum materials and on the other hand maximum deals with expressing the same expression on a macroscopic level. 






After watching the documentary we were divided into 3 groups, and each group and to debate amongst them and come up with answers for :
1.who is an artist? (Group one)
2. Is it essential for artist to be an activist? (Group two)
3. Who is not an artist? (Group three)
I was in group two. we all started with expressing our own views, there was a lot of discussion about how we view the word ‘essential’ in the entire question. So, we mutually decided that if essential is to be looked as forced or necessary then– no its not essential for and artist to be an activist.
but our discussion didn’t stop there we went on discussing and came to a conclusion that No,an artist does not essentially need to be an activist, but an activist is an artist. There was debate and we were questioned about why we feel so, but after discussing and justifying our views to the rest of the class they agreed to with our answer.

when in class we discussed  the first question about who is an artist? there was a lot of debating and I was personally not very satisfied with there first statement cause I felt it had gaps but eventually as a class we came up with a final answer to the question which was-
when in class we discussed  the first question about who is an artist? there was a lot of debating and I was personally not very satisfied with there first statement cause I felt it had gaps but eventually as a class we came up with a final answer to the question which was-An artist is an individual who consciously expresses themselves with motive, medium and methodology. 

I have always wondered what material is and I somehow always had and answer to that, that material is an object, but what I realised after the class discussion was that, only when we use material with a motive. It becomes a medium.

After that we watched a documentary called ‘Never sorry’ – it was about this artist called AI WEI WEI. The documentary was about a few of his works and his life and how his journey had been as a activist  and as an artist. I feel that when you watch a film like this, you can actually see how one artist makes and effort change the world. He revolts choosing art as his medium of expression.

What the documentary made me realise was that art is not something can be isolated from activism and even things like politics, we are often mistaken by the idea that they are two completely different and unrelated disciplines, but after watching the documentary that perception of mine changed. Other artist like the gorilla girls, Peggy Diggs and Suzzane lacy come my head. Especially Suzzane lacy’s work as she worked in alliance with police department, and this just shows artist aren’t isolated from activism and politics.

The third group defined a non artist as a person who doesn't express with an intention of expressing. 

After all these discussions and debates, we were left with a question for the next class: Will an artist still be an artist if the viewer fails to recognise the art?