BENGALURU: Politics is not always muscle-heavy, it’s also about things like art, and dollmaking, commented filmmaker Hansa Thapriyal at the screening of her documentary Outside In at a social justice film festival. And the Majlis Culture Centre in Mumbai was a physical manifestation of this statement.
Operational from 1990 to 2016, Majlis was a broad-based coming together of the like-minded people of the left. “It was at a time when our common beliefs were being put to test by the changes around us. It created opportunities to respond to the changing times… in a wide range of social action, public art projects, individual works of art, plays and film,” says painter Sudhir Patwardhan, via video, on a webinar titled ‘Art. Making.
And the Moment’, where the discussion centred around the practice of political art-making. The event was hosted by ‘reFrame’, an arts fellowship programme which, through multiple mediums addresses the various dimensions of identities, geographies, sexualities, perspectives and experiences.
As a part of a series of conversations called ‘smalltalk’ in which artists engage in conversations about some not-so-chottimotti baatein about what they do, filmmaker Vani Subramanian led a panel discussion consisting of Madhushree Dutta, filmmaker and co-founder of Majilis, writer Githa Hariharan and Sneha Ragavan, an art archivist.
Githa Hariharan brought to the discussion the need for continuity, multiplicity, inclusivity and the politics of all that we consider ‘art’. Drawing examples from instances of violence we see in India today, she talks of how public installations, street plays and productions are necessary as they help the public articulate and navigate through gender fault lines, caste, community, alleged tradition and alleged morality.
According to Hariharan, there needs to be an overlap of cultural and political spaces, and the need to make art a living culture. With members of the audience sharing their thoughts, the webinar was rounded up by the panellists pointing out how the “artistic community is bigger than we think” and how it is “bewilderingly diverse”, and there’s a need to engage in the political art to not only raise awareness but also “challenge structures of authority in different forms.”