Performance artists go for the audiences jugular through outre acts. But when and how does spectacle become art? At art Dubai last month,you could be forgiven if you did not recognize the bespectacled Abhishek Hazra,given that the artist was wearing a cardboard box over his head and speaking through a megaphone to guests he took around the show. I chose the box because its cheap and crude,and goes against the trend of looking at art objects as saleable products, says Hazra,by way of explaining his anti-art statement at an art fair. I was asked by the Global Art Forum to give the guests and dignitaries a guided tour of the fair,but Im wary of becoming the artist or an expert dispensing knowledge. So I inverted the idea of the tour guide and became a blind figure who had to be led to the artwork, chuckles Hazra,a 36-year-old Bangalore-based artist. In a similar spirit,Baroda-based T Venkanna charged at windmills by doing a full monty at The Art Stage,Singapore,in January. The artist invited passers-by to sit beside him for a photograph while holding his hand,as an act of empathy and sharing. Behind him was a large print of Mexican surrealist Frida Kahlos famed work,The Two Fridas (1939). The performance caused a furore. They took away my passport and I had to visit the police station a few times,but my gallerist,Abhay Maskara,intervened and we managed to minimise the damage, says the artist. The performance was widely reported in the tabloids. Though Venkanna was asked to leave the fair,he returned to make angry drawings of a decapitated man and tearful broken hearts. In Mumbai this January,Tejal Shah caused a flutter at the Queer Azadi March in a sequined dress with a strap-on dildo underneath,causing even drag queens with silicon breasts to gasp in shock at the offending appendage. Shah also showed at another controversial exhibition,where Chinese artist Han Bing wore a lungi,and kissed and caressed abandoned heaps of concrete in the pavilion of a south Delhi market. Artists trying to shock the audience is as old as Marcel Duchamp and his urinal,or the Dadaist and Fluxus movements in the West,which inspired public and performance art. In India,however,the audience is largely unsuspecting,and the questions come thick and fast at such shows: is this art? Artist Atul Dodiya seems to approach such work with scepticism. We must acknowledge that the Dadaist movement happened almost 50 years ago,so when one is quoting from that movement emotionally,the subject matter has to be new, he says. These public art interventions are more like a splash and the way art becomes entertaining is a bit too casual. The look-at-me syndrome leads some artists to indulge in shock tactics and that may not be very healthy. Maskara,however,points out that the protests against such art are often triggered by media reports. Actually,(Venkannas) performance was going on fine but then a tabloid did a sensational story and the authorities were provoked to act, he says. The Mumbai-based gallery owner even argued that it was not really disrobing in public since the fair was a closed ticketed event. There was a black curtain screening the performance from passers-by; and there was a sign outside the booth that said only those above 21 are allowed, he says. It is not always the business of art to be acceptable,believes art historian and critic Gayatri Sinha. Many art practices have been rejected and then accepted by the mainstream. A successful work should be judged on the grounds of whether the address is genuine and whether it is successful in conveying its message, she says. She points to Sonia Khuranas Bird a performance video in which the artist shot herself in the nude as a work that is critically valourised because it is located within the larger feminist discourse. Han Bings performance at a Delhi market is harder to contextualise,she says. Artists,though,are naturally keen to push the envelope. Frankly,I couldnt care what audiences think of me. Im not out there to shock and this is not a gimmick, says Hazra. He says that his commentary at Art Dubai was aimed at opening out the discourse around how we look at art and the futility behind all the effort of creating. Delhi-based performance artist Inder Salim,who recently wore a cage on his head to protest the incarceration of Dr Binayak Sen,says the need to occupy the marginalised space of performance comes from a greater anxiety about the world and the state of affairs. I see more people turning to performance and writing poetry,for there is a need to take art out of the gallery and the drawing room and bring it onto the street and public squares. Aesthetics has dominated the art discourse for far too long, he says. He suggests that the formal qualities of painting and sculpture have dominated discussions on art for many years and we have not looked at other forms of art long enough to understand it. But was it art when Salim cut off his little finger and flung it in the Yamuna as a response to the Gujarat riots in 2002? The critical dialogue around performance is what makes it art, says Salim.
