Why clean the mess?

Disclaimer: This post is not a validation of messiness. So please refrain from deriving guilt relief from it!

My mentor is junior college had a plaque on her desk that said, “A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind.” I didn’t think if it was true but I enjoyed the audacity of this one sentence in a country that boasts of relentless organization, and immaculate order, predictability. In retrospect, though the statement was a bit of an overkill, it stayed with me. And I wondered if organization was over-rated? Why is there only one prescribed way of doing things? Does it suit us all to be organized?

In a delightful tale of subtle humour and irony Fitzgerald touches on the sides of organization we tend to neglect. In“Gretchen’s Forty Winks”, tables turn when Tomkins, the guy who talks of organization, balance in life has a nervous breakdown while Roger,the workaholic, wins his due. The humour has an element of surprise, the doctor says, “ He worked pretty hard at keeping his life balanced.” I almost laughed aloud. It drove home a point, the guy who works with no sense of day and night, puts no thinking on the way he is going about his work but rather he is concentrated on the work itself. The sheer task of keeping things organized could be a pressure. Not to mention the frustration of unfortunately misplacing something in spite of the organization. For those who do not emphasise on organization the mind gets accustomed to certain lapses, misplacement becomes a part of the routine. Maybe there is no real time advantage or ‘efficiency’ attached to organization??

Some research indicates a different kind of organization that helps right-brained individuals. They have non-linear patterns of listing ,they find the usual ways of filing un-natural. I am highly sceptic of dualities hence will take this with a pinch of salt. In any case, I believe that the important thing to remember is that individuals are different. In a liberalised world (at least in the ideal sense), we should make room for differences- even in the way we work.

For what its worth, dis-organization comes with its perks just like organization does. Just think about it, walking into a cluttered room is cozy sometimes, even more welcoming. Working with non-linear lists helps us discover new ways of doing certain things. Creativity and structure are a bit of a misfit. Maybe there is another side to organization.

For those interested, I just discovered a book that tells you more about the uses of messiness
:A perfect Mess(Jan 2007!)

ART: Stories your’s and mine.

There were people from different walks of lives, even the almost stereotypical caricatures: flamboyant, drunk old men, proud, young and pretty muse apparitions, the calculative buyers, and the other worldly drifters. It was an evening for the celebration of art. It was as eventful as a social evening gets. When I left the premises I was reminded of a famous painter, Jatin Das’s words: “"Creativity is a transfer of energy".

I was left with a craving to script something after 48 hours of no sleep, truly energized by the exuberant creativity around me. But it also spawned the reflective questioning that ensued.

I was repeating to myself the usual artistic introspections and on the other hand I wondered about perceptions of art in a larger sense. I questioned: what it means to an artist, a artist, or me the artist: to exhibit. Art is personal; no artist would disagree. But all art seeks patronage and an audience. Exhibitionism somehow seemed antagonistic to the thesis of art being a personal tryst. One would agree that something heavy and wanting of expression within oneself drives the process of creation. Art sometimes is making sense, and hence sharing the knowledge produced becomes an exhibition. It is also a moment or pinnacle in occurrence which is not incidental but defining to the artist, exhibition then is a personal footnote on a dairy. I would go so far as saying that all art is crystallized, born in a moment of clarity or vision that makes it worth the effort of exhibiting.

There is a certain added dimension to what people have vaguely termed, ‘contemporary art’. Most contemporary art is a result of a lot of interrogation, internal, external and of regions between the two. Not to say that other traditional arts did not, contemporary art alone foregrounds this exploration. This form of art is meditation which does not culminate in the exhibition, but in fact carries forth the dialogic process that the artist begins for his own self. The artist’s personal dialog and the dialogue on the outside between the art and the viewer lend to multiplicities. To each it derives a satisfaction, maybe a personal catharsis too. Exhibiting then is an artist’s way of exposing a thought process, an experience that they find valuable, or a finding that is of occasion to them. I am speaking to you my thoughts like strokes on a painting seek to speak to you. Fortunately, words are malleable and so is art, to take on meanings and expressions that are diverse and at once fascinating.

My homeland, my country

Question: Are you a patriotic Indian?
Answer: I think that’s irrelevant. Yes I am Indian, it defines who I am, shapes my thoughts, but no I don’t think I feverishly worship my Indian roots. Patriotism is irrelevant whether Indian or any other.

Breeding specific country-based loyalty seems somehow misplaced in a largely migrant world (migrant is not just the physical state, but also our divided loyalties, multiplicities of beliefs and ‘globalized’ living conditions, in a sense we are all migrants one way or another). Let’s begin by understanding where this concept of a nation came from.

Nationalism was born probably in France, US, Russia before it reached all the colonized nations. The concept of nationalism was based on a shared past, customs, and history, or as Tagore calls it a “collective egoism”. The important thing to note is that nationalism is not something that existed and was ‘discovered’ but it is a construct like any other social or cultural tradition. Like the latter it thrives on narratives or stories.

Without going into the debates on origin or venture into: "who fathered the notion of nationalism?", lets veer back to the present. Is there still an umbilical cord that attaches us to our mother-land? Are we free of the almost irrational loyalty to a ‘country’ one calls ones own?

I think our sometimes conflicting loyalties to ‘international systems’ MNCs, WTO, UN have rendered nationalism irrelevant. For those who do not subscribe to loyalties of any of the above, nationalistic loyalty is still extraneous to commitment to a particular cause. For instance: humanitarian movements. There are political agendas(US, Iraq etc) which draw heavily on patriotism but it still remains to be seen if this is shared by large groups of the population outside these circles that stand to benefit directly from making these agendas.

In today’s age and time we can at best hope for pseudo expressions or dull echoes of what used to be a grand fervor. Nationalism is a white elephant, decorative for speeches and confined to museums.

PS: Like most of you reading this, I too grew up on faithful Indian history textbooks. I have also been through the phase of speeches, fervent slogans, even patriotic euphoria at cricket matches.

Picture Courtesy: perso.orange.fr

Today's Update from the WarZone

Recently a very successful young company in Singapore was acquired by MediaCorp: one of the biggest names in Asian Media. The strange thing is that knowing the media space and these organizations one can tell that they have very little in common; in fact they are as different as the baby Boomers and Gen X! And even stranger is the fact that this is probably the highest point for this young company.

There is a new kind of imperialism going on: corporate imperialism if you may. Big MNCs that acquire oust and acquire and continue acquiring. Capturing ‘new’ growing markets, dominating markets: there is a whole lot of militaristic undercurrent here. On the other side of the fence we have small entities: companies, individuals, and groups that do not want to relegate their beliefs and be engulfed by the giants. This side mainly comes together in networks to build on each others strengths, cooperating against their ‘enemies.’ There is a new kind of warfare too, called the media and there are all kinds of it. While big companies continue to dominate traditional media, broadcast news channels etc the small team is looking at ‘new media’, blogger netwoks, internet communities and the like. Even language is being used to suitably gain credibility by either camp: our big guys like to define 'progress' in terms of free trade. Economies that havent 'opened up' are not yet developed.

The war is far from over and there are quite a few casualties. Even in acquired territories there are uprisings and there are those who switch camps or convert. Some get disillusioned of the tireless, dehumanizing monotony of corporation, some get tired of idealism and its disparity with reality. The battle is leaning towards the big guys I think, so you better watch out!

NOTE: I work for a start-up myself, we are struggling to make a place in the world. It’s not easy given the circumstances of our 'free world'...

Photo Courtesy: Inlet.org

An argument in pictures

Detour-I thought it was important to make way for a strident voice: Sebastião Salgado.

This man forsake his profession as an economist for his camera. He traveled 39 countries for 7 years gathering impressions. This collection of photographs Migrations essays economic squalor across continents that has uprooted millions and caused insufferable damage to humanity.

These images in hues of black and white depict a consciousness of pain with no room for pity. It’s hard to classify them as documentary because they do more than purely witness. In the words of the photographer there is no possibility of detachment, “I think if you just come into it, take your pictures and go, it must be a disaster for you.”

What do these pictures serve? They are speaking for someone, the way I hope to be able to speak to you through this blog.
"The people concerned many times would see me taking photographs," he said of the Sahel project, "and they would say, 'Please, come and photograph my son, photograph me, help me solve this problem.' In the end they come to your camera like they would come to a microphone, they come to speak through your lens."

Speaking about what he hopes to achieve through his photographs in his work Migrations he says: “My big hope is to aid and provoke a debate so that we can discuss the human condition looking from the point of view of displaced peoples around the world. My photographs are like a vector that link what is happening and give the person who does not have the opportunity to go there the possibility to look. I hope that the person who comes into my show and the person who comes out are not quite the same.”


The questions he poses are arresting, "Are we condemned to be largely spectators? Can we affect the course of events? Can we claim 'compassion fatigue' when we show no sign of consumption fatigue?"

Courtesy:

• Official website of Terra: Non-profit organization created by Salgado & his wife.
  
• Interview with the San Francisco Chronicle

Rethink Globalization

Is progress really inevitable? Whose progress is it anyway?
Is Globalization the way to go: or is it a TINA( there is no alternative) perspective?!

Watching You: 2

After getting your feedback and insightful comments, I went about digging some more on this new voyeuristic culture (an act of voyeurism this!). The idea was to seek an alternative explanation.

I figured voyeurism is in a way a democratic power re-appropriation by the masses. In other words, now everyone has the power to see hence the playing field is somehow leveled. Think about the times when certain sections of cities were off limits for certain castes and access to knowledge, education, and scriptures was restricted to certain segments of the population. Foucault, a very famous theorist coined the ‘clinical gaze’, which refers to the power of a physician to know all (think therapists).

Zoom out to current scenario, where public and private spaces are being collapsed in an information explosion and everything can be seen. In this age of media overkill we are all empowered, hence we are all voyeurs.

More:
Ironically, the mainstream embrace of voyeurism comes precisely as many Americans feel their own privacy is in danger, be it from surveillance on the job, marketers on the Net… “These shows are a kind of acting out of the mingled fascination and fear that surrounds this, a way of playing it out in a kind of harmless way."- Article on Times, about Reality TV.

Watching you

At 2 AM after a very long day at work, I sat down to write my first blog entry for Diggin Deeper. But being a compulsive multi-tasker, I got into an argument while chatting on the go. My friend was telling me that I needed to blog personal incidents. All people are voyeurs; they are more interested in other people’s lives, he claimed. But I wasn’t convinced, wasn’t the internet a source of information with a capital I, besides blogs are about opinions?

This incident made me a bit uncomfortable, which lead to some pondering and scribbling.The word ‘Voyeur’ was originally the name of a disorder of watching unsuspecting people for sexual arousal. The negative connotation has stuck with it, so my first reaction like most people was: something must be seriously wrong if we are all turning into voyeurs?

Whether it is watching home videos uploaded on youtube.com, browsing people’s online photo-albums, reading their personal commentaries on blogs, following dramatized life-stories on Reality shows, all around us is an excess of voyeuristic behavior. The TV Show ‘Big Brother’(Big Boss in India) is a classic case, five pan-regional versions of this massively successful reality show are screened in continents all over the world. On Big Brother, a bunch of people agree to be under constant surveillance during their stay at a communal house. They are ousted one by one by popularity votes and the last one in the game wins a prize.

Looks like the vision of Orwell in 1984 has become a reality today!

It’s quite powerful, the feeling of seeing everything and yet it is completely mundane. There is more to this: What does it mean to be a voyeur? Is this desire to sneak a peek something that today’s technologies have afforded us? Is it because we can publish whatever we want that voyeurism is being fed or is it the other way round? Are people living all their desires vicariously through these acts of voyeurism?

Beat this: One of these days I stumbled on a comment on a blog that said:

“I loved taking a peek inside your mind and life.” (!!)

Check out: Cartoons about voyeurs. 514 pictures tagged voyeurism

Diggin what?

Breaking the barriers of discplines, challenging definitions, and ending dogmatic theory-
lets begin by questioning the things that are never questioned.

Like: Why is their a lecture system in colleges? Why does democracy stand apart from communism? Why are we building larger than life brands/companies/organizations?
Why do pop songs sound the same? Why do we have song and dance sequences in Bollywood movies?

Help me dig deeper into culture, science, economics, or politics. Write to me at:ushamnathan at gmail dot com