Bakul Artfest-2009 in Bhubaneshwar was an experiment with viewership/audience and participation of public in contemporary art. The different activities organised by Bakul Foundation during the Artfest from January 15-28, 2009 were: the exhibition Towards a New Viewership/Audience, conceptualised and curated by Rajashree Biswal in association with Art and Deal Magazine, New Delhi; the Wall of Peace, which was painted by artists, college and school students and the general public, and the evening programme of video art and film screenings as well as interactions with artists. The artfest was a creative negotiation and effective mobilisation of the different networks, institutions, art lovers and people from inside and outside the state by the artists Birendra Pani and Veejayant Dash with the help of other artists and volunteers of Bakul Foundation.

Rajashree Biswal reflects her and the artists thoughts and journey through the artfest.

Towards a New Viewership/Audience
This exhibition was held in Lalit Kala Akademi, Regional Centre, Bhubaneshwar, Odisha from January 15-18, 2009. It was a part of a larger concern of expansion of viewers/audience in different spaces including the gallery space (i.e. the expanded viewership/audience of people from diverse disciplines, schoolchildren, common men and others besides the defined art world people). It also comes under the broader aegis of the activities of Bakul foundation (www.bakulfoundation.org) in creating a sensible and critical community of children and people from different walks of life through art, literature and other social and cultural activities. Contemporary visual art may give a critical, contextual, analytical and reflective thinking and picture about the present world. But in order to be an effective language, it must reach to the wider viewers/audience as meaning is produced at the dynamic moment of interaction of the reader/viewer and the text. Otherwise its social function is denied as its access is restricted within the nexus of artists/art world/gallery/auction house and functions primarily as a commoditised object.

36 artists from different parts of the country had participated in the exhibition. It was designed to incorporate varied modes, mediums and approaches in contemporary expressions in Indian art. There was constant interaction of the curator with the participating artists regarding the importance of viewers: what is the importance of viewers/audience in artistic practice?  Is there any responsibility towards viewers/audience on the part of the artist and the art world? What may be different innovative methods/modes of reaching out to larger viewers/audiences and encourage more participation of the public in the Indian context? Is there a necessity of an art festival in a place like Odisha? And the responses of the artists are also the part of the catalogue of the exhibition.

 Excerpts from the catalogue:

The Context
What it mean to think, talk and act on the notion and concept of viewership/audience of contemporary art in a not so happening scenario of Odisha, when India is undergoing through one of the most traumatic moment of brutal terrorist strike in the collective psyche? And in a phase of one of the worst economic low in the country? A moment of retrospection will lead us that the utter helplessness in our individual psyche can be consoled only by being more optimistic but vigilant in future. And more committed as well as engaged in our existential reality and more effective within the collective. Precisely the very premise of the show is the engagement with the here and now.

My dealing with the subject is from a very local grounding which is situated within the larger discourses of art world. In Odisha, despite its rich cultural legacy, there are a very few people who understand and appreciate the language of contemporary visual art due to varied reasons. The contemporary visual art may be said as the “minor other” with respect to other different art forms like folk art, traditional art, tribal art, popular visual art etc. in Odisha. All these art forms are integral to and essence of every culture, but contemporary art has its own engagement with life at present.  The attempt here is not to create differences rather to see all different art forms adding to life in the process of creative interaction. The lack of awareness about contemporary visual art can be seen in different levels: e.g. within the family of visual artists itself, the identity of the artist is relegated to signboard or poster painter. The intellectuals of different disciplines and of other forms of art have little information about it. The very distributive apparatus like mass media with little space for contemporary art. And finally the internal   inertia within the existing art institutions and art world, lack of proper platform and lack of exhibition spaces and the most importantly the idea of self confinement of contemporary art add to this state.

Although this is the position of contemporary visual art in Odisha, similar situation prevails in many of the non-metro places so far as the contemporary visual art is concerned in India, which is also having a global dimension. Since contemporary art is related to the larger question of politics and history of art and of life in a globalize world, the process of creation of new viewers/ audience, awareness about contemporary visual language is an imperative one in micro level.  Who are the viewers/audiences of art? Should it be restricted only within a small section of people or it should expand so that contemporary visual art may be a more effective language? If yes, what can be different methods for reaching out to them? However, though we are dealing within the gallery space in this exhibition, here the concept is an expansive one not being limited to the physical space of the gallery rather  the gallery space itself is a liminal space for constant negotiation.

Here towards is a process, a journey at the same time it is a philosophy, an ideal as well as praxis. The word ‘new’ is not the denying or obliterating the previous initiatives1 in Odisha in the past, rather it is a definitive moment of deliberate, strategic and conscious movement for thinking and keeping priority on the receiving end i.e, the viewers/audience of contemporary visual art, besides the defined viewers/audiences of the art world. This is not the only initiative rather it marks the beginning of all the future initiatives in Odisha by different agencies as well. I must not essentialise rather I must strongly emphasise the gravity of the context.

Contemporary Visual Art as a Contemporary Language
What is the need of contemporary language? What it mean to talk about the viewership/audience of local, when the artists scaling upon global heights and have new international audiences? ‘Contemporary’ is the site of micro-politics of everyday life. Though “contemporary art” is a fraught concept, it is the site of reflection, reaction and the contemplative space for future action. It improves apprehension, enlarges vision, and refines discrimination. Both the artistic and the aesthetic involve perception in sensuous, formal, qualitative, intellectual, and personal where the instrumental and the consummatory intersect. Art gives us the object replete with meaning. Aesthetic experience, unlike sensual gratification, is informed with meaning and aims for a higher truth.

Dewey acknowledges art as ‘refined and intensified forms of experience’. He will neither reduce art to the ‘materials and aims’ of  ‘everyday doings’—as did the Marxist critics of that time (1934)—nor accept the metaphysical exaltation of art to ‘a separate realm’ where the designation ‘classic’ removes all responsibility from works of art. Art has to live in the present or it doesn't live. (Dewey in his book Art as Experience). Considering the functions of the images: “Images in the mind motivate the will,” wrote Benjamin, alluding to the political power of images claimed by Surrealism. One should be able to read images emblematically and symptomatically and need to critically analyze the image “as a social object”.

Art World, Viewers and Audience
Since art world is fundamentally a set of relations, it also encompasses all the transactions, personal and social, between the sets of participants. The gallery system remains basic to the art world. The paradigm is on which work is made apart from an audience and in which a space is then secured, at the sufferance of an intermediary, where the audience may “visit” the work (and where the few may appropriate it physically.) This sequential network paradigm of artist/art work/ gallery/audience severs any sense of responsibility or commitment to an audience, and political artists must seriously question whether it isn’t against their interests to perpetuate it.2

Going into the fundamental terms, viewers and audience one can say: a viewer is a person having the direct experience of viewing of the original work of art. ‘The analytic entity “audience” is meaningful only in relation to the rest of the art system of which it is a part and as part of the society to which it belongs.’3   one can say an audience is he who is having the viewing experience of the original art work or its reproduction or its circulation through different media or some way relate to it. Viewers are a subset of the larger set called audience.  Many a times due to the limitation of the medium of art, it may not be possible to have larger viewers, but one can always have a larger audience. But artist and the art world should try to reach to a different audience from the usual high-culture-consuming public through different methods. 

Some Reflections on the Expansion of Viewers/Audience
Any change at the ground level i.e., in the level of basic education about art, not only about visual art, but all different forms of art will develop a cultural sensibility and nurture the creative self from the beginning.  A sustained effort in this direction will bring a permanent effect. Exploration of new spaces for engagement with alternatives, new mode of collaborations and creative negotiations in terms of new methods, mediums, people and institutions etc are also important approaches in this direction, but primary impetus should come from the art world. Sometimes artistic autonomity prevents the artist to think and act in this direction. But talking about the expansion of viewership/audience is not necessarily complete negation of the “space of freedom” of the artist; rather it is the creation of spaces for interaction. More happenings related to contemporary art will work in this direction. Another general apprehension is that contemporary visual art may be inaccessible due to its complexity. The same feeling pervades among some of the artists as well. Although there is some fact in this as every languages have their own syntax, grammar, symbols, signs, meanings and interpretation for understanding the language, but the very preliminary stage to learn the language is to understand and interpret it is by viewing it. Besides art has no fixed but multiple meanings. Of course the viewers also have their responsibility to educate themselves. 

The main idea is that audience are the key to the understanding of art, because meanings are created from them and the ways it is used depend on its consumers not on its creators. Art shapes society through audiences who are for the most part quite capable of intelligent reaction i.e., as put by Griswold (1993:457) reader as hero. The reception aesthetics which first developed in literary criticism, suggests that people receive culture in relationship to their personal “horizons of expectations.’ The implication is that art never stands alone, but must be understood in relationships to the people who consume it. Specifically, meanings people take from art, and the type of art they choose to consume, are based on their backgrounds and their social networks. Besides contemporary art being interdisciplinary in nature and borrowing from present life, it can be interpreted from different perspectives. Even if one is a novice viewer/audience, one cannot be denied of the right of sheer visual enjoyment of the formalist aspect of it or the way they like it even if they can not comprehend the intended the meaning or the so called higher meaning of art. Once it enters into the public space, the meaning as told by the artist may be one of its meanings, but it is in a space for multiple interpretations.

Coming into the aesthetics of the art, as semiologist Jean Mukarovsky effectively says: Every work of art has two components, the ‘working-thing’ (which we can touch, purchase and have restored) and the “aesthetic object” which is “laid down in the collective consciousness” (Mukarovsky, 1988, 7). To interpret the aesthetic object is to measure its participation in the multiple codes which govern the collective consciousness4. Aesthetics of art is finally related to the distributive apparatus and receiving ends of art in society.

In the exhibition “Towards a New Viewership/Audience” the artists responded to their complex reality with the fast growing social entropy and replacement of old socio-economic and political structures. An open examination of different symbols, signs and images produced in the exhibition, reveal them with multi-layered meanings. The overall works of art in this exhibition can be seen under some broader categories although there is always overlapping and spillover of the categories as they are mutually related in a complex way.

Every day as the site of reflection
Here expression is an exalted awareness of participation in everyday life, in a new, developed world with possibilities, as well as contradictions and antagonism, where the vision understands the “reality”, the world around us, its history, its present and its future perspectives. In Aparna Mohanty’s painting titled “Thirteenth November”, the artist, in a poetically poignant way reflecting about the mesmerised past and the contemporary middle class sentiment. Vibha Galhotra’s work “White noise” is an embossing on white paper. It captures the noise at the moment of halt, interruption in everyday urban life i.e., near the prohibited sites of barbed fence, in the traffic, near the construction site, where there is regulation of our movement as the work is on progress. It simultaneously captures the psychological state of people at these urban sites within the hustles of everyday life. Prathap Modi’s huge wood cut work titled “Crass Word” is culled from the imagery of urban day-to-day life. The streak of subversiveness within the objects intended to elevate the everyday urban life from the trap of the sedentary, monotonous and mechanical gesture.

In Ramakanta Samantaray’s “Untitled” art work, men and women are with different yogic postures in a park and there is the negotiation of ‘class’,  ‘gender’, ‘tradition and modern’ to construct and reconstruct new identities towards a balance, harmonious and successful life. Soumitra Gouri’s interactive artwork in bronze “Surrogate Mother” raises a range of emotional issues related to the phenomenon:  what is the position of the surrogate mother in the society? Is it simply another face of human life being commoditised including the most intimate of the relationship between mother and child?  Jagannath Mahapatra’s “Untitled” painting addresses the issue of child labour that is very much prevalent in our society, despite the official ban on the activity.

The Embodied Self
Human being as an embodied self being entangled within the condition of present has developed different modes of negotiations as well a new methods of resistance. The externality of embodiment puts one and one’s actions, in the public sphere. I am, as Paul Ricoeur (1950, 56-57) points out, conscious of being the author of my actions, and this kind of awareness often comes about as my actions are reflected in the presence of others. Thus, embodiment brings inter-subjectivity and sociality into the picture. The life size figures in the sculpture “Master Striker” by Ketan Amin, as if the Michealangelesque figure trapped within present condition, whose head and mouth had been replaced by a huge hand in action that favours pragmatism over dry intellectualism. Tapan Das in his “Untitled” painting features a placid human being, in a surrealist atmosphere amidst cacophony of colour, design and texture to create the sophistication as well as a mental state, in a poetic mood, is still hopeful enough to acquire the higher attributes within the self. Both Hrushikesh Biswal as well as Purna Chandra Sahu, there is similarity in their approach i.e the fine draughtsmanship, the linear quality as well as the concern with conflict, contradiction and crisis of youth in present. Hrushikesh’s work “Guddi Darling: secret album page -1” is about the repressed sexuality. In Purna, the relational existence of the individual vs the community is quite prominent in his work “Untitled-III” and Pinching-II.

Pun and punch and the satirical approach to engage with the various contemporary phenomena through perfomativity, theatricality, narrativity in the paintings had been the forte of Rajendra Kapse’s approach. The subversiveness within the compositional structure as well as in individual figures in his “Untitled” work is the mockery of the rat race of the contemporary god men who are equipped with all technological adages for publicity to gain the maximum visibility and thus expansion of their sphere of influence in the life of people.  “Making a Flower”, the performance based digital photographic work by Surekha, there is the juxtaposition of positive images where she is taking petals out of her mouth and pasting it on the stem in making a flower and in negative images she is eating the petals. Reading the positive and negative images i.e, eating and recreating a flower simultaneously, is having multi-layered meaning. Vinod Patel’s work titled “Identified” is the fossil of one of the past sculpture of the artist. The incorporation of the concept of ‘fossil’ in his artwork is a subversion of the artistic ego as well as the artistic creation. 

Nature, Self and Other
The change in our perception of nature from the organist and animalistic paradigm to a mechanistic paradigm resulted in the transformation of the same into a commodity, an empty dead matter to be exploited for profit and power. We have forgotten our former closeness to nature, the spiritual, emotional, religious, and the artistic dimensions of human being. Humanity is suffering from a collective amnesia.

In three of the works in this section, there is the invocation of a moment of simultaneous departure from the existing mode of perception as well as for a redefinition, revitalisation and renewal of our relationship with nature. Ravi Agarwal in his performance based digitalised photographic work “The Dead Wood- I&II, the performative self of the artist in the bare body holding tenderly a live plant in one and the dead trunk in the other. The bareness of the body bereft of its dispositions in past, symbolises the complete union of the self with the nature in all forms. Keeping in mind the predicament of human condition, Bhupen Burman in his work “The sobbing land” there is the poetic response to the changing nature within and outside. Ramakrishna Behera’s painting “Banyan Tree Composition” is an invitation towards a deep communion with nature through new sensorial perception of the energy fields regaining its organic existence in our consciousness. 

Another few works stands at the intersection of the nature, environmental crisis and the critical condition of agriculture and farming community in India. Over the past decade, there has been pervasive crisis in Indian agriculture and farmer suicides have emerged as symptoms of a larger crisis. Sharmila Samant’s larger engagement with globalisation, hybridity and her extended concern related to the crisis in natural resources and its implication in local culture has resulted in the series of digitally manipulated photographic work “Contamination”. There is conscious use of the indigenous skill of the local people of Bolangir in Odisha with permission, in the expression of artistic language. It addresses the grave issue of using GM seeds and its larger implication in deterioration of the environment and the condition of people resulting in mass suicide by farmers in different parts of the coutry. Rajiba Lochan Pani’s work ‘Cotton garden” depicts the condensed expression of sad existential reality of the farmers’ community, here relating it with the farmers suicide in Vidarva. Biswaranjan Kar has a larger engagement with the crisis of Olive Ridley turtles in coastal area of Odisha. Here the “Untitled” ceramic based installation highlights the alarming decrease in the number of the turtles of other local variety, as they are increasingly exported for  the purpose of consumption.

The Narcisstic Trope and Indiscriminate Urbanisation
In an insightful essay, Zygmunt Bauman writes, desire no longer desires satisfaction, in modern age, ‘desire desires desire’ which is the basis of our constant greed. And the fetters of the narcisstic trope continue. The powerful force of desire unless being channelised through constructive and upward motion  of the self, always remain within the gross sensorial level of life and action and thus limited with the pursuit of materialist pleasure. The implications of indiscriminate urbanisations is represented by a series of landscape paintings with different levels of engagement and addressing different facets of life.

There is the corroboration of the notion of “pathetic fallacy”5 in a series of work. In a schizophrenic condition of present time, Alok Bal’s “Untitled” work it is an abstract reflection, or rather one can say the abstraction of human being in the suffocating space of concrete jungle. Sambit Panda’s work titled “Cat on the ground” and “Housefly” create a sensibility towards the unregistered co-habitants of human being in the changed scenario.  Rohit Supakar’s work shows the psychological insulation within the interior space of habitation. In his work “Path to eternity” he still believes, the real happiness is in depth of inner life rather than at the surface material culture. Pradosh Swain’s work, “The last weather cock” his language in a poetic and self reflective way talking about the changed environmental condition and human perception.  While Pratap Jena’s “Untitled” mixed media work (fibre-acrylic on canvas) deals with the rapid urbanisation and indiscriminate grabbing of land by the corporate houses, there is negative impact on the habitation of human beings as well as the deterioration of the ecosystem affecting   the crocodiles. Satyabhama Majhi’s painting “Life long” where there is the falling of the worn out chappal at the centre stage with the high rise building in the backdrop. It is a strong critique of rising of one class at the fall of the other.  It is the metaphoric as well as symbolic representation of the great fall of the working class especially the labourer class. In Babu Eshwar Prasad’s single channel video work, “Vortex”, the sorry story starts at the failure of the utopian promises of the machines and modernisation. The gigantic but now the non-functional machines and post-industrial debris accumulated across vast patches of land who are owned by none and are new forms of environmental concern.

Power, Violence and War
Power is omnipresent. Power results in the subjugation of the other, but at the same time, it offers the space for resistance. The nature and form of both power and resistance depends on the position of the subject. War is rooted in human nature itself, while the triggering mechanisms for violence are many and varied. Human beings are somehow "wired" to be violent and aggressive.  Conflict related to class, caste, gender and race, religious fanaticism, extreme form of nationalism, power hungry leadership, retaliation and the pervasive force of capitalism and material culture, create an escalating cycle of violence.

Both Debraj Goswami’s painting  “Still there is life” and Bibhu Patnaik’s painting “Boom!” relate to the present condition of series of blasts, terrorist attacks and violence in India and the spirit of common man.

Prandeep Kalita’s painting “Gandhi” is standing at the cross-road in a time of dilemma and confrontation among the cultures and global war and reflects where ‘ethos and philosophy of non-violence’ of Gandhi stands.  Zakkir Hussain is a provocateur and prolific imagemaker with an experimental approach. His work “study of landscape in the hospital stretcher” simultaneously shows the helplessness of the repressed and the collective resistance is in the gradual state of formation. In Pratul Dash’s provocative video work “Ek Ravivar”, there is the juxtaposition of everyday life experience –  the sacred sound of conch in Hindu religion with the scene from a slaughter house – for a different aesthetic raising question about the borderline between sacred and violent. Prithwiraj Mali’s symbolic and metaphoric work “Hand to Mouth” made of aluminium, depicts the perpetual struggle and distinction between the two classes i.e, the grabbing one or the elite class symbolized by the hand of the crab and at the other end there is the human hand, the class living from hand to mouth i.e., the common and working class. There is the search for a process of evolution in the socio-psychological space in between these two extreme towards the illusive goal in life. In Debarchan Rout’s “Untitled” work, there is the visual metaphor of power monger in the society, by the reference from the folklores of Odisha, as well as the reference of the literal meaning. Here the visual juxtaposition of the image of the tiger, the eagle and the snatching human hand of the class people. Veejayant Dash who deals with the issue of migration, child labour and the idea of slavery, in his huge painting “Wanna be the King” highlights the perpetual struggle to be the only winner, the king, the achiever, which is a part of human nature. Manjunath Kamath’s symbolic but playful video work “Talk” where the clay animated figures transformed into different forms and there is the interaction, talk and exchange with equal, unequal and variegated subject positions. Power is not only explicit but implicit in all different micro levels through capillaries in everyday life. Birendra Pani’s mixed media work (fibre-acrylic on canvas) titled “soft subversion” is the climax of a distorted, dysfunctional state of the human being due to over-indulgence and all different external influences in extreme form. Rather than being guided by the rational self-resulting into the cautious and harmonious being, it has been exposed to the degree of havoc.

It is a constant search for possibilities of new subject positions and also for active resistance to each and every kind of violence, inside and outside human beings, within the system of high complexity and unstable equilibrium. The intentional and intimate choice of each human being in channelizing individual resources in a constructive direction is crucial in overall transformation of the society in this decisive moment of historical time.

As per the opinion and reflections of the many of the visiting artists outside the state as well as the art fraternity in Bhubaneshwar, the exhibition was quite striking in terms of contemporary language and expressions in different mediums and stand at per with any good exhibition in India. For other viewers in Odisha, it was an extraordinary one. Besides the unique thing about it, is the response that was overwhelming to say with at least 2000 people in the Artfest including more than 1700 new viewers. Most of the volunteers of Bakul who worked to promote the Artfest were new viewers themselves, who had never been to an art gallery before. After reading about the exhibition in the newspaper, many who had come to the Bakul library or participated in any non-art activity of Bakul called up to enquire and went down visiting the exhibition. There were many students from school of social works, who had been particularly encouraged to engage with the visual expression of concerns for social change by artists. Besides the regular and irregular visitors of art, there were engineering college students, MBA students, young professionals, and artists of other forms of art who turned up in large numbers so much so that in the exhibition lasting two weeks, there was hardly a dull hour at the exhibition, which was always filled with people throughout the day. Most of them had never known of art exhibitions happening and had always kept a distance from art. Of course, there were many, who had some interest in art, but had never pursued it, and discovered a dead interest of theirs in the Artfest. Besides the regular and irregular visitors of art, many of the viewers liked to visit it more than once along with some new viewers. There were about 700 school students, who came for the art exhibition. e.g children from the elite schools, St. Josephs, Mother's Public School, from schools in slum area  like the Press Colony UP School, the school for tribal children, KISS, etc. The participation and excitement of the St. Xaviers schools is worth mentioning. First, a busload of students came from St. Xaviers, Kedar Gouri to the art exhibition. They were so excited that immediately the next day, two more busloads of   students came from the same school. The word spread to another sister school, St. Xaviers Khandagiri, and   students of the latter school came later as well. Also many other school students, who come to the library and their parents, visited the art exhibition. What was most striking of these new viewers was the way the art works appealed to the imagination.   Ketan Amin's   work “The Master Striker” for instance was a hit. There were many school kids who immediately recognized the Master Striker having seen the image in the newspaper earlier. The image had stayed on, and the imagination had been tickled. Biswaranjan Kar's “Untitled” installation of cutlery on a dinner table as turtles also evoked a sense of "Aisa bhi hota hai". Children and youth loved the interactive womb of Soumitra Gouri, as they rediscovered their favorite game as it communicated a serious point. The new viewers also had the sense of eureka in seeing Surekha's “Making of a Flower”, when they realized the trick she had played, by reversing the process of the unmaking of a flower.

Wall of Peace
 As an integral part of the Bakul Art Fest 2009, Bakul Foundation planned to paint a Wall of Peace at opp Big Bazzar, Satya nagar, a prominent place in the centre of the city of Bhubaneswar on January 16, 2009, 10pm onwards. It is a 600 ft long wall that was painted by artists on the theme of “peace”. It was a celebration of peace as a counter celebration of violence as a response to one of the most disturbing developments all across the world in the last few years i.e., the development of fundamentalisms that celebrate and promote violence. What is alarming is the increasing polarisation that is taking place and how more and more people are turning fundamentalist in reaction. Most importantly Odisha, which has always prided in its image of being a sleepy and peaceful state, has been shattered by the unending violence in Kandhamal in 2008. People from all walks of life were encouraged to participate in this celebration hoping that this Public Art project may create a new interest in the Arts in Odisha.

The real success of public participation could be seen, however, in the painting of the “Wall of Peace”. About  400 people at the same time. The city administration and the police cooperated and the entire road was blocked for the benefit of the artists and the viewers. The Bhubaneshwar Municipal Corporation also cooperated to get the road, which was made anew the day before the event.

Participating in the public wall itself is the experience of both being the spectator as well as the participant. It was participated by the well known artists like Manjunath Kamath, Babu Eshwar Prasad,  Debraj Goswami, Farrad Hussain, Dhananjay Saha, Rajesh Ram, Vinod Patel,  Alok Bal, Pratul Dash, Shivkumar Varma, Raiba Lochan Pani, Veejayant Dash, K.P Soman, Birendra pani, Biswaranjan Kar, Lalat Kishor Pradhan, Aditya Gadanayak, Ramakanta Samantray, Pratap Jena,  Aparna Mohanty, Debarchan Rout,  Satyabhama Majhi, Madhuri Sahoo, Shyama, Suleman, Bujinga Rao, Subrat Mallick, Gajendra Padhy and others. Susanta Nayak, Manoranjan Nayak, Ajay Barik from 2nd World  art studio Bhadrak, students of  Khalikot Art college, Berhampur, B.K. College of Art and craft, Bhubaneshwar,  Dhauli College of Art, Bhubaneshwar,  National Institute of Fashion and Design, Bhubaneshwar were also the part of the event. Volunteers, students of Bakul, even the rag picking  children who were passing by, children from slums, children on wheelchairs, autistic children, students, professionals, tourists, retired people, and housewives find it fascinating and tempting  to participate in the event. Children from 12 schools including the school of Deaf and Dumb, participated on the occasion with their teachers.
The Wall of Peace had the complete flavour of a fest. Many wandered in to see the mass painting and ended up leaving their colored impression on the wall. Everybody was encouraged to participate and even those who would never hold a brush or paint put their palms in color and put their impressions on the pillars in between panels as a collective gesture.  Even after everyone had left, one could see people in the evening coming to see the wall and adding to it with the leftover colors. There were more than 50 panels and fell short as many artists and people did not find the space to paint. Most panels were painting by interacting and sharing the walls.  

Video Art, Film Screening and Interactions with the Artists
Every evening from January 17-21, 2009, there was the screening of  video art and films in the premises of Lalit Kala Akademi, Regional Centre, Bhubaneswar. Artists Surekha and Birendra Pani interacted with the viewers.
The very idea of the programme was to have the experience of new media art practices especially different approaches of video art   in India and abroad. It was for the first time such a large number of video works had been screened in Bhubaneshwar. Different video works by the artists were:’ Talk’ and ‘Happy man with restless cat’ by Manjunath Kamath, ‘Trans-ver-sal’.by .C. K. Murali, Spring by Birendra Pani,  ‘Vortex’, ‘Splice’ and ‘Dus Ka Bis’ by Babu Eshwar Prasad, ‘Rastriya Kheer and Desiya Salad’ by Pushpamala N., ‘Ek Rabivar’, ‘Life of  a Double’ and ‘Reflection’ by Pratul Dash, “One person’s loss…another one’s gain…may be” by Raghavendra Rao K.V, and nearly 13 works by Kiran Subbaiah made during 1998-2004 e.g. ‘Concealment’, ‘Hello’, ‘Now I Don’t’, ‘Salt Water’, The Pinnacle’, ‘Reality and the mirror’, ‘The blind eye’, ‘Strip Tease’, ‘Beginnings’, ‘Droppings’, ‘Flight Rehearsals’ etc were part of the video evening.  And the film ‘First Dream’ by Bill Viola and short films ‘Afternoon song’, “three months of solitude”, “Monsoon cloud” and ‘The East Wind’ by M.S. Prakash Babu was also a part of the screening.

Every evening there was a good gathering of about it 80-100 people comprising art students, artists and some viewers other than the art world. There was interaction and sharing of responses after the work of each artist, and at times, the reflections from the novice viewers were quite striking and some times critical. The general discussions which was participated and initiated by the art students: why video art at all? What should be the duration of a video art? What are the different norms and regulations regarding reproductions and copyright and also with respect to taking references from different sources etc.
                                                                                      
Bangalore-based artist Surekha, showed a series of her video works and interacted with the public. She talked about her experience of gradual shift from conventional art practice to video and photograph as a medium of expression. A large number of her video works i.e  “Not  all towers fall, 2008”, “Nobody’s walls, 2008”, “Cooking concepts”, “Triptych”, “video installation, 2007”, “Three fragmented actions of silence” (16mm/Digital), 2007, “The boiling concept” / “The burning concept” ,”Making home”, “Between Fire and Sky”, “Bhagirathi Bringing Water” were part of the screening. The interesting feature about her video art making was the use of minimal technique. She discussed her artistic language, which has an affiliation with feminism and also engages with the notion of private/public space in every day life in a broader sense. Also many of her works are self-performative in nature with a critical dimension but in a poetic and reflective way. During her interaction she responded to the importance and distinction of making video as a medium of art making. She also shared how video art can be instrumental in reaching to a larger audience.

Art historian and critic Anil Kumar was also present in the occasion and shared his opinion about the nature and types of video art and the uniqueness of the same as a medium through various historical examples. The issues related to authenticity and reproduction of video art were also discussed. Birendra Pani shared views about his art practice, which has a continuous engagement with the pre-modern and unique traditional form of dance called Gotipua dance. There were important discussions about Gotipua dance form as well as the present state of different local cultures in critical condition. Alok Bal and Vinod Patel’s slides of the their work were displayed. The video art/film evenings and interactions with the artists were very enriching experiences especially for the local art college students as well as for local public.

Mobilisation of the Public
What was most interesting about Bakul Art Fest- 2009 was the public participation, the kind of which has seldom happened w.r.t Art in Odisha. Bakul Foundation organising it was uniquely placed as it is a movement for volunteerism where there are many part-time volunteers of various age groups and backgrounds. Volunteers from different colleges tried to publicize the Artfest in their own colleges. Attempts were made particularly to reach out to the many engineering colleges, the govt. colleges, social work colleges, colleges of media studies, institutions for MBA studies, coaching institutions through posters, invitations etc. Since Bakul has a children's library and has been organizing activities for children, any schools with a bus to carry students to the Artfest and any school that could walk its students down, was approached. Professionals employed in companies were invited through mailers and invitations. The  local artists motivated in the circles of the visual artists, all the students of art   college, faculty of art colleges and others relate to art, community of dancers, literature persons, theatre persons,  intellectuals and others to participate in the Artfest to their level best. Also they motivated large number of new viewers in their individual levels. There were banners in public spaces for public notice as well. Media was used to the maximum. Articles appeared in the local newspapers, radio and TV channels promoted the Artfest through features on the activities and posters.

 The Future Anticipation…
In the approximately 350 comments in the feed back register at the exhibition, apart from their overwhelming appreciation of the Bakul Artfest as a collective effort towards a new viewership/audience and public participation, one recurring theme came out, it must not be an one time effort… it has to be continued … to make a difference…
End note:
1. Like WAA (Working Artists Associations), BAA (Bhubaneshwar Artists Association), Kala Melas by Lalitkala Kendra, a few important exhibitions like Home Bound We, People, Place & Nation : Locating Art and Self and other important shows and workshops have happened in Bhubaneshwar.
2. Martha Rosler, “Lookers, buyers, dealers and makers: thoughts on audience” in Art After Modernism: Rethinking modernism” ed by Brian Wallis, pub by The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York in association with David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc, Boston,1984.
3.ibid.
4. Stephan Bann, “Meaning/Interpretation” in “Critical terms for   art history” ed by Robert S.Nelson and Richard Schiff , Univ of Chicago, London, 1996.
5. The word ‘pathetic fallacy’ coined by the key critic of the Romantic era, John Ruskin in his seminal book Modern Painter (1856), pathetic fallacy refers to the projection of human emotions where the landscape is devoid of any human subject, rather different atmosphere, feeling, emotions, sentiments, animals etc as the protagonist evoking the sense of loss and a condition of lamentation.