Interview: Amira Farooq

"The best part is the absolute isolation"

By Naeem Safi

Amira Farooq lives and works in Lahore. She received her BFA from NCA in 2004, followed by a brief adventure in print and electronic media as a model and presenter. Since then she has been painting and recently had her first solo exhibition at Nairang Art Gallery. She creates intense dialogues concerning the complementary nature of human relationships, emotions, and the existence, by juxtaposing the opposites in contrasting colours and forms -- usually, along with some elements from nature.

She is the fifth person to go to NCA from her family, and that too only to pursue fine arts. "Father is an architect, and mother is a designer. It definitely had an influence on me, because you see the way your house is kept; every little thing, like how to view things."

TNS: How has your major in printmaking at NCA influenced your work?

AF: It's all connected. I need variations in expressions, because you learn things that you might use in the other medium. Printmaking is a two-dimensional medium and I think that comes out a lot in my work. But the more I paint, the more I break away from that.

TNS: How has NCA affected your work, if at all?

AF: NCA, obviously, is an old structure, and has taught me some discipline that you can't work without. But apart from that, it is the exposure that I got there, by meeting people from all over Pakistan, which was a huge eye-opener and got me out of my own little bubble. It has influenced my work more, conceptually, rather than in technique or skill.

TNS: How do you conceptualise your images? Do you draw on ideas or memories?

AF: I just pick an emotion, focus on it and I paint the visuals that best describe it. Sometimes I sketch, but most of the times I am working straight on canvas. I have to have music to work; that really helps channelling the emotions and in focusing.

TNS: How much role the element of chance has in your work?

AF: I think everything that we do in life is half chance. When you start making a painting, you intend to do one thing, but during the process you discover things, maybe through the paint, or let's say something spills over, or all of a sudden you see something on the canvas that you hadn't intended to make before. So yes, there is the element of chance in almost all creative processes.

TNS: What famous artists have influenced you, and how?

AF: Michelangelo has influenced me for one sheer skill, prolificacy. And then Dali for his mind; you just can't walk away from Dali without reacting. I really love Van Gough because he was the rebel of the art world. I, kind of, relate to him in terms of feeling misunderstood. In order to achieve greatness, there is a certain amount of suffering involved, and nobody gets it better than Van Gough. And then when I'm sitting down and painting, in my space, my biggest influence would probably be the first cave painter. Because here was somebody who was free of conditioning and approval, and all he thought about was just making an image, and re-creating something that he had seen in nature. And I think you have to be really free in your head from the voices of other people while you paint. So, I channel that anonymous caveman -- or woman, we don't know -- who started painting on the cave walls.

TNS: You mean you paint without any inhibition and do not expect any sort of appreciation for your work?

AF: When I am painting, the viewers are not there. They come into the picture when I show them my work. There is a dialogue. Not every piece can be loved by everyone; but every piece is loved by someone. That is a sort of validation that you need, to keep working. Because there is so much isolation in this profession that without that feedback, sometimes, it's hard to see what you are doing is really important. The job description of the artist is to be the conscience of the nation. In order to love something, you have to be free of your own selfish desires.

TNS: Do you feel that your technique of rendering is a bit simplified for painting?

AF: One could look at my work and say that it's not as 'skilled' as it is expected to be, but that is exactly my point. I'm trying to create a stylised version of reality that looks very simple from a distance, and even child-like to some extent. But at a second glance, the concept is not child-like at all. The paradox I like to play with my work is to keep the visuals very simple and the concept a little out of the box. Lately I've gone back to the primaries; if it's a simple thought, I might use fewer colours. It depends on what I am trying to say.

TNS: What are the best and the worst parts of being an artist?

AF: The best part is the absolute isolation, and it is just addictive once you start expressing yourself on a daily basis. Being an artist gives me a licence to insanity.

But then, the stereotyping can be very inextricable. Because most of the people believe that I will automatically be liberal and open to everything and anything under the sun, which is not the case. I have very clear-cut preferences and very precise likes and dislikes. And being a female artist, there are a lot of sexist gender issues attached as well.
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Published in The News on Sunday
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/feb2010-weekly/nos-14-02-2010/enc.htm#4

Interview: Saeed Akhtar

"Art is all about our lives, why hide it?"

Professor Saeed Akhtar’s contribution to the development of art in Pakistan can hardly be matched. His is undoubtedly a classic master. His observation, mastery of skill, combined with his imagination has produced the most remarkable works that appreciate the beautiful in the local by idealising them in various thematic settings. Quest for the Divine beauty was the focus of his recent exhibition.

By Naeem Safi

The News on Sunday: Have you always been an artist?

Saeed Akhtar: I had this appetence for art, just like everyone else has that for one thing or the other. However, before that, I was interested in automotive mechanics, especially motorbikes. I would disassemble the parts and join them again, marvelling at their beauty and the capacity of human brain.

TNS: Which aspect of art is more consequential for our times in this part of the world?

SA: Art encompasses all aspects of life through architecture, textiles, ceramics, and other such disciplines. A molvi once said to me that I’ll burn in hell for teaching drawing. I replied that it is for Him to decide, but what can I say about you, the core of ignorance. He works as an electrician, and has learned his trade with a lot of beating from his ustad, instead of learning it in an appropriate institute, where he could have learned proper drawing. The absence of quality art education at school level has turned this society into the mess it is now, where all one see is entangled cables hanging in front of ugly facades. I can not imagine a single moment of life without art.

TNS: Do you believe that this attitude has anything to do with the shifting interest from realism to abstraction?

SA: In our days, art was believed to be a means of earning money, and for that one needed proper training in seven-eight skills to achieve the required level of understanding. These days words are stressed upon more than any other skill; this does not solve the problem. When an artist is not well equipped with the required set of skills it will breed frustration. But who knows, the artists of today can be more successful than those of our times, as each period has its own requisite set of skills. And I believe the young artists are well aware of that.

TNS: As we are talking about changing times, how is Saeed Akhtar of today different from the one of 1960s?

SA: Learning, is what distinguishes them. Our teachers could see one eighth of an inch error in perspective in a glance. I once asked my teacher, "Ustad jee ay inni inni ghaltiyan tohano nazar aa jandian ney?" He said, "Hann puttar, sari umar lang gai ay wekdey." I would not have much consciousness then, regarding my errors; the teachers were there to identify them. Now I can depend only on my own judgement.

My canvas offers me new challenges everyday, it annoys me, it hurts me, and it makes me feel like crying. But the joy that follows a finished work is unthinkable for anyone else. This is what my struggle is all about, since coming from the age that was all about learning the fundamental skills.

TNS: What interests you the most when deciding a subject?

SA: Anything that comes out nicely in the end. Beauty is not the only standard; beyond that, it’s the expression that matters. The thought of painting eyes kept bothering me for a long time; I would paint and wash repeatedly. The eyes that I painted on a 4’x4’ canvas remained untouched for quite a while; one day I started drawing lines around them that turned out to be my own image, from the time spent in Quetta.

TNS: How do you choose your hues and tones, some of them being imaginary for you?

SA: I am not familiar with the look of blush, or a suggestion of greenish tint on some freshly shaven face. But I can not deny their existence. I see tones and then blend them according to my imagination. However, I am not too cautious with colour application; and sometimes my misjudgements fascinate viewers.

TNS: How do you see the nude in the broader scheme of existence?

SA: I believe this whole existence is for the human body. If you pay attention, all the activities that you see around you are linked to the human body, the dress, the building, and almost all of the innovations related to such products. God says that He has created the human body in His own image, which is the most beautiful. In other words, the more beautiful a human, the closest she/he will be to the Divine. God is beautiful and loves beauty. Though we can not imagine His beauty, we can still idealize the glimpse of it in the human form. The Romans and the Greeks have done the same. The seven nuktas that make an alif follow the human proportions with which the whole Quran is written. Sharing beauty and joy is not a sin.

TNS: You believe you are looking for the Divine in such manifestations of beauty?

SA: In this regard, human face attracts me the most. I saw a face, when I went for haj, and thought that the artist who painted Mary must have seen a beauty like this. Such beauty leads to beautiful thoughts where we find our own ideals.

TNS: The figures on display in your recent exhibition portray such beauty?

SA: Beauty is somewhat personal. I like high-bridged noses, some people don’t. Some like narrow eyes, while I like big eyes. You have to see the beauty in its context, because different regions have different perceptions of it. The bright coloured attire and ornaments used in our deserts in the South can not be appreciated through some other culture’s perspective due to the difference in sensibilities. The working women with Gandhi, had just fabric wrapped around their shoulders, and were not wearing any blouses. In our childhood the women would wear tehband with kurtas, and there was no concept of bra. Why do we want to see the female in stiff and straight posture anyway? Similarly, since I have lived in Quetta, I really like the graceful turbans wore by the men there.

In my recent exhibition, only five paintings are a bit exposed, and they were the first to get the sold tag. And the apparently unusual postures are nothing but images from daily life that is not tied with ropes, and which can be extraordinary on its own. One of my paintings — showing a female figure in motion on a swing, her hair swaying in the wind and the bust visible through the drapery — was bought by a lady. I enquired where she had it hung; it was in their living room. Art is all about our lives, why hide it?

TNS: What is the story of buraq?

SA: It is all about emotions and has little to do with the tangible. Our prophet’s journey through heavens — and his description of the ride, which was much faster than light — brings to mind such visuals that guide us to the path of breaking free. Look at the fascinating colours of feathers on this planet; buraq, for me, is the culmination of all flights.

TNS: How do you feel about art appreciation and art criticism in Pakistan?

SA: Artists have colours and art critics have words to play with. But mostly the critics here use the same old vocabulary, and you feel like reading the same thing over and over. Our art institutes mainly focus on the Western Art and art history as the art. And in comparison, there is not much of the published material available on the local arts and artists. Do art students know about the local artists as much as they do about the Western artists? How many art students actively visit art galleries and exhibitions, or know about Shakir Ali Museum, Chughtai Museum, or the Alhamra Permanent Art Gallery?

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Published in The News on Sunday

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/dec2009-weekly/nos-27-12-2009/enc.htm#2

Interview: Julien Columeau

"I think writing is born also out of a dialogue with different authors and that makes you conscious of a very important thing; that there are books that you have never read and you would love to read but nobody has written them and you are the person who is going to write them. Writing is always about writing what others haven't written."

By Naeem Safi

Julien Columeau got a degree in Islamic Studies from Sorbonne, Paris, and has been working as an interpreter for an international humanitarian organization for the past twelve years. Was posted in India, Afghanistan, and lately Pakistan. Heavily influenced by philosophical and literary theories of Maurice Balnchot, Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, the 'enfants terribles' of French Thought. Has published two novels in France. His third French novel, Zahid (story of mujahid turned pimp) is under press in Paris.

Following are the excerpts from an interview TNS had with him recently.

The News on Sunday: Can you recall precisely when did you decide to become a writer?

Julien Columeau: I don't think I ever decided to become a writer; I think I just decided to write. Becoming a writer, in my sense, sounds a bit pompous. There are very few people that I'd call writers. In French we have this concept of 'écrivain'. Écrivain is somebody whose life depends on writing. He is the person who'd die if he didn't write a book or a line. He lives out of writing, spiritually, gets his energy out of writing and not out of anything else. I think it is very difficult and very few people can attain that. Most of us get energy from writing, people who are like me, who are in the habit of writing, as people are in the habit of smoking. We derive our energy from writing but I don't think we derive all our energy from writing and we are striving to get close to that stage where you are one with your writing.

TNS: Could you tell us about your writing habits? Do you follow a strict regime or wait for inspiration or the 'right mood'?

JC: I don't believe in inspiration and I don't believe in getting in the mood either. I think what you have to write is within you and it has been within you for years. It's very much connected with your own subconscious. I think writing is a form of a conscious dialogue with your own subconscious. It's all about you letting your subconscious talk very often. You have to go and meet a psychoanalyst and you don't decide the time when you are going to meet him and, unfortunately, it's following a very strict routine. All the psychoanalysts stress a lot on the importance of routine.

TNS: How important is company or setting for a writer?

JC: It is important, to some extent, but it is also very good to be able to see it for your own imagination and not for your physical aids. I think in order to write fiction you need to give more importance to the unseen. I would say that without having been to Lahore I would have never written the book, Saghar, if I talk about myself. But at the same point, when I wrote Saghar I don't think I was in Lahore.

When I had the first idea of Saghar I was quite far away from Lahore. The city was some kind of a memory or a fantasy. And this is why I didn't feel restricted by geographical facts that at times you feel you have to respect if you are talking about a given place.

It actually got me a lot of liberty to write about Lahore in a very dreamy way. In order to translate it into words you need to feel the distance. I was not describing Lahore, I was describing the vision of Lahore, which is very imprecise and I wanted it to be so.

TNS: You have written a novel about poet Saghar, by the same name. Would you like to share the experience?

JC: I didn't have to go through much actually; it was just a couple of book readings about him, written by those who were close to him, who had a lot of love and respect for him, which was good. And I feel that a lot of Urdu poets have earned people's respect but I don't think many poets have earned people's love to the extent to which Saghar had. I have the feeling that he is very dear to the people of Lahore, especially the Walled City and some adjacent areas where he used to move around and that's a very specific thing. So what I encountered first was people's love for Saghar, and a lot of them could still identify themselves with Saghar and his memories, as if Saghar was embodying a period which is dead now.

And then I realised there were important things missing, unfortunately, people were talking about their perception of Saghar and their love for Saghar but not much about Saghar himself. And they were talking a lot about what they assumed Saghar was going through -- mentally, spiritually, and philosophically. The thing that was missing was Saghar 's point of view itself. It was then I realised that I'd have to go through his diwaan as often as I could and try to interpret it in my own way into some fiction. I've been writing the fiction for a couple of years, which was to find a kind of fictional background for a lot of the verses by Saghar, which moved me and that was the beginning of the purpose of writing the book.

TNS: What has influenced this text more: reading Saghar or living in his city?

JC: Yes I'd say both of them but especially Saghar himself, meaning whatever I could get from his poetry, from different biographical accounts, and what also I could gather and understand, which is very important, is that people don't know much about his life. So it's mainly about some kind of gaps which I noticed in his biographies, huge gaps. People were not aware of very important things; they knew where he was born, where he died, but they didn't know what happened to his mother after 1947. They didn't know who inspired him, whom he referred to all his life in a very metaphorical way. So basically what I didn't know about Saghar is what inspired me to write about him.

TNS: You feel that your perception is different from that of the local Urdu writer?

JC: I'm not too sure. It's debatable. If you talk about the local writer you might be talking about the masters. Obviously I cannot write anything classical because I don't know much about classical literature. People in the modern age feel differently. The set of experiments attempted by contemporary writers in the past thirty years have taken Urdu literature to its limits, for instance Enver Sajjad, Anis Nagi, and the stories of Hassan Askari, the first stories written in Urdu that are very fresh and willingly used the method of stream of consciousness. I was very much influenced by poetry as well, especially Majeed Amjad.

TNS: Do you use such a rich vocabulary in French as you've used in Urdu?

JC: The aspects of language, which I stressed on and exploited, while writing in Urdu and in French are different. In French I wrote in a very intellectual and internalised way, and in Urdu I tried to exploit the colourfulness of the language.

What you write is not what the language tells you to write but you are telling the language what it is to express. I was more conscious in the beginning when I was writing in Urdu, so that not to make it obvious for the reader that it's a foreigner writing. And since I had to write in the voice of Saghar I was not allowed to write anything but what I imagined would be a very rich, colourful and precise language. The effort was very conscious in the beginning but soon it became Saghar 's voice itself and then I was possessed by it. If I think about most of the scenes I have no idea how I wrote them, or no recollection of the mood I was in. This connection of distance is what helped me feel Saghar 's character and hear his voice within me.

TNS: So what you are saying is that you had some sort of a spiritual experience?

JC: I would not say that at all, being very far from roohaniyat. I think it's a very material experience. And in spirit it's a very sexual experience.

TNS: Do you believe Pakistanis have understood and appreciated Saghar the way he deserved it?

JC: Saghar was a malamati, somebody who despised himself and made himself despicable in the eyes of the society. I don't think there is any question of deserving. He stays in people's memories as a malang, with all the sensitivities and sensibilities that are associated with it, and that's what he wanted. This is something that I talk about in the novel, the malang who was so present in the public spheres and life. While malang is somebody who lives a life of retirement or that of a hermit, which was not his case. And I somehow came up with this idea that maybe Saghar could have been rejected by the other malangs that creates a different state of mind in the end where Saghar is completely satisfied with his life and he feels that he is neither a malang nor a normal person anymore. The last thing that gave meaning to his life was the company of his beloved.

He created his own mental space. I have the feeling, as far as his interaction with drugs is concerned, that it became a habit later at some point. As in the beginning it was born out of his wish to experiment with different states of consciousness. He talked about drugs, using the metaphor of wine and the name he chose for himself, Saghar. But it was more than just consuming drugs consciously and in a very organised way as far as his poetic dynamic is concerned. A point that I'm highlighting in the novel is that he became a malang out of compulsion, to some extent. But at the end it is his decision. When he walks out of the hotel room towards Data Darbar, he is someone who knows where he is going, with an aim in mind to describe and analyse the old process -- when he says "mein khud ko munazzam tarikay sey taraaj karonga", the only instance of the future tense in my novel.

TNS: Would you like to elaborate on the protagonist's choice in Saghar to appreciate the military parade over saving his love?

JC: That's the feature of Saghar, him being a patriot. I'm describing something that some people witnessed but the context is fictional where his girlfriend is feeling the effect of withdrawal and he is out to get some money for her heroin. She is dying while he is doing that.

I felt like it was echoing with the beginning of the second part when he writes the national anthem of Pakistan and in return loses his personality. It's a kind of metaphor expressing the way the states crush individuals through the passion that they ignite in their hearts and minds about the nation and other confused and meaningless concepts.

Saghar is very much attached to mythology, and nation is very much part of the mythology which is beyond his own existence and that makes him jealous of these soldiers for being part of it, yet real creatures.

TNS: You feel other writers influence your writing?

JC: I think writing is born also out of a dialogue with different authors and that makes you conscious of a very important thing, which is that there are books that you have never read and you would love to read but nobody has written them and you are the person who is going to write them. Writing is always about writing what others haven't written. You have to be faithful to the originality. You need to distance yourself from the authors who give you energy through their ideas in order not to write in the same style as them. The idea is to achieve the balance between yourself and the others, because if you're too much of yourself then nobody will understand a single word of what you write.

TNS: Before learning Urdu, what was your perception about this culture?

JC: A person coming in contact with something that is new to him has some prejudices. And I had some kind of fixed ideas in my mind and was going pretty much by all the stereotypes which are being circulated outside Asia. Learning Urdu was a very important and central experience, the experience of changing yourself through a language that is a very fresh object to you. While doing that, you give up on your own culture and background and more of your inner self and identity and focus on something else. And if you have been able to focus on that then you will realize that it doesn't really make any difference if you write in Hebrew or Urdu.

TNS: Your favourite Urdu authors.

JC: My favourite Urdu writers are poets. First on my list would be Majeed Amjad, then Saleem Ahmad and maybe not immediately Saghar, which may sound very paradoxical. I love what he wrote but I don't think he reaches the heights. He was not like a literary figure who is coming up with literature consciously. His own process of creativity and writing was very different in nature from the process of Majeed Amjad and Saleem Ahmad, or N.M. Rashid.

Each poet's poetry is, or defines a different genre. It's not that some people write in the poetical genre but I think that Majeed Amjad writes in the Majeed Amjadian genre. It goes beyond style because style is about repeating a certain set of images or combination of words. It's born out of the unity of the inner kaifiyyat and the way this kaifiyyat meets the author's world through words. I feel a lot of silence, or sakoot -- being stuck in time -- in Majeed Amjad's poems. Or like Joan Elea who was toying with the zero, or nihilism.

TNS: How do you see the contemporary Urdu literature?

JC: Urdu literature was in danger, some time ago, to die of suffocation. And I don't think many literatures can survive by themselves. There have always been two currents of Urdu literature, one is the riwayat pasand, who want to go by the tradition; and there are people who want to break free from the tradition.

I have the feeling that that kind of hangover with tradition was very much present with Urdu literature when the taraqi pasand were going to take over. Then some people, among which Asad Farooqi, and Muhammad Umar Memon, and Ajmal Kamal, realised that Urdu was going to die out of suffocation and decided to open the window by translating and adapting works from other languages into their own.

TNS: Anything else you want to share or shed light on?

JC: I wrote this novel first in French, and then I realised that very often I ended up explaining some concepts indigenous to this land. Then wrote it in Saghar 's language and changed it to the first person that gave me the liberty to impersonate him and play his role actively in my mind. Actually Urdu freed me from all the constraints that I was feeling while writing in French. People would find it very paradoxical for me feeling much more freedom in writing in a language which is not my mother tongue. But it was as if I was equipped with a new and fresh imagination, which was a very exciting and unique experience.

The book I have written is more of a tribute than a novel. After its completion I visited Saghar's shrine and asked for forgiveness from the baba.

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Published in The News on Sunday

http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2009-weekly/nos-18-10-2009/pol1.htm#1

Interview: Michal Glikson

"It's hard to believe that

people can even make art here"

Michal Glikson is presently studying her masters in painting at Baroda School, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Gujarat. In 2008, she was invited as artist -- in resident to the National College of Arts, Lahore, where she gave a presentation of students work from the Baroda School and showed the Baroda series. The Lahore Series evolved out of her internship in NCA's specialised miniature painting department and has been shown in Baroda in tandem with a presentation of students work from the NCA, Lahore. Lahore Series was exhibited in May 2009 at Damien Minton Gallery, Sydney, Australia. Excerpts of interview follow.

By Naeem Safi

The News on Sunday: How did you end up in this part of the world all the way from Australia?

Michal Glikson: My interest in this part of the world began when I was studying politics as a secondary degree to my fine arts degree and I became really fascinated by imperialism, colonisation, and particularly the links between the colonisation of Australia and the exploitation of the subcontinent by the British Raj. So it was following the trail of the British and their empire that I first went to India.

Then in 2006, I was really interested in the connections between the kinds of news coverage that we got about the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan and the links between that kind of media coverage and the old history of British exploitation. It was some kind of fascination with wanting to understand why the news coverage would be so skewed, linked historically to the old patterns of exploitation. That's why I really wanted see for myself what was really happening at the scene of the earthquake or what had really happened to people on the day that it caused the kinds of media coverage that we got in Australia which presented the Kashmiri people in a very bad light. I was quite sceptical and was interested in finding the root of that feeling people's stories. TNS: You exhibited at Rohtas a few weeks back, how did that go?

MG: There was not a large turnout but the people that were there seemed to really enjoy the work and I got some very nice feedback particularly in the guest book. People really seemed to grasp where I was coming from, which was a place of not just compassion but more a place of wanting to make connections, to actually step into the shoes of people.

TNS: What made you choose children as a primary audience?

MG: The works are done for children and adults but I hoped to engage children's attention, to capture the other end of what the media wasn't presenting -- media was presenting a sophisticated kind of view that you get from the lens of the camera and the flashy sensation. I was hoping to present the kind of story that you get upon reflection and that speaks to children in terms of the language that they speak when they are beginning to draw. In making the works I felt like a child a lot of the time.

The style is one of a childlike simplicity. I don't attempt to mimic the way children draw but I do comment in the style of the drawing in ways the things that stand out to children, which are colour and a sensitivity of line. At this stage I didn't want to present this view as an exquisitely controlled experience but to be one much closer to the surface of the skin.

TNS: Do you believe in the bourgeois and humanitarian divisions of art?

MG: I think it is a reality and I wish it wasn't there. Many people are in denial of that and we have to ask whose interest it serves that they continue to deny that schism. There is a lot of money to be made out of denying certain schisms in our society -- there is a lot of money to be made by denying that chocolate makes you fat.

TNS: How do you feel about the local art scene, especially in relation with the socio-political challenges that this region is going through?

MG: This is going to sound kind of tough, but it's hard to believe that people can even make art the way things are in Pakistan, similarly in India or Australia for that matter. And this is because there is such an enormous distance between the people making works and the people suffering the issues. There are people making works who are trying to reach down into the issues, but there is such a great socio-economic and political distance between the makers of the works and the sufferers; and then again a distance between the makers whose works get seen and the makers whose works don't get seen. It's kind of like an enormous beast not going anywhere and tripping over itself, because the thing is who is enjoying or reading the works.

It's not that I think that things are much better in Australia, where we don't have a huge gallery-going audience. But the gap between the gallery-going audience and the non-gallery-going audience is a little smaller than it is here. Here it's like people are making out whilst riding a serpent. And you can see the serpent of the country waving around and these little artists on top almost sucking their thumbs but trying to look at the serpent and make-work.

The role of the artist has largely become of someone who sits on the periphery of society and sucks their thumbs. And sometimes they make a lot of money by doing so, and they come into the centre and then go out again. But they are not regarded as a writer of books; they are regarded as somebody who is in some kind of basket or rocking chair.

TNS: What is the alternative to sucking thumbs?

MG: There is a wonderful book that really attacks this kind of predicament and that's the The Reenchantment of Art by Suzi Gablik, in which she talks about how a whole new epoch of the way we regard and make art has to begin and has begun and it really sets a challenge that everybody who is making anything ought to really a look at.

I am grappling with it myself and not succeeding but we must grapple with it. And that is, that people who make things should be putting themselves right on the street in the face of the things that needs to be re-made. It's a literal agenda that she proposes; it's as literal as a new architecture that is efficient, and in its efficiency beautiful, and in its beauty democratic. It's about a new way of recycling and organizing our garbage and not just making art out of garbage but actually programming into the very way that society is operating. It's difficult to describe in words but the process or the product has to really be something that people can use.

For me that was the most rewarding aspect of the whole earthquake story thing, the process of actually sitting down in some field with some people who had lost so much and doing a portrait of them as beautifully and truthfully as I could in the given circumstances.

Their stories weren't really getting out there. Journalists had come and gone, snapped pictures and left. One of the things that every creature really thrives on is energy. In the end, for me, it was not about making pictures, although the end product was something that people could see, but the actual experience.

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Published in The News on Sunday

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/aug2009-weekly/nos-02-08-2009/enc.htm#2