Thinking Performance Art

Inder Salim

Inder Salim’s performances have always jolted viewers out of ordinary patterns of thinking. The man who cut his finger to protest against dying of Yamuna river speaks of the nuances of performance art.

The opening paragraph is an attempt to introduce ‘Performance Art’ as another genre in art; and we know how this term caught the imagination of both young and old in the present world of art and little beyond. there are too many views in vogue, which is quite healthy actually, by those who are actively engaged to explore this form of art, and the rest who know what this term “ performance art “ stands for, and have, by now, fairly gathered some idea of this form of art. I guess, this piece will only add to the fog that has accumulated around this slowly moving (Art) ship in the middle of sea, yet, in the least, I will try to know the direction of the shore: Here, I will try to speak about the term “Harkat” which is a forced translation of the term “performance art”. When I articulate the term, “school-un-school” I see how easily the term “ school” gets neutralized by term “un-School” and all we have is some haze between the term Harkat and Performance Art. Not to end with, but only to begin with, I quote, J. Ranciere, who says in his book, ‘The Politics of Aesthetics’, that “ we need to rethink aesthetics as the invention of new form of life. Art is not the exemplary site of sensory pleasure or the sublime but a critical break with common sense “. So, if we think, the myth, of both the mythology and of life on ground as serious impediment to realize the life force, then this ‘common sense’ must be about us, about all the things which go in the making of us, which is material-initself, which perhaps has the power to enable us individually to know who we are in the first place.

A constant enquiry of existence and connection. It is only when we feel everything around is drifting away, that a word like ‘Harkat’ comes in the picture, which somehow translates into ‘life movement’, which simultaneously impregnates another term ‘I exist’. Here, a unique moment comes to the fore when nuances of very “life movements” decide to play a new music for our true selves. What looks trivial,once shifted to another window, or, what looks empty and wasteful over there, becomes a true friend and opens a new map for our future journey(s). So, what used to claim as most legible and represented the grand of aesthetic value alone, is now only meaningful in the company of erstwhile illegible and insignificant. Then, a markedly different smile fills the skin of the face and face underneath the face. We exist. We exist, means that something inundates us with some surplus, some latent energy, and the very consciousness of being alive, exceeds from what we have- this huge visible surface of the present to omething deeper, grips our imagination endlessly.