I’m starting to write this at the beginning of today, as we go through the biennale.
We started with one place near the main venue where some volunteers has made some art. Some fairly trippy stuff, and some risqué stuff
Now on to today’s pertinent observations
- This is only the fifth edition of the biennale
- I quite love the artwork I’ve seen so far. And if not for the school I don’t think I would’ve seen all this art at all
- Some of the art is “vaguely familiar”. And that intrigues me. The familiarity draws me in. The vagueness makes me want to keep seeing more of it. Sidhus quote about the bikini comes to mind
- The biennale has this concept of “art mediators”. Effectively tour guides who explain the art and concepts around it. Our guide today was Safa. The comment I made about tour guides yesterday doesn’t apply to her. I’m enjoying her commentary.
- Just now I heard another art mediator explain a piece of art that Safa had just explained. And the two are nearly orthogonal! I guess the thing with art is that it’s in the eyes of the beholder, or maybe the mediator
- From the biennale venue (aspinwal house) you can see the kochi container port. To me, watching container ships getting loaded and unloaded is also art
- Ok I finally have a hypothesis on what I consider as good art – something that compels me to keep looking at it. It could be stuff that is hard to interpret. It could be stuff with several dimensions. It could be things that tell a new story every time you look at them. That is the kind of art I like.
- And so I like Paul Fernandes – so much going on in his art. And why I cut out a page from the times of india on Republic Day and pinned it on my wall
- And so I like Picasso – it is so hard to interpret what he has done and there are so many dimensions I want to keep looking at it
- If it gets too abstract though there is no “handle” to latch on to. And so it becomes hard to interpret
- So far I haven’t been impressed by stuff with too much “messaging” – the message by definition makes it one dimensional and not something I want to keep seeing!
- Art is fundamentally a “low precision low recall” activity. You can never see anywhere close to all the good art in the world (hence low recall)! Low precision because to find any good art you need to also go through a lot of art you can’t appreciate.
Ok now it’s afternoon and we’re at lunch. The post is long enough as it is and we’re done with the first session of the biennale. And I’m rather proud of the last two things I’ve mentioned here. So I’ll stop here.