Kallat in Chicago

(Published in the Bengal Post, Sunday, September 5)

Sometimes coincidence is more than merely eerie. It comes to life with nightmarish clarity, evoking more emotion that the human mind could conceive of absorbing. And sometimes, it is all a matter of finding commonality rather than having it thrust into the limelight, analysing it, understanding it and then creating around it. This is what Jitish Kallat has done with his new installation, Public Notice 3, opening on September 11 this year at the Art Institute of Chicago. With this unusual work, he wanders into history and back to the present, linking two moments in time through their deep philosophical significance, giving his audience fresh food for thought. Kallat takes a speech made by Swami Vivekananda at the First Parliament of Religions held on September 11, 1893 and converts it into LED displays along the risers of the 118 steps on the Woman’s Board General Staircase located close by the original site of the session. Curated by Madhuvanti Ghosh, Marilynn Alsdorf Curator of Indian and Islamic Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, the installation is site-specific and bridges the 108-year gap between the presentation of the speech and the traumatic drama of September 11, 2001, when terrorist attacks devastated the United States and changed the socio-political perspective of the country for ever.

The 1893 Parliament, held in conjunction with the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, was perhaps one of the first attempts to start a global dialogue of religious faiths. Vivekananda spoke of a recognition of and respect for all traditions of belief through universal tolerance, a way of thought so urgently needed today. Religion was at the core of the September 11 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City, punched holes in the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and dove a plane into a field in Pennsylvania. Kallat explains that “To see these two events and dates as an almost-palimpsest, laying them one over the other, was the core of the project in some ways. It also falls in line with an index within my practice over the last ten years (two major works: Public Notice, which channelled Jawaharlal Nehru’s speech with burned alphabets, and Public Notice 2, which used Mahatma Gandhi’s speech in resin bones) that looks at the possibility of revisiting a historical speech as a grading mechanism to look at the follies of the current world. The speech that becomes the work itself, so to speak.”

Vivekananda’s words called for the death of fanaticism, the end of intolerance. He argued for universality, religious tolerance and a respectful recognition of all traditions of belief. Kallat believes that “This is as valid in today’s world. While it is revisiting those words spoken on that day, 9/11, Public Notice 3 itself looks at the museum as an architectural site, almost a notepad within which the speech could be re-inscribed.” In a way, the grand staircase becomes part of the art; “It is very beautiful, starting from two sides, going to four sides, broad steps, a gorgeous piece of architecture. Every riser has the text.” And the colours used are as thought-provoking as the work itself. “As you are ascending, you can read the words illuminated in five colours (red, orange, yellow, blue and green) that the US Homeland Security Department has marked as threat levels” – a mechanism defined post-9/11 and revised every day. As Kallat says, “That is where the work comes in; it looks at the date, the words, and refracts them through The threat colours, on a site where the World Parliament of Religions happened, where Vivekananda represented Hinduism. About 108 years later, 9/11 happened.”

And there is more to it, Kallat found as he thought through the concept. “If you want to take coincidences, the number 108 is significant in Hinduism too. Post 9/11 there have been lots of viral emails, a lot of paranoia, numerous connections established, so many conspiracy theories. I started playing with these notions of these theories in a sort of reversal of method - I took those dates and travelled back into the past to go back to that first 9/11, to look at that as a possible way to revisit this highly contested moment; to pick that same code, look at it from the perspective of fantasy perspective and travel back into a real moment. You realise that the nation that became the recipient of that attack was also the host of the original parliament.”

With his three related works, all using important speeches by major Indian statesmen, Kallat finds that he sees “a pattern. Done over the last decade, all three reference historical speeches, but do different things to those words.” They have become more than just works of art, spanning across to literature, “perhaps from the tradition of concrete poetry, where the act of giving shape to an alphabet alters the context of the word and hence gives a cast of meaning to the structure of the poem in a way. It is about using a thread from concrete poetry, but applying that thread to a historical moment.” This awareness came after the fact of creating the work, Kallat admits, “I see that pattern now, not when I did it. Doing this one (installation) made me go back and think about my own processes.”

For Public Notice, Kallat set every alphabet that Nehru delivered in his speech at the midnight of Indian Independence aflame. “The words burned down on the surface of a mirror; the distorted mirror would break and fragment your face as you read the words – it represented a unique present that held no filament of the present or the past.” Public Notice 2, which detailed Gandhi’s speech on non-violent civil disobedience, was cast as 4,600 bone-letters that were placed on shelves like relics. Since then, he has used bones in a number of his works, so much so that they have become almost a signature. But this time, bones do not make the picture. “A few hundred have already experienced it with their bones,” Kallat laughs, “but no resin bones! I am relying on human bones to take people up and down the artwork.”

Jitish Kallat: Public Notice 3
September 11, 2010–January 2, 2011
Art Institute of Chicago
Woman’s Board Grand Staircase