As part of the Critical Writing Ensembles talk series in Dhaka Art Summit 2016 (DAS), the third day was scheduled for “The Political Unconsciousness of Art Writing.”
The session was designed to look into the political considerations in art writing and how that has been manifested in different people’s works or in different geo-political contexts.
Speaking first, Geeta Kapur spoke about the life of Begum Hazrat Mahal, pioneering Indian Muslim artist Rummana Hussain, among other rebellious figures. Geeta Kapur is an art historian, curator, critic, and expert on contemporary art and history. She is noted for her many accomplishments in curating and art criticism.
With Mariam Ghani’s intriguing take on Afghan filmmaking, her film project sheds new light on the unknown terrain of Afghan communist intellectual tradition and its relation with filmmaking during Mujaheedin rein.
Ghani, a New York based artist, talked about her documentary film titled “What we left unfinished: Shahrazade in the archives.” She also spoke on critical writing.
Ghani thinks that engaging fully into political discourse will consume the artist. But showing a tepid interest may leave the artist empty.
In her film Mariam Ghani looks at five different feature film projects in Afghanistan that were left unfinished and inspect why those films were unfinished.
She tried to understand the psychology behind creating a utopian vision in the Afghan films. She thinks that they were attempting to create a world through film that they can never have in reality.
Ghani ended her speech referring to the Shahrazade (the Persian Queen who narrated the stories in One Thousand and One Nights): "Like Shaharzade, we can all tell our stories night after night and force our nations into sanity."
The last speaker Ovul O Durmusoglu talked about the political context and meaning in the current day Middle East, which she refuses to call Middle East and refers to as Mesopotamia.
Her talk titled “Rebranding Mesopotamia: The Inextinguishable Fire” included a lot of contemporary political analysis and data, shedding light on how the struggle of the Kurds are misused to designate different meaning by different factions.
Durmusoglu talked about how right wing movements have recently became strong in Europe. Just like she thinks that the term "Middle East" carries too much of colonial baggage, she also thinks that the failure of Sykes-Picot borders for the Middle East has finally engulfed Mesopotamia and it can no longer meaningfully define the region.
