The long journey out to Majuli is just one physical manifestation of what has been a long friendship with DMC — Mriganka and Sonal. While we’ve never had an actual opportunity to be together ( and I never imagined it would be with so many others who have built different intensities of an intimate friendship with these two), there have been numerous conversations around some of the ideas and provocations and processes the assembly sought to ignite and re-fuel, over the course of time. This form of a relationship with fellow artists and cultural producers is not new to me. Its the only kind Ive known. Its the only space from which the work that I do has emerged — at times smooth, at times difficult, at times successful and many a times a failure but the friendships always grow. At times its a conversation on whatssapp and at other times an exhibition in a gallery. Sometimes its the process of discussing and sharing proposals and ideas that never come to frutation for a “public” and at other times, my most recent before I came out to Majuli, was in the form of a thesis in my Masters program on the work of a friend Ive known and engaged with for close to 10 years now. And perhaps thats where Id like to start. How do we think through friendships as a foundation? Or is foundation too strong and too solid — do we need something more pliable, constantly being shaped and re-shaped?
For someone nomadic, most of my engagements in what we would call “knowledge production” has come from long term friendships — built on vulnerabilities, on sharing and caring, a lot of fighting, but most importantly built to resist the ways in which capitalist desires shape our relationships (human to human / human- non human/ human — other life forms) as well as the various “affects” of emotions implicit in the very infrastructures of these complex relationships.
I still don’t know what that meant going into the Majuli experience but Ive learnt to trust the flow. Going into the Assembly, at that point, was (and still is in many ways) an overhwhelming desire to unlearn and to not have such a way with words and the english language in articulating the futures of a post-capitalist desire. And post-capitalist desires is what I want to work towards.
Perhaps the hesitation to even write is coming from the fact that I write too much, and use the language of the coloniser because I’ve been trained to — its in my consciousness as well. Capitalism itself has taken over our consciousness a long time ago. I literally think in terms of facebook posts or see via instastories and feel like snapchat ( ok Ive never used snapchat but you get what i mean, hopefully) I’ve learnt a lot about the beast, but I don’t know if the beast and I are two separate entities anymore. Is that why the need to think of kinship and care and friendship with the island, forests, river, animals, ether, in order to understand the human animal as well?
Some desires I want to share and think through without forcing a format or a way of doing it going forward -
- Death: A sudden death of a professor and a mind that influenced me a lot occurred a year ago on Jan 13th 2017 while I was his student in London. He took his life, unsuccessfully battling depression, on which he wrote some of the most brilliant (and accessible ) theories on Capitalism and its control of our desires. I spent the first anniversary of his death on the island with a group of people with whom I laughed ( a lot ) and rode bikes with and ended the night with one of them dedicating songs to each of us who sat around him, in the womb of the Meji. A year ago the suicide let out a kind of accelerated force that brought a mass group of his students together — we found ways of being together that the neo-liberal university space — a space thats becoming corporatized and in many ways already is — tried to/tries to nip in the bud so to speak. In our collective mourning and anger and sadness, friendships were strengthened in ways I cant ever articulate. We took care of each other, we cried, we fought, we cooked for each other, we laughed, we were in pain but we were always together. At times we went into our caves, but when one of us did, the others watched over more closely. And despite us being together for just 12 months, being displaced and atomised by top management in what my late professor, called “the vampires castle”, we persist, we love, we stay in touch, we build Its like we are all being guided by ghosts and spectres of a “being” who was called Mark.
And so my interest in Ghosts.
2. Ghosts: John Akomfrah writes of ghosts — when we listen to neo-nazis talk — “make this country great again” — its like the cadaver of Andrew Jackson is speaking to us.
What ghosts will a post-capitalist desire call upon then?
3. And so — The aesthetics of my politics: What makes someone enter a conversation with us around the positions we take, the politics we live or try to live, without being able to easily dismiss us?
My hyper-educated upper class self is an “aesthetic” — or atleast thats how I project the self-awareness I have around my privileges and it makes unsuspecting individuals enter a conversation with me around my politics. Because they can’t quite figure out what I stand for — but the world works on assumptions. So a degree from Christies and Goldsmiths is an enticing portal — enter through it expecting something — usually adding “intellectual” value or “cultural capital” to the machine. But maybe the portal can be used as a loophole instead?
I’m interested in the idea of “Luxury Communism” (discussed in an interview between Mark Fisher and Judy Thorne)- two large beasts of a concept that are completely at odds with each other but when placed together might reveal new ways of being rather than working in expected binaries. We cant dismantle Capitalism, but we can ‘glitch’ it, or find that loophole.
4. Lets speak of the libidinal. Of desire. Of Post-Capitalist desire — and how do we make it as desirable as red lipstick or a new iPhone? Theres no point doing away with “technology”. Instead how do we think about making the revolution desirable?
5. Time: Someone spoke of having more time with each other. I agree — except that time clarly warped for me throughout the Assembly. What was most crucial in setting the assembly in Majuli, was that its an island thats not easy to get to. In my travel to get to Majuli and in getting out of Majuli — many micro-conversations took place and again, the accelarated friendships took form in that post-capitalist desire kind of way. They just sort of, happened. We were tired, at the 8th hour of a 10 hour journey on the bus from Nimani Ghat to Guwahati, and Julia walks over and sits next to me and we have the most intense conversation, half tired, half asleep and yet focused — but it was in that other state of being — that we bonded. There was no ‘presentation’ mode, or the pretence of paying attention in a fully awake state of mind. I laughed at everything Sohrab said, and I feel like its all I needed to know hes one to keep — something that might not have happened if I just went from 6:30 pm to 8 pm at his opening in the gallery.
I walked with Waheeda on the river bed and all we came up with was that we needed to start a cosmetics company together called Brahmaputra Minerals and take some of what the riverbed offers back with us. I love how we went all Capitalist desire and we laughed about it.
Accelerated time as a variable in an algorithmn for a post-capitalist desire.
These are just a first set of provocations and thoughts , random I know , — both, what I went in with and what I’ve come out of the assembly thinking and processing. Looking for more variables, more algorithms towards, lets say it again, a post-capitalist desire, in the futures of the Assembly of Desire.
