Arts and the Knowledge Question

​

Working Group: Sushruti Santhanam (Convener), Avinash Jha, Sunil Sahasrabudhey, Rajeev Sangal

​

This session is to interrogate the territory of knowledge beyond the usual discourses of science, technology and social sciences, which have been left unexplored in the mainstream institutionalised academic spaces.

In the mainstream pursuits, Knowledge conceived of in the image of Science has an impervious boundary guarded by an epistemology that claims to be more and more universal.  In this universe knowledge is separated from aesthetics, ethics and any meaningful social experience. Whereas art seems to build bridges between mundane reality and intangible worlds of ideas, between many perceptions of reality.

What is required is a conception of knowledge that can capture the paradigm of social life of ordinary human beings beyond production and consumption. Truth and meanings, collective visioning of life, reflection and contemplations of common people have all been better expressed through artistic intelligence.

In India there still exist several instances of such continuous social traditions in kalā, which help us work towards a more encompassing theory of knowledge that better represents the human condition. Historically this society made grand temples and complex lyrical compositions, iron and exquisite cloth as part of its engaged seeking of a sāmājik drsti.

The mechanics of such artistry: The systematised knowledge of evoking rasa anūbhuti and deeper states of consciousness is transmitted formally and socially. Instances extant now from which to cull out such an overarching theory (case studies) may be used to set the framework.

The Idea of embodied knowledge as represented by Kalā: The modes of knowing which are more vested in the body of the artists as well as the community of listeners, beholders, knowers of art, rather than in the texts. How does the kalākār or kārigar see a form that will eventually be co-owned with society? Remembering, recalling, form giving and experiencing as a process of knowing that is deeply embedded in social experience and not particularised textual knowledge.

The modes of work (technique), play (samvāda) and negotiation (consensus) creating the space for the samāja for exercising collective ownership of kalā. This concept being embedded in the way people responded to iconography, organised themselves around plays and story telling, following customs of festivals and celebrations year around creating markets for artisans, submitting to social customary relationships that still continue that marked collective social knowledge of kalā and its nuances in technique and material (particularities of occasion specific, rangoli, weaves and materials appropriate for occasions, tunes representing emotions, dance as a expression of collective joy (could include a discussion on loka jñāna encompassing śāstriya jñāna).

The deliberations could lead us to get a better understanding of the concept of Soundarya Dristi  (a view that could be shared by all) as a process that enables the samāja towards realising Beauty which can then also be seen as what is real, what is true, what is proportionate, what is just and what is universal. As well as a way of understanding aesthetics as knowledge system which is not merely a way to measure that which is beautiful and evocative but that which is right and just in its method.

Vividly seen in the still existing traditions of the grāma nātakas where after having finished all chores people go and sit in a theatre to watch a play. They are entertained no doubt, but they also judge characters and happenings of the imaginary world created on stage and reflect on who is right and who is wrong, what is just and what is unjust.

This eventually determines for the society a mode of exercising creative sovereignty and an imagination to push forward towards the future.

​