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Last week on Sunday, a small art group called the “Tentative Collective”, gathered a group of volunteers and team-members to sit on the wall of a park for an hour. They did this as a symbol of their desire to overcome the growing blockades in both, our society and civic landscape.
Their public invitation to the event read: “This social action has been organised in response to the ethnic violence and instability in Karachi, a city of diverse migrant communities. A city that has unfortunately become a city of walls, hedges and barbed wire. Free public space has become gated, walled, priced and policed. Homes have become little fortresses. Could we suggest that these boundaries are arbitrary?”They decided to use the wall of the Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Park on Boat Basin to carry out this “social action”. The event attracted 30 to 40 participants and went smoothly, while catching looks from passers on the busy road as well as the (relatively thinner) pedestrian traffic.
Both protests and art-exhibits are fairly common in our cities, but this particular idea didn’t fall neatly into either category. This was a kind of public performance art; it had a message, but no one was holding signs to explain that message. It was for the public to see, but no one passing by could easily identify what was going on. Like a protest, it had a cause and concerned participants, but - like art - it was proactive, and open to interpretation.
Activism through art in public spaces is an exciting and fascinating idea that is already popular in the west, with many examples of art that range from openly subversive to simply thought-provoking.
In Pakistan, activism in conventional art has deep roots, with many examples from poets and musicians, to playwrights and fine-artists – especially during more oppressive times when the conventional media was too tightly controlled for alternative ideas.
Today more than ever, with a relative freedom of expression, there is no shortage of conventional protest in our country. Among this cacophony of loudly dissenting voices crying out for their different causes, perhaps now is a great time to add another, more subtle layer to the emerging canvas of ideas and opinions.
Some may argue that our public is too “unexposed” to understand the style of communication that these ‘artists’ often seek to use – this is true to an extent, for example when asked what the “Beyond Walls” protest was for, the park’s gatekeeper (and even a couple of the blue-collar participants) responded with complete perplexity.
However our rich (and popular) artistic heritage proves that our masses do in fact have eyes and ears for such ideas. With more cultivated art-forms like poetry, we can see that this has already happened, with millions alike being swayed by the words of revolutionary intellectuals such as Faiz and Jalib.
In recent times, a few activists and individuals have decided to explore more experimental and artistic modes of “social activism”. One example is the late Asim Butt, an artist who toured the country making artistic graffiti and murals with his own social and political messages – the most popular of which was the “eject” symbol that could be seen around Karachi protesting the “state of emergency” regulations imposed in November 2007.
The power of activist art is only unlocked when its creativity channels the curiosity of the public, and takes the ideas to the heart of their localities to reach them; the more inspired it is, the more minds it effects.
In this nation of protesters, there are hundreds of causes to choose from – it would be interesting to see both protest and art made more meaningful when creative Pakistani minds explore this intriguing mixture of both.
