I'm curating a special issue on Kashmir for Pratilipi. The immediate provocation of course is the cycle of killings and protests that has gripped the Valley since June. I've been wondering: Can art - along with what we know as analysis and activism - analyze, activate, respond? Can art change the discourse? Challenge it? At least introduce a ripple in it?
ALTERNATE CALL:
If something can change a dream, or a nightmare, art can. The dream life of art can take us outside the most relentless of curfews and also to its most relentless inside. Every stroke of a pen, a brush, on a keyboard can wrap inside itself a stone which will heal a scar, stop violence, and bring what's disappeared back. Do you believe? We must believe.
Your mandate for investigation: Kashmir.
Inviting poetry, fiction, non-fiction, genre-crossings, translations, images, artwork, sound, video, and other art practices. Entries are welcome in English, Hindi, Kashmiri, Urdu, and other languages.
Please consider submitting your work, or forwarding the call to people who you think would be interested. Not every entry might find place in the magazine, but the idea is to find other/multiple ways in which we can present/display the art and mobilize it.
Submit to artforkashmir@gmail.com by November 20, with your name and a brief bio.
If at all there is a part of the country that is in need of the healing touch of art, my overwhelming choice would be Kashmir. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" awakened the conscience of a nation and kept America together. Let us explore the possibilities for an art that heals, unifies and reconciles. Therein lies our destiny.
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