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**** Annual Goanetters Meet ****
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Annual Goanetters Meet - January 3, 2012 - 12:30 - 2pm
Tourist Hostel, near the Old Secretariat, Panaji (Panjim)
Planning to attend? Send an email to eve...@goanet.org with contact details
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Debating the Goa Lit Fest: Size and the architecture of happiness
Jason Keith Fernandes
Some days ago, starting with the voice of one Mr. Avinash Pednekar,
there was a string of complaints in the Navhind Times over the
organization of the II Goa Arts and Literary Festival. These complaints
suggested that the Festival had been a failure because the sessions had
been poorly attended, because sessions failed to start on time, because
many of the big names who had promised to come simply failed to show up,
and finally, these complaints alleged that the principal organizers of
the Festival, Ms. Sahai of the International Centre and Mr. Vivek
Menezes, were both arrogant and rude. This column will suggest that such
opinions while being valid opinions of the complainants are merely one
way in which the facts experienced by these complainants can be
understood, and set forward another perspective on these same facts.
The first complaint was over that of size, this complaint emerging
because the Goa Art & Lit Fest was compared to the huge crowds that
throng the Jaipur Lit Fest. This comparison may have been effected not
only because of the similarity in the names and concepts of the
festivals, but also because the organizers of the Goa Lit Fest, perhaps
expecting Jaipur Lit Fest like audiences, had erected a huge marquee
that dwarfed the audience that did assemble for events held in that
space. The question that we need to ask however, and this question is
being posed to the organizers of the Lit Fest as well, is whether the
Jaipur Lit Fest must necessarily be a positive reference point for the
Goa Lit Fest. The Jaipur Lit Fest, that is said to have begun in 2006 as
a ‘civil society’ initiative has in addition to allowing space for
audiences to encounter authors, today grown into a media-house and
corporate extravaganza that raises hordes of ethical issues and
attracted trenchant criticism. Complaints abound of how the size of the
event has prevented intimate encounters between author and reader, or
indeed among readers, and how a literary event has descended into just
another carnival.
Given that Goa is often presented as the location of carnival, we should
not be surprised if the carnival becomes the goal of our cultural
events. Yet, there is more that Goa is capable of producing. One of
Goa’s most eminent offerings is that of scale; it offers an option for
the small and intimate. Perhaps nowhere was this benefit of scale
demonstrated as in the film festivals that used to be organized by the
Moving Images Film Club in the International Centre Goa and the Kala
Academy. Almost every screening would be followed by the most
stimulating of discussions, made possible essentially because of the
intimate nature of the gatherings; a fact commented upon by one of the
national organizers of the Tricontinental Film Festival, highlighting
this occurrence as something unique to Goa. When held in the more
confined spaces of the International Centre’s permanent halls, the
sessions of the II Goa Lit Fest shared in this magic of intimate and
sparkling conversations. Indeed, it was precisely because the event
turned out to be so small, that new bonds were forged between authors,
and between authors and those who did attend, something that is not
often possible in larger events, when much is lost in the crowd. Indeed,
one of the more prominent authors who participated in the Goa Lit Fest
indicated that it was precisely the scale of the event that encouraged
them to privilege Goa over Jaipur. It was when events took place in the
big marquee that one was left with a sense of a small audience marooned
in a sea of empty chairs, unable to communicate with the discussants
thanks to the technical failings often associated with sound systems,
and the distance between audience and the discussants on the stage. It
was these effects of the scale of this marquee that also stripped these
gatherings of any sense of intimacy, and perhaps left persons with the
feeling that the event was under-attended, and lacking in intellectual
stimulation.
If there is a lesson that the organizers of the Lit Fest must take
seriously, then it is one of architecture. Lose the stage, and engineer
more intimate settings for the sessions; sessions that allow the
chemistry between the discussants to be communicated to the audience,
for the audience to get a sense of proximity to the discussants being
highlighted at the sessions, and safeguard the participative tone of the
event thus far. Not only does size matter, but how you use it makes all
the difference.
When dealing with the charge of the arrogance of the organizers one
needs to invoke a different understanding of architecture. A personal
evaluation of Goan ‘civil society’ suggests that it is in fact largely
lacking (as is perhaps the case with civil societies across India) the
institutional density that one theoretically associates with a vibrant
civil society. What one has in place are restricted personal and
familial networks that even when allowing for the organization of
interesting events, carry with them the self-limiting nature of these
networks. Thus once the personality involved with the event disappears,
thanks to the lack of an institutional investment that can provide
continuity, the event disappears as well. In such circumstances, the
process of initiating, and carrying forward an event is often the result
of the dream and exertions of one individual. In such a context then,
there is often no difference between an attack on the individual and an
attack on the event itself, the two being synonymous. In the context
where the social structure actively prevents the creation of a civil
society, and privileges the development of personality cults and the
reinforcing of the power of closed social groups, even if this dreaming
individual seeks otherwise, they are often bereft of the opportunities
to create a more inclusive organizational structure, and unable to
create distance between themselves and the event. Removing one is akin
to destroying the other. It is in this context that we should perhaps
see the alleged arrogance of the organizers of the Goa Lit Fest. This
arrogance should be seen not necessarily as personal attributes, but as
stemming from a larger flaw in our social architecture that actively
prevents the well-meaning from transcending the limitations that social
structure imposes on us. As this column has often argued, the individual
is not always the independent and conscious entity that we are
encouraged to imagine, but as often merely an unconscious tool of larger
social processes.
In light of this argument, perhaps the organizers of the Lit Fest, whom
we have to thank for their exertions in initiating the Lit Fest,
regardless of the shortcomings and our critiques of its organization,
could actively think of expanding the institutional framework within
which the Lit Fest is held. Such an expansion would allow the Lit Fest
to be the investment not only of the individuals who conceptualized this
event for Goa and realized it for two years running, but of a wider
civil society that would invest making the event a recurring and more
genuinely participative one. (ENDS)
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A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times, Goa -
January 4, 2012
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