1 00:00:07,080 --> 00:00:16,680 Welcome everybody to the latest instalment of the Art Radio Hour. 2 00:00:16,680 --> 00:00:18,030 My name is Geoff Batchen, 3 00:00:18,030 --> 00:00:29,040 and every week at this hour I have the pleasure and honour of being in conversation with a guest where we talk about art history and its vicissitudes. 4 00:00:29,040 --> 00:00:36,120 And I've done my best this term to arrange a relatively diverse range of scholars looking at 5 00:00:36,120 --> 00:00:40,980 a whole range of different types of types of art history and different types of material. 6 00:00:40,980 --> 00:00:46,400 And this week, I'm very lucky to have Professor Dipti Khera with us today. 7 00:00:46,400 --> 00:00:52,560 Dipti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at New York University and also an associate at the IFA, 8 00:00:52,560 --> 00:00:57,840 which is where a graduate studies is done at NYU and she specialises in. 9 00:00:57,840 --> 00:01:01,920 Well, she's going to tell us which specialise and let's call it the art of India to begin with, 10 00:01:01,920 --> 00:01:06,450 and then we're going to whittle down to a more and more specific locale. 11 00:01:06,450 --> 00:01:10,620 But thank you Dipti for joining us. When I was looking at your CV, 12 00:01:10,620 --> 00:01:14,790 something struck me because I have a similar pattern in my own background that you actually 13 00:01:14,790 --> 00:01:20,160 began with degrees in architecture and design and then subsequently shifted to art history. 14 00:01:20,160 --> 00:01:30,090 What? What made you want to shift from designing and building to studying, you know, at an academic level? 15 00:01:30,090 --> 00:01:37,590 DK: That's a great question to start. Firstly, let me thank you and the History of Art department at Oxford for this invitation. 16 00:01:37,590 --> 00:01:45,300 As I was saying earlier, I've really enjoyed some of the conversations for the way in which you've been able to draw 17 00:01:45,300 --> 00:01:51,180 out some of these smaller and bigger questions for Art History from people having very, 18 00:01:51,180 --> 00:02:02,290 you know, different journeys, perhaps. And so my journey, as you noted, started in the architecture school and I. 19 00:02:02,290 --> 00:02:06,940 I actually was working as an architect in the best place possible, according to me. 20 00:02:06,940 --> 00:02:18,970 I was working as an architect after I finished my degree in Goa and I was having a time of my life because of what that city is and what it offers, 21 00:02:18,970 --> 00:02:25,990 like what its history has been, which has been extremely intercultural, very localised, 22 00:02:25,990 --> 00:02:32,230 excellent food, excellent architecture and the firm that I was working with. 23 00:02:32,230 --> 00:02:40,450 A group of architects really focussed on thinking about this particular history and the history of the built environment, 24 00:02:40,450 --> 00:02:48,950 both in terms of thinking of preservation projects of Re-adapting some of the older houses, which are very, 25 00:02:48,950 --> 00:03:01,690 you know, very one could call them eclectic, but also like very precisely mixed houses for various kinds of patrons from the Portuguese who settled 26 00:03:01,690 --> 00:03:10,180 there to the local Goans who were kind of travelling across different worlds in the Indian Ocean. 27 00:03:10,180 --> 00:03:14,380 So one, thinking about the question of adaptation of historical architecture and open 28 00:03:14,380 --> 00:03:21,070 places and two, thinking about construction technologies and local building material, 29 00:03:21,070 --> 00:03:32,650 especially the red laterite stone from which much of the building happens there and thinking in terms of like local low cost building modes, 30 00:03:32,650 --> 00:03:38,410 if you will, for various kind of scales of architecture. 31 00:03:38,410 --> 00:03:47,140 In that sense, dive also into this entire kind of 1960/70s post-independence, thinking on the question of low cost housing. 32 00:03:47,140 --> 00:03:54,280 And Laurie Baker was an architect who really was a steward of that. And so these were students of Baker. 33 00:03:54,280 --> 00:04:07,210 This was an office where there were architects and draughtsmen on the payroll and you had carpenters on the payroll and, 34 00:04:07,210 --> 00:04:13,030 you know, masons on the payroll. And every project was a project was a key project. 35 00:04:13,030 --> 00:04:20,200 We were working with the in-house staff, so one would spend two or three days a week on the draughting board. 36 00:04:20,200 --> 00:04:24,320 I learnt architecture that gives you a sense of how ancient I am. 37 00:04:24,320 --> 00:04:33,370 Like, we had one computer station, but you just embarked onto digital in terms of thinking about architecture, drawings of the computers and, 38 00:04:33,370 --> 00:04:42,620 you know, spending two or three days on site, sometimes laying out arches like, you know, really getting to know the material. 39 00:04:42,620 --> 00:04:52,870 So this question of how you adapt historical architecture for contemporary design was like really 40 00:04:52,870 --> 00:04:59,140 at the core of what this practise was and how do you think about it for a variety of publics? 41 00:04:59,140 --> 00:05:00,790 So in that process, 42 00:05:00,790 --> 00:05:12,490 I found myself really drawn to research and I found that the architectural practise at any given point fairly soon one had to stop and say, 43 00:05:12,490 --> 00:05:22,660 OK, what is the design solution for it? Where are we going? So that's when I kind of realised that my kind of draw was and research. 44 00:05:22,660 --> 00:05:28,960 And it's not that I had a direct route into art history from there because honestly, 45 00:05:28,960 --> 00:05:34,060 like I did not have any exposure to art history given that I was, you know, 46 00:05:34,060 --> 00:05:41,380 what my schooling was and the space that I came from and the space for the humanities in 47 00:05:41,380 --> 00:05:49,450 some ways not something that I knew in a way that I know now as a curricular, 48 00:05:49,450 --> 00:05:52,360 as a discipline, right? 49 00:05:52,360 --> 00:06:02,710 And so from there, I kind of followed and went to this programme, which kind of looked at South Asian design and architecture, you know, 50 00:06:02,710 --> 00:06:15,400 history from people who were practitioners, architects, sculptors, painters who were interested in the question of history as a practitioner. 51 00:06:15,400 --> 00:06:27,760 So that kind of like got me into that world and got me actually then thinking more in terms of historic preservation, 52 00:06:27,760 --> 00:06:34,930 museums, history museums, old buildings of museums. 53 00:06:34,930 --> 00:06:38,200 Yeah, that led me then later to museum anthropology. 54 00:06:38,200 --> 00:06:49,390 Again, not art history, because I was coming from that space of the built environment in some ways right to do it. 55 00:06:49,390 --> 00:06:54,100 GB: But you ended up in Columbia, at Columbia, in New York. Why there? 56 00:06:54,100 --> 00:07:02,150 DK: So I came for my museum anthropology degree to Columbia, and I was in anthropology and museum anthropology. 57 00:07:02,150 --> 00:07:05,750 You know thinking about questions of heritage, 58 00:07:05,750 --> 00:07:16,550 thinking about how anthropology defines anthropology and archaeological anthropology in that sense defines museums and stakes of museums, 59 00:07:16,550 --> 00:07:21,500 as I was embarking on those projects and thinking about contemporary heritage landscapes. 60 00:07:21,500 --> 00:07:25,550 In some ways, reflecting on the work that I had been doing. 61 00:07:25,550 --> 00:07:34,490 With some of these museums, post my first kind of masters and inroads into historical studies. 62 00:07:34,490 --> 00:07:41,660 My interest became even more historical because I was questioning some 20th century narratives that took me into 19th 63 00:07:41,660 --> 00:07:49,730 century colonial narratives and the continuities and those as twentieth century heritage 64 00:07:49,730 --> 00:07:58,100 landscapes are shaped, and that led me to the question then, OK, what were the other competing narratives? 65 00:07:58,100 --> 00:08:03,560 How is it possible to be center what was going on? What are the sources that we go to? 66 00:08:03,560 --> 00:08:13,880 So that kind of took me more into art history, and I did my Ph.D. in art history at Columbia, but 67 00:08:13,880 --> 00:08:19,900 As you can see, it wasn't circuitous journey. And even at that stage, I was. 68 00:08:19,900 --> 00:08:29,320 This question of disciplines was very much perhaps like I can now, I can now verbalise it, 69 00:08:29,320 --> 00:08:35,080 think through it, but I had like this very interesting scenario when I was to start my PhD in art history. 70 00:08:35,080 --> 00:08:39,790 I was actually considering a Ph.D. I had three choices I had. 71 00:08:39,790 --> 00:08:46,960 I could go for a Ph.D. in anthropology and material archaeological anthropology at Chicago. 72 00:08:46,960 --> 00:08:53,800 I could go to Berkeley for architecture and I could go to Columbia, offered a Ph.D. in art history. 73 00:08:53,800 --> 00:09:00,910 So I kind of was like stuck between three great institutions, three great cities and three different disciplines. 74 00:09:00,910 --> 00:09:09,460 So. So that kind of reflection in some ways has been part of my journey and I think 75 00:09:09,460 --> 00:09:14,860 has been part of how my projects have been shaped henceforth as well. 76 00:09:14,860 --> 00:09:21,330 GB: And I guess by the time you finished your Ph.D., you've become a specialist in painting rather than architecture. 77 00:09:21,330 --> 00:09:27,700 So particularly struck by things written about, I guess, I'd call them invitation scrolls. 78 00:09:27,700 --> 00:09:34,150 I know there's a specific Hindi word for it, but yeah, Invitation Scrolls, 79 00:09:34,150 --> 00:09:38,050 which I think from your writing you suggest have previously been somewhat 80 00:09:38,050 --> 00:09:42,550 marginalised in the like in the way that Indian painting has been written about. 81 00:09:42,550 --> 00:09:48,670 Could you perhaps describe one of these scrolls for us? And then I'll ask you why they are significant, do you think? 82 00:09:48,670 --> 00:09:57,550 DK: Sure, sure. So and I'm also happy to dwell upon that painting vs. architecture question. 83 00:09:57,550 --> 00:10:06,890 For me, kind of. It was a little bit about like getting into the questions of historical experiences of spaces. 84 00:10:06,890 --> 00:10:12,700 One of them being this kind of invitation letters which enable you to then think 85 00:10:12,700 --> 00:10:17,470 through these sources for histories and experiences of the built environment. 86 00:10:17,470 --> 00:10:24,880 So in that sense, like, yeah, by many, I'm now perceived or categorised as a, 87 00:10:24,880 --> 00:10:29,980 you know, we all inhabit multiple categories, but as a scholar of Indian painting. 88 00:10:29,980 --> 00:10:34,990 But for me, it's interesting in some ways like I started and even at times now, 89 00:10:34,990 --> 00:10:46,810 like I find like I'm an interloper in those boundaries because my questions didn't start with questions of painting per se. 90 00:10:46,810 --> 00:10:52,160 But that's a different quest track because I feel in some ways. 91 00:10:52,160 --> 00:10:59,630 It's it's always the in-between space of them, the interloping that has attracted me the most. 92 00:10:59,630 --> 00:11:08,420 And in that sense, these invitation objects are also those kind of boundary objects that do not fall into any category. 93 00:11:08,420 --> 00:11:16,910 So these letters, they're called [INAUDIBLE], but those which quite literally translates as meaning invitation. 94 00:11:16,910 --> 00:11:21,680 But your meaning letter, sometimes they're called [INAUDIBLE]. 95 00:11:21,680 --> 00:11:23,690 So that's a painted letter. 96 00:11:23,690 --> 00:11:37,190 And these are letters that were sent by mercantile collectors, by merchants in the space of a bazaar in cities all over the subcontinent, 97 00:11:37,190 --> 00:11:44,000 West, north east haven't been able to track as many in the south, 98 00:11:44,000 --> 00:11:56,660 but it's just a question of more research and from small towns like from port towns like you saw on the Western Indian Ocean to desert towns, 99 00:11:56,660 --> 00:12:03,140 towns within northwestern India, to the east. 100 00:12:03,140 --> 00:12:10,640 In very much and the at the heart of high colonialism in the 19th century from Bombay, from 19th century Bombay. 101 00:12:10,640 --> 00:12:18,440 And these were invitations that were sent by merchants who belonged to the Jain community. 102 00:12:18,440 --> 00:12:23,750 jainism, as there is, is a religion that has a very long history. 103 00:12:23,750 --> 00:12:33,470 As long as Buddhism in the subcontinent and most of the people who belong to the jains are in professions 104 00:12:33,470 --> 00:12:43,190 that are related either to them being bureaucrats or being artists or being merchants, of being, 105 00:12:43,190 --> 00:12:47,000 you know, scribes, historians, monks, so on. 106 00:12:47,000 --> 00:12:55,400 And so they played a very key role in the mercantile and wealth that was generated in the 107 00:12:55,400 --> 00:13:00,560 bazaars of India with their trained trade that was there across the Indian Ocean. 108 00:13:00,560 --> 00:13:06,230 So they sent these letters to important monks of the Jain community, 109 00:13:06,230 --> 00:13:15,770 asking them to come to their city during the next monsoon season and settle in their city for three or four months. 110 00:13:15,770 --> 00:13:24,440 So visually, these are like long scroll objects GB: I should mention that some of them can be as long as 70 feet in length. 111 00:13:24,440 --> 00:13:35,210 - a very big letter. DK: Yeah, very big letters, which usually have the textual letter on one end. 112 00:13:35,210 --> 00:13:43,640 And the visual letter is a praise, but the textual and the visual is a praise for the city and the visual letter, 113 00:13:43,640 --> 00:13:47,660 you know, different artistic, different approaches from different cities. 114 00:13:47,660 --> 00:13:53,450 They make connexions to painting practises. They map out the cities. 115 00:13:53,450 --> 00:14:00,800 There are certain genre, you know, certain vignettes that are expanded upon based on what they decide to do. 116 00:14:00,800 --> 00:14:05,960 But it's the space of the bazaar that certainly celebrated. 117 00:14:05,960 --> 00:14:13,370 And so in some ways, it's like this very interesting object, which I think really strikes home for us now. 118 00:14:13,370 --> 00:14:19,130 At least for me, the project has been changing and expanding as we've gone through this pandemic because 119 00:14:19,130 --> 00:14:24,890 these are letters which are trying to tell these monks that you have to undertake this travel. 120 00:14:24,890 --> 00:14:29,210 We know that this travel is very arduous because these are monks who only walk. 121 00:14:29,210 --> 00:14:33,470 So they are going to walk for months to arrive at this place. 122 00:14:33,470 --> 00:14:39,740 So you have to convince them that this is a place worth coming. 123 00:14:39,740 --> 00:14:46,400 GB: And what's the advantage of having the monk come? I mean, what? Why merchants are concerned to have the monk there? 124 00:14:46,400 --> 00:14:53,750 DK: That's a great question. And that's one that has been at the heart of these multiple letters. 125 00:14:53,750 --> 00:15:02,240 I call them letters from the local bazaar for a new project that I'm working on, which is what they are, 126 00:15:02,240 --> 00:15:09,770 the monks might be receiving letters from different places at the same time. Scribes have been able to track that, 127 00:15:09,770 --> 00:15:16,430 even though I haven't been able to track this, the decision they took where they ultimately went in each case, 128 00:15:16,430 --> 00:15:21,110 then I have these examples of competing letters. 129 00:15:21,110 --> 00:15:26,420 And the advantage of them coming is from what one can gauge 130 00:15:26,420 --> 00:15:31,850 is that it's very historically specific in each piece at the general level. 131 00:15:31,850 --> 00:15:40,310 It certainly would transform the entire political economy of that city because with monks would come, 132 00:15:40,310 --> 00:15:51,700 the merchants would come the pilgrims, you would have this entire kind of setting up of this base on the frontiers of the city and. 133 00:15:51,700 --> 00:15:55,800 The border of the city, so in some ways it changes. 134 00:15:55,800 --> 00:16:02,280 It would change the entire political economy of the city, it would change the demographic of the city. 135 00:16:02,280 --> 00:16:08,480 It would bring prestige to the city. And what I've been able to track is that. 136 00:16:08,480 --> 00:16:16,790 For most places, these letters have been sent at very critical points in, 137 00:16:16,790 --> 00:16:20,270 you know, how the political economy of the city is shifting. 138 00:16:20,270 --> 00:16:28,160 So for example, this 70 feet letter that you are referring to, which was sent by the local merchants airport in 1830, 139 00:16:28,160 --> 00:16:39,410 was sank precisely at the time when the Udaipur agency - Udaipur was a town in northwestern India, was abolished, 140 00:16:39,410 --> 00:16:49,370 and that is when the British had been able to bring Udaipur within a larger administrative unit. 141 00:16:49,370 --> 00:16:55,070 Their independence had been entirely curtailed. 142 00:16:55,070 --> 00:17:01,820 And so you can very clearly see what is going on when you look at the letter because you can see that 143 00:17:01,820 --> 00:17:08,300 these there are as many as 30 merchants who are signing these letters in different handwriting, 144 00:17:08,300 --> 00:17:11,840 and they're saying, Look, of course, this is the best place you can see. 145 00:17:11,840 --> 00:17:18,110 You can see it's a 70 feet long letter, so it is saying like they can't be anybody better than us. 146 00:17:18,110 --> 00:17:25,820 Why it is also saying: when you come, that is when this place will change. 147 00:17:25,820 --> 00:17:32,060 And what's interesting is that in this letter, like in many letters, but in this letter, it's very precise. 148 00:17:32,060 --> 00:17:38,390 It actually imagines the time in the painting when the monk would arrive and where 149 00:17:38,390 --> 00:17:44,780 he would set up his entire durbar or his gathering on the outskirts of the city. 150 00:17:44,780 --> 00:17:51,860 And the artist actually maps it in a way that that particular space is absolutely 151 00:17:51,860 --> 00:17:58,010 opposite the new residency of the British agent that has been set up. 152 00:17:58,010 --> 00:18:04,910 He kind of creates a competing vision between them and kind of paints, in there, that the monks setting, 153 00:18:04,910 --> 00:18:11,660 which he imagines will happen in 1831 is quite a large group of people, 154 00:18:11,660 --> 00:18:19,850 including the British resident, who's kind of in the procession going to words now on its way. 155 00:18:19,850 --> 00:18:25,670 This becomes really interesting is, you know, when I'm talking about this question of borders, right? 156 00:18:25,670 --> 00:18:35,000 These questions of margins. So when you look at this archive along with the letters that are being exchanged between the Udaipur 157 00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:42,530 court and the British residency and the main kind of prejudices {INAUDIBLE] officials in Delhi. 158 00:18:42,530 --> 00:18:50,060 You read this anxiety about the political economy of the city who is lending money to whom. 159 00:18:50,060 --> 00:18:50,810 And in fact, 160 00:18:50,810 --> 00:18:59,450 you find that the merchants who sebd these letters are the ones who are lending money even to the British, who are lending money to the court. 161 00:18:59,450 --> 00:19:09,330 And so you can see that it's actually participating in a different genre of letters and diplomacy and questions of the [INAUDIBLE] as well. 162 00:19:09,330 --> 00:19:18,830 So if you start along with like the code painting, then you are seen like in some ways, what the artist is doing and changing the painting. 163 00:19:18,830 --> 00:19:27,570 Now these kinds of scrolls, in that sense, if you were to look at them coming back to a question of history of Indian painting. 164 00:19:27,570 --> 00:19:32,220 Then they would be just seen as - 'oh this is not like the best object. 165 00:19:32,220 --> 00:19:36,360 These are scraps. It's not the best painting what is going on here' 166 00:19:36,360 --> 00:19:45,960 but that exactly is at the heart of the various kind of conversations I'm trying to bridge. 167 00:19:45,960 --> 00:19:52,080 GB: So just physically, how would the monk receiving such an invitation scroll, you know, 168 00:19:52,080 --> 00:19:57,630 physically see it because if it's 70 feet, I presume it's, you know, as a scroll wound up. 169 00:19:57,630 --> 00:20:02,700 I mean, when you unscrolled it, is there a temporal element to it as well? 170 00:20:02,700 --> 00:20:12,780 I mean, in other words, you said that the the painting imagines when the monk has arrived but is that what the monk sees at the end of the 70 feet. 171 00:20:12,780 --> 00:20:19,530 And how does it how does the temporal and spatial unfolding of the scroll interact? 172 00:20:19,530 --> 00:20:26,850 DK: Yeah, that's a that's you know, that's a really important question and one that has some answers, 173 00:20:26,850 --> 00:20:30,240 but I don't think it's possible to find all of the answers for that. 174 00:20:30,240 --> 00:20:36,390 So, for example, I've dwelled a lot and I continue to think through it with the various examples. 175 00:20:36,390 --> 00:20:43,530 And as this research continues, is that what does the directionality in which the receivers would have seen it? 176 00:20:43,530 --> 00:20:48,790 GB: Do you read the letter first or do you start with the painting and work towards it? 177 00:20:48,790 --> 00:20:57,630 DK: So, so the thing is that with this letter, I, for example, we actually have the address of where the letter was sent. 178 00:20:57,630 --> 00:21:03,420 Then the scroll is, you know, when it's a scroll, then it's not unfold. 179 00:21:03,420 --> 00:21:11,640 So that at least gives me a very important clue that that is the way in which it was forced. 180 00:21:11,640 --> 00:21:14,460 That is a mode in which it was carried. Right? 181 00:21:14,460 --> 00:21:26,450 So that doesn't mean that after it was unfurled the first time or many times, that was the mode in which it was scrolled back. 182 00:21:26,450 --> 00:21:31,860 So there's that entire kind of dimension to it. 183 00:21:31,860 --> 00:21:35,760 If we are to go by how the artist would make them, 184 00:21:35,760 --> 00:21:47,010 it's very clear that the artists start with the paintings certain iconographic and auspicious symbols at the beginning of the letter. 185 00:21:47,010 --> 00:21:50,670 Then they depict the city and then you have the textual letter. 186 00:21:50,670 --> 00:22:02,910 But if we think about addresses, then in some ways you are seeing that the the recipients likely saw it in this opposite way. 187 00:22:02,910 --> 00:22:07,770 So therefore seeing the signatures of the merchants, then they are seeing the letter. 188 00:22:07,770 --> 00:22:13,290 But they are kind of like seeing it backward the very first time that they will put it, right? 189 00:22:13,290 --> 00:22:18,370 And and then they are seeing the entire city. 190 00:22:18,370 --> 00:22:21,900 And so in some ways, like I, I think through that a lot, 191 00:22:21,900 --> 00:22:29,250 but in some ways you need to think through both of those directionailites and what that does to this question of temporality, 192 00:22:29,250 --> 00:22:36,360 because in some ways they are seeing the domain that they would establish when they would arrive. 193 00:22:36,360 --> 00:22:41,460 You know, there's also the dimension of when they would arrive the following year, 194 00:22:41,460 --> 00:22:49,740 first, before they would see the the space of the court or the bazars or so on. 195 00:22:49,740 --> 00:22:59,280 But in kind of like thinking through this for the very first time, I actually created a facsimile of the scroll for myself. 196 00:22:59,280 --> 00:23:11,490 Yeah, because I could handle it only in, you know, I could see it only within three feet, you know, slices and photograph it within three feet slices. 197 00:23:11,490 --> 00:23:14,100 So I then kind of created the facsimile. 198 00:23:14,100 --> 00:23:24,000 I still have that and you know, I laid that out in trying to understand it, but that's how these questions really kind of came to the fore. 199 00:23:24,000 --> 00:23:32,190 GB: I mean, I was wondering because of the physicality of the scroll that it kind of replicates a processional experience 200 00:23:32,190 --> 00:23:39,450 of the city as if the man could already imagine as the scroll on rolls a procession through the city. 201 00:23:39,450 --> 00:23:43,240 I mean, there's something quite physical about scrolls as opposed to, you know? 202 00:23:43,240 --> 00:23:52,440 DK: Yeah, yeah. And I think that's something that I think about as this project has expanded. 203 00:23:52,440 --> 00:23:55,320 As I said, I called it Letters from the local bazaar. 204 00:23:55,320 --> 00:24:07,830 And in terms of methods, I actually think of it as unfurling scrolls of mobility and scraps of time in the global eras of art history. 205 00:24:07,830 --> 00:24:16,530 And by that, of course, I am making a case for a variety of mobilities in, you know, 206 00:24:16,530 --> 00:24:24,450 because this genre enables me to enter the time needed to see it from almost circa fourteen hundred to nineteen hundred. 207 00:24:24,450 --> 00:24:33,840 So it's also something which kind of breaks what we think of as chronological, right? 208 00:24:33,840 --> 00:24:43,890 And two is that I'm quite conscious that what kinds of scraps of time does it reveal? 209 00:24:43,890 --> 00:24:57,090 And then I say 'and what does it mean to write art history in this global era of art history from these kinds of scraps of objects?' 210 00:24:57,090 --> 00:25:05,280 Right? But I'm also writing an art history from scraps in our time period. 211 00:25:05,280 --> 00:25:14,820 There you're seeing the rise of a certain globalisation or a certain globalism that's distinct from the globalisms between, 212 00:25:14,820 --> 00:25:18,990 say, circa twelve hundred and fifteen hundred. 213 00:25:18,990 --> 00:25:21,240 This is 214 00:25:21,240 --> 00:25:32,700 The globalism that then is when your commercial networks are becoming into your imperial networks, into your colonised networks. 215 00:25:32,700 --> 00:25:43,650 GB: I wanted to ask you about that because you mentioned that the colonial governor or whatever the official word was is included in the scrolls cityscape. 216 00:25:43,650 --> 00:25:51,030 But was the invitation to the monk an effort to provide a kind of power balance to the colonial presence? 217 00:25:51,030 --> 00:25:55,350 So with these kind of counter colonial objects as well, then? 218 00:25:55,350 --> 00:26:06,840 DK: Absolutely. I mean, that's what I find over and over again, because not all of them have necessarily procession scenes. 219 00:26:06,840 --> 00:26:13,340 But, for example, one which just sent from the port town of Diu, on of the Gujarat ports, 220 00:26:13,340 --> 00:26:22,590 Diu was one of the most important port cities before the rise of Surat as as a more well-known port city. 221 00:26:22,590 --> 00:26:30,290 And there what's really fascinating is that at the end of the painted letter, you have a depiction of the 222 00:26:30,290 --> 00:26:45,920 Monk, who would arrive, but you have the depiction of the Portuguese merchants who have already arrived and who are at the mouth of the ocean. 223 00:26:45,920 --> 00:26:53,030 So in some ways you have this entire displacement of what the threshold of these letters usually are. 224 00:26:53,030 --> 00:26:59,420 And it's interesting that the the written letter has this entire poetry where it's 225 00:26:59,420 --> 00:27:05,510 talking about the wealth of the city from the various kinds of people who are there. 226 00:27:05,510 --> 00:27:11,120 So in a way, they are being used to entice the months to come. 227 00:27:11,120 --> 00:27:14,120 But it also then makes a huge point about that. 228 00:27:14,120 --> 00:27:22,760 The wealth of the city is something that is tied very much to the kind of deeds it performs in other spheres, 229 00:27:22,760 --> 00:27:33,590 and it's for those deeds that you need to be present. So you have these ways which value too the question of mercantilism 230 00:27:33,590 --> 00:27:38,550 is also something that is kind of very much at the heart of what is going on. 231 00:27:38,550 --> 00:27:44,270 And again, if you track it, when that particular letter was sent in sixteen sixty six, 232 00:27:44,270 --> 00:27:53,270 it is sent again at a point where you have a very important shift in the political economy of the city that was taking place. 233 00:27:53,270 --> 00:28:00,710 letters that are sent in Seventeen ninety five from Surat are being sent exactly at a time when there is a 234 00:28:00,710 --> 00:28:07,070 big riot that has taken place in the city that the British are trying to control, 235 00:28:07,070 --> 00:28:13,880 that, you know, the question of who has mercantile control at that time and what is the, 236 00:28:13,880 --> 00:28:18,980 you know, what is it that the local merchants are able to assert? So there's a very. 237 00:28:18,980 --> 00:28:22,490 So there's this conversation which is going on in multiple spheres. 238 00:28:22,490 --> 00:28:33,030 And that's the reason I think this kind of vernacular archives and I mean, let in at various levels is what I think is at the heart of that. 239 00:28:33,030 --> 00:28:41,300 How do you write the art histories of this peried? How do they come in conversation with the kind of maps and the kinds of more elite 240 00:28:41,300 --> 00:28:48,620 objects that we always look at to think about mobility and to think about other kinds of questions? 241 00:28:48,620 --> 00:28:57,290 GB: One thing that you make clear in your analysis of these scrolls is that they offer multiple sensory experiences 242 00:28:57,290 --> 00:29:05,150 and indeed the senses or sensory perception is the focus of your 2020 book 'The place of many moods'. 243 00:29:05,150 --> 00:29:13,850 And in this book, if I could just sketch it out, you look at why certain paintings made in northwestern India conjure moods, emotions and sentiments. 244 00:29:13,850 --> 00:29:17,510 So the first thing that struck me when I saw the theme of your book was, well, 245 00:29:17,510 --> 00:29:24,290 this is another example of sort of affect studies, which seems to have swept over our field in the last ten years or so. 246 00:29:24,290 --> 00:29:29,900 So I'm sure you must have been worrying about how do I enter that almost global 247 00:29:29,900 --> 00:29:35,750 conversation now about what art history should do with the experience of affect and how. 248 00:29:35,750 --> 00:29:42,800 But how do you deal with it that still recognises and acknowledges the specificity or localism of your particular examples? 249 00:29:42,800 --> 00:29:48,770 So I'm just wondering, precisely this global and local relationship 250 00:29:48,770 --> 00:29:54,950 that you just described that your invitational leaders is also engaged in? 251 00:29:54,950 --> 00:30:01,850 DK: Yeah, I that again, you've really read my work carefully! 252 00:30:01,850 --> 00:30:06,470 GB: It's not an exam exactly, Dipti, but 253 00:30:06,470 --> 00:30:11,270 DK: Yeah, right. Well, these are the things I want to talk and think about. 254 00:30:11,270 --> 00:30:17,090 Like, I'm not saying it's your exam or my exam, I'm wondering. 255 00:30:17,090 --> 00:30:25,580 GB: I was I was interested because I know, I know that you stressed in the book the sort of specificity of this local painting tradition. 256 00:30:25,580 --> 00:30:30,980 But on the other hand, you're obviously in conversation with sort of a larger shift in the field. 257 00:30:30,980 --> 00:30:35,630 DK: Yeah, so I mean, I think, you know, at the heart of this book, as you say, 258 00:30:35,630 --> 00:30:41,240 is tracking this category through these localisms that are very 259 00:30:41,240 --> 00:30:47,930 powerful that shift the field of painting through this particular one, 260 00:30:47,930 --> 00:30:57,770 the authors of a particular study do but how their work travels around and shifts practises across northern western India. 261 00:30:57,770 --> 00:31:01,880 So it's this category that they are formulating and iterating, 262 00:31:01,880 --> 00:31:06,800 and like hundreds and hundreds of books where the mood of a place is something 263 00:31:06,800 --> 00:31:14,300 that becomes dominant in how they tackle a variety of subjects from portraiture, 264 00:31:14,300 --> 00:31:23,420 from invitation letters, from, you know, from genealogical histories, just a variety of genres. 265 00:31:23,420 --> 00:31:26,510 This mood of places, what pictorial mood of places is. 266 00:31:26,510 --> 00:31:32,760 What structures it and, so that's one kind of end of it, 267 00:31:32,760 --> 00:31:40,920 and the other end of it is that I'm trying to make a place in some ways for many moods to get to your question 268 00:31:40,920 --> 00:31:48,330 about the specificity of it and the conversations we need to have with questions of affect or sensory tone. 269 00:31:48,330 --> 00:31:57,660 Now, if I go to mood of the place, the word for it that is used as [INAUDIBLE] translates as feel, mood, emotion. 270 00:31:57,660 --> 00:32:08,820 It also translates as what is the feel or emotion that leads to then a lasting aesthetic taste about something. 271 00:32:08,820 --> 00:32:13,950 GB: When I was reading Wikipedia, always a good source also translated as becoming, 272 00:32:13,950 --> 00:32:20,160 and I was struck by how a word that can mean emotion and mood can also mean becoming. 273 00:32:20,160 --> 00:32:27,660 And I wondered if that is a significant part of why in India, this is an important aesthetic concern. 274 00:32:27,660 --> 00:32:32,460 DK: Yeah, yeah. So it's and the concern itself is something that, in philosophical terms, 275 00:32:32,460 --> 00:32:39,820 intellectual terms, literary terms, can take you back to archives from the third century onwards. 276 00:32:39,820 --> 00:32:49,290 So there's a very long intellectual history and it is seen as the term, that is both a category. 277 00:32:49,290 --> 00:32:57,570 But it is also, as you say, very much about an act of feeling and transformation of both the self. 278 00:32:57,570 --> 00:33:01,920 Not necessarily just individually, but in a collective, if you will. 279 00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:06,600 So it's also like a theory of reception of thought in some ways where. 280 00:33:06,600 --> 00:33:12,960 The question of becoming and who is feeling is what starts defining this type of project. 281 00:33:12,960 --> 00:33:18,090 So we have a very long intellectual conversation around it. 282 00:33:18,090 --> 00:33:23,580 It seems to have structured all kinds of thoughts. 283 00:33:23,580 --> 00:33:28,650 But then when we start thinking in terms of how specifically in terms of mediums, 284 00:33:28,650 --> 00:33:36,570 how do you think about the conceptualisation and interpretation of these kinds of concepts and how they are taken to different directions? 285 00:33:36,570 --> 00:33:43,530 It's not as if we are having that entire history written down in a source, so you're kind of piecing it together. 286 00:33:43,530 --> 00:33:45,750 GB: I was going to ask you how I was going to ask you, 287 00:33:45,750 --> 00:33:52,530 how does one know how a viewer in 1830 or in the 18th century, how they feel when they look at a painting? 288 00:33:52,530 --> 00:33:54,360 How does one know those things? 289 00:33:54,360 --> 00:34:04,710 DK: So it's so it's like you find these commentaries that are there often on the back of paintings that I look at, where 290 00:34:04,710 --> 00:34:13,740 They describe what is depicted as depicting the mood of the place time events. 291 00:34:13,740 --> 00:34:22,740 A certain kind of experience. You have this in enough number of works to know that is the mode in which it's being described. 292 00:34:22,740 --> 00:34:28,710 In fact, the first time that terminology is used, it's used in 1610. 293 00:34:28,710 --> 00:34:32,220 In an invitation letter that is sent from Agra. 294 00:34:32,220 --> 00:34:40,500 That is how the pictorial project of the letter versus the scribes writing of 295 00:34:40,500 --> 00:34:46,380 the letter is related, that if you want to get a sense of the mood of this place, 296 00:34:46,380 --> 00:34:52,440 then look at the artist letter. So that's a very kind of clear signal. 297 00:34:52,440 --> 00:35:04,800 So we have those kind of fragments that are there, but to me in any kind of affect studies or kind of fleshing out 298 00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:10,830 of the question of emotions and mood and what it does is to historicize it, right. 299 00:35:10,830 --> 00:35:17,580 And that is the kind of historicization that to some extent, Indian painting has been a little bit. 300 00:35:17,580 --> 00:35:21,040 The feel of Indian painting has been doing it. 301 00:35:21,040 --> 00:35:30,030 But it's been still fairly recent because to do that historicization, you need to step away from the painting as well, 302 00:35:30,030 --> 00:35:39,120 and you need to be able to track it with these multiple kinds of sources, whether its literary sources, whether it's other kinds of political documents, 303 00:35:39,120 --> 00:35:40,770 whether it's other paintings, 304 00:35:40,770 --> 00:35:50,430 to think what is precisely the work of a certain mood that is being asserted over and over again, say in our time period, 305 00:35:50,430 --> 00:35:58,360 say in one case between 1746 and 1751, that one kind of a specific is it doing. 306 00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:02,750 That has been my methodology. 307 00:36:02,750 --> 00:36:09,760 GB: Can I ask you, does that mean that certain pictorial conventions can induce one mood and at one point in time, 308 00:36:09,760 --> 00:36:18,760 And a different mood, in another point in time? DK: Entirely so you have in that sense, conventions that are there say, for example, 309 00:36:18,760 --> 00:36:25,660 the mood of the monsoon or the mood of spring is something that is very celebrated. Now, 310 00:36:25,660 --> 00:36:34,300 You know, I'll give an example from the mood of the monsoon. If one is to think about the mood of the monsoon entirely from its poetic sources, 311 00:36:34,300 --> 00:36:39,910 how it's the celebrated season in terms of love and longing and all of that, 312 00:36:39,910 --> 00:36:48,100 then that is very helpful to think about the painterly effects and healthy painters that create and bring these moods. 313 00:36:48,100 --> 00:36:53,710 But if we start thinking about it and say in relationship to the specificity of a place, well, 314 00:36:53,710 --> 00:37:02,230 how did the monsoon environment matter for that place to actually function as a territory? 315 00:37:02,230 --> 00:37:10,240 Then we start arriving at the precarity of the monsoon and was valued in a certain way and by the monsoon of a place was 316 00:37:10,240 --> 00:37:20,380 made into such a big theme and that it was this monsoon that was sustaining something, was made into such a big theme. 317 00:37:20,380 --> 00:37:25,810 So it is then we have to go to different architectural environmental methodologies, 318 00:37:25,810 --> 00:37:33,820 but also other historical sources which actually are coming from the ground up from these travelling monks who are like writing that 'oh dear, 319 00:37:33,820 --> 00:37:39,220 The monsoon this year is like so bad and this king hasn't done something' 320 00:37:39,220 --> 00:37:41,770 Or 'still the merchants have tried to fleece the people' 321 00:37:41,770 --> 00:37:49,330 So you then start getting to the historical specificity of why a monsoon in that sense, the aesthetics of it, 322 00:37:49,330 --> 00:37:56,230 the political economy of it, the historical emotion of it is playing out at specific times. 323 00:37:56,230 --> 00:38:01,390 GB: So, OK, let's talk. Then by what means does a painter evoke a particular mood? 324 00:38:01,390 --> 00:38:07,900 I mean, is it iconographic if you wanted to? If you want to evoke a particular mood, you paint a monsoon. 325 00:38:07,900 --> 00:38:11,920 If it was in the West, you'd be looking at colour as a kind of. 326 00:38:11,920 --> 00:38:20,530 There's an assumption about a certain emotional states, you know, related to certain kinds of use of certain kind of colour. In Indian painting. 327 00:38:20,530 --> 00:38:26,650 Yeah. By what means two painters evoke particular moods? DK: So iconography is one way. 328 00:38:26,650 --> 00:38:36,010 So the iconography of the monsoon would include peacocks and would include elephants, you know, but it would include. 329 00:38:36,010 --> 00:38:40,210 And these were all actually defined as the (INAUDIBLE). 330 00:38:40,210 --> 00:38:46,420 That is that these were the underlying factors that could lead to an emotion of joy in the monsoon, 331 00:38:46,420 --> 00:38:53,800 which you can then see through the subjectivity of non-humans or the becoming of non-humans as well. 332 00:38:53,800 --> 00:39:03,460 But painterly effects play a very, very important role in kind of like capturing that feeling of a monsoon of a cloud 333 00:39:03,460 --> 00:39:11,410 bursting or how the texture of water and rain can be very different in spring. 334 00:39:11,410 --> 00:39:21,430 And that sense like the kind of exploration you have with roses and lotus flowers and this kind of red powder, 335 00:39:21,430 --> 00:39:24,760 which is used for spring festivals. 336 00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:37,240 And so you find painters like really making paintings that are that are a commentary in that sense on colour on 'rang' itself, 337 00:39:37,240 --> 00:39:44,020 which is the word for colour, which is again an aesthetic word as well, in terms of that, it colours your mood. 338 00:39:44,020 --> 00:39:51,070 GB: is the colour indexical rather than symbolic? DK: I would say yes. 339 00:39:51,070 --> 00:39:59,500 And in some ways, like again, I feel that there is an entire discourse on the relationship between colour and 340 00:39:59,500 --> 00:40:07,870 mood that is now unravelling in a variety of studies and in some ways, 341 00:40:07,870 --> 00:40:14,470 taking off from the earlier histories that some of these questions where there was 342 00:40:14,470 --> 00:40:21,580 only a kind of a general symbolic discussion around because you had, say, 343 00:40:21,580 --> 00:40:29,380 for example, the red colour used often as the background of these arch (INAUDIBLE). 344 00:40:29,380 --> 00:40:36,430 You had the meeting of the lovers and related to the erotic experience, (INAUDIBLE). 345 00:40:36,430 --> 00:40:45,190 So then there was this kind of discussion, of this one to one mapping, if you will, of colour and emotions and moods. 346 00:40:45,190 --> 00:40:59,630 And it's not like that is not there. But it's I would say that it's true, it's too little and it's changing and it has to be more specific. 347 00:40:59,630 --> 00:41:03,860 You also have a conversation if you're talking about how they showed mood 348 00:41:03,860 --> 00:41:13,550 at least what I have found is in terms of the conversations artists establish with contemporaneous poetry, 349 00:41:13,550 --> 00:41:18,080 and some of that poetry may not be inscribed per se. 350 00:41:18,080 --> 00:41:23,180 But there are ways in which there are overlapping tropes that enable you to think 351 00:41:23,180 --> 00:41:31,220 about how moods attached to places or times or seasons are evoked in that sense. 352 00:41:31,220 --> 00:41:39,050 How the question of a sensory in one medium is about sound, iteration, rhythm. 353 00:41:39,050 --> 00:41:47,180 You know how memory is formulated, how does it stick with you, how they engage that in terms of manipulating scale and painterliness? 354 00:41:47,180 --> 00:41:49,850 So there's that as well. 355 00:41:49,850 --> 00:42:01,310 So, yeah, I would say that in my work, I've found that the components and the constituents can be stretched in multiple directions. 356 00:42:01,310 --> 00:42:13,550 And in some ways, you have to get to the specificity of each conglomeration of things you put together to be able to extract that question. 357 00:42:13,550 --> 00:42:24,290 And that's the reason you have to work across medium and across time periods as well to be able to then get to that specificity. 358 00:42:24,290 --> 00:42:28,430 GB: When I was reading cursorily your book, 359 00:42:28,430 --> 00:42:36,500 I was struck that that the that the audience for these kinds of paintings seemed to be elite men. 360 00:42:36,500 --> 00:42:42,210 Were these paintings also made for women? I mean, is there are there women's moods, if you like? 361 00:42:42,210 --> 00:42:53,600 DK: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And in fact, means that are there are definitely, you know, women are protagonists in how many of the moods, 362 00:42:53,600 --> 00:43:01,890 especially related to the question of the question of both. 363 00:43:01,890 --> 00:43:06,900 You know, the question of love and longing in some ways is what is highlighted. 364 00:43:06,900 --> 00:43:11,040 It's happening in slightly different genres, but you know, 365 00:43:11,040 --> 00:43:21,300 there's some very interesting new research that is trying to think about that are some of these 366 00:43:21,300 --> 00:43:30,270 paintings which are emphasising moods of women and to think from their perspective and not just to think in terms of idealised women, 367 00:43:30,270 --> 00:43:42,030 but that they are the key patrons of many of these works, that they are the key consumers of many of these works in the novel. 368 00:43:42,030 --> 00:43:46,340 GB: Do we have evidence? Do we have evidence that they are key consumers? DK; Yeah, yeah. 369 00:43:46,340 --> 00:43:54,810 I means I think we are finding that evidence. And I think one way that I've been actually entering it with a group with a new group of 370 00:43:54,810 --> 00:44:03,210 books is that I've started actually focussing on the figures of the musicians and the 371 00:44:03,210 --> 00:44:09,660 dancers and how they appear in these elite settings when the consumption of these moods 372 00:44:09,660 --> 00:44:16,050 are taking place and how they are the ones who are creating these moods and that sense, 373 00:44:16,050 --> 00:44:21,690 and all because of the repetition of some of these figures that I've been able to 374 00:44:21,690 --> 00:44:28,290 find within a very tight group of things between seventeen sixty one and 1767 375 00:44:28,290 --> 00:44:36,210 I'm actually now able to get into a history of thinking, 376 00:44:36,210 --> 00:44:43,460 from the perspective of these very specific depictions of these specific dancing girls that are there. 377 00:44:43,460 --> 00:44:52,950 You know, dancing girls is one way to describe them, but they are the ones who are really kind of holding that mood together. 378 00:44:52,950 --> 00:44:56,130 They are the ones who are crossing social boundaries. 379 00:44:56,130 --> 00:45:04,410 They are the ones who, you know, in some ways holding musical knowledge together and shifting the mood of an assembly, 380 00:45:04,410 --> 00:45:13,960 as well and there is very good work on this. By Katherine Shonfield, who is a historian of music at King's College London. 381 00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:17,600 So I'm able to build on that by looking at these specific case studies. 382 00:45:17,600 --> 00:45:22,920 So there's a lot happening in terms of thinking through these specific case studies. 383 00:45:22,920 --> 00:45:32,130 GB: I'll ask you one of the things that you say is that to appreciate these paintings, a viewer had to become proficient in the art of sensing. 384 00:45:32,130 --> 00:45:40,470 How does how did how did one become so proficient? When did you have to be trained to appreciate these nuances? 385 00:45:40,470 --> 00:45:49,380 DK: That is the sense we get, right, because that is the sense we get from the deeper histories of how connoisseurship 386 00:45:49,380 --> 00:45:58,980 for elite male men and women was something that was part of becoming the political, 387 00:45:58,980 --> 00:46:08,370 ethical self, in that sense. And that's discussed in kind of a variety of genres of writing. 388 00:46:08,370 --> 00:46:16,080 But you also see that kind of enacted through these conventions that are used for painting. 389 00:46:16,080 --> 00:46:19,680 And I think in that sense, 390 00:46:19,680 --> 00:46:29,100 it's that iteration of those conventions in some ways where you see that displaying that becoming is something which is really elevated. 391 00:46:29,100 --> 00:46:37,410 It's interesting when you get out of the court as well to some of the mercantile material or some of the like the low brow material. 392 00:46:37,410 --> 00:46:41,370 Then again, you see how that sensing self is. 393 00:46:41,370 --> 00:46:46,380 Something that is used is depicted to make a certain kind of point. 394 00:46:46,380 --> 00:46:56,760 It actually becomes very, very important in the 18th century, you know, Rosalind Hand Hanlon, who was at Oxford, has done some excellent work on this, 395 00:46:56,760 --> 00:47:05,490 where she actually talks about becoming this kind of male elite was key in the 18th century political scenario, 396 00:47:05,490 --> 00:47:14,280 as you had the Mughal Empire decentralising, not so powerful you had several regional players. 397 00:47:14,280 --> 00:47:23,970 And how were they kind of asserting their authority and what was the cultural terrain and the aesthetic 398 00:47:23,970 --> 00:47:33,840 terrain that was equally important to be able to enter certain political networks or certain boundaries or to assert themselves? 399 00:47:33,840 --> 00:47:41,040 In that sense, it's very comparative to the larger 18th century story, as one might think about it from various locales 400 00:47:41,040 --> 00:47:47,670 So that's another conversation that I'm very, very interested in, which also kind of marks, 401 00:47:47,670 --> 00:47:52,980 which is also like the reason one is getting into the question of place of many moods, 402 00:47:52,980 --> 00:48:01,270 not just the mood of the place, because the time period that I'm talking about, if one is thinking from the question of landscape, then. 403 00:48:01,270 --> 00:48:04,840 The mood that is told through British landscapes, 404 00:48:04,840 --> 00:48:13,120 which circumscribes or has largely circumscribed study of depiction of place within South Asia and many, 405 00:48:13,120 --> 00:48:20,170 many other colonised places. There, it's a different kind of it's the mood of the sublime. 406 00:48:20,170 --> 00:48:30,970 It's the mood of desolate spaces, the mood of ruination, which has its own poetics and politics and embodiment that is ongoing. 407 00:48:30,970 --> 00:48:41,500 So in some ways through this archive, I'm also able to talk about the place for many moods at that time period to think through it. 408 00:48:41,500 --> 00:48:46,900 So that's how it becomes part of the important territorial story that is unfolding as well. 409 00:48:46,900 --> 00:48:52,990 At the same time in which landscape and place and the mood of a place is at the heart of that political story. 410 00:48:52,990 --> 00:48:58,510 GB: OK, I want to ask you more, but I just want to remind our audience that if they themselves have questions for Dipti, 411 00:48:58,510 --> 00:49:04,390 they're welcome to add one in the chat and I will pass it on to her and we'll interrogate her some more. 412 00:49:04,390 --> 00:49:13,780 But I'm very interested in the politics of mood. So these paintings, these sort of sensate paintings, how did they function politically? 413 00:49:13,780 --> 00:49:21,880 It sounds like they helped affirm an elite group in their sense of self. 414 00:49:21,880 --> 00:49:26,770 But did they have other kind of political agency as well? 415 00:49:26,770 --> 00:49:33,420 How were they used, for example? DK: Yeah, so from what we see that their subjects become, 416 00:49:33,420 --> 00:49:41,640 it seems that the question of territorial assertion is something that is central to their territorial assertion in terms of 417 00:49:41,640 --> 00:49:50,010 what are the places that are featured and what are the moods of those places that are then iterated in different time periods. 418 00:49:50,010 --> 00:49:56,790 And so in that sense as well, like, you know, the letters that people are talking about, 419 00:49:56,790 --> 00:50:04,890 those are very useful because they are also telling us how this concept was taken outside of the space of the court, 420 00:50:04,890 --> 00:50:12,420 how it had a valence there in order to make an important territorial political claim of what is possible. 421 00:50:12,420 --> 00:50:19,980 So this question of temporality that what is being depicted in them is about the here and now, 422 00:50:19,980 --> 00:50:27,840 but because they are constantly also kind of pulled in directions of tropes and idealisations in some ways. 423 00:50:27,840 --> 00:50:35,820 There's also like this aspirational aspect of of that historical moment that is embedded in them. 424 00:50:35,820 --> 00:50:39,990 So, you know, so territories are proclaimed in terms of, say, for example, 425 00:50:39,990 --> 00:50:47,460 Through the places that are depicted, say, lake palaces depicted in the centre of a lake that are highlighted because that has 426 00:50:47,460 --> 00:50:57,870 been you're able to create a certain kind of network from where you can be looking out to anybody. Specific temples, 427 00:50:57,870 --> 00:51:12,120 specific landscapes, specific lakes, hills in 1810 or journeys to specific temples that take place in the context of 428 00:51:12,120 --> 00:51:18,810 the British Durbar that has already declared that shift in territoriality in 1830. 429 00:51:18,810 --> 00:51:22,980 And so why then going to pilgrimage sites outside becomes important? 430 00:51:22,980 --> 00:51:32,310 But also why kind of painting them at a certain scale by an artist none other than Kassi (?) 431 00:51:32,310 --> 00:51:35,850 Who is someone who's painting for the British colonial agents, 432 00:51:35,850 --> 00:51:45,480 making the architecture drawings that they demand for their histories that are being written and also shifting the centrality, kind of like, 433 00:51:45,480 --> 00:51:49,980 how can he mind moods again to claim territory for this king? 434 00:51:49,980 --> 00:51:51,570 There's that going on. 435 00:51:51,570 --> 00:52:00,790 So I think that is completely part of the story, which is always the case in any kind of assertion of knowledge or territory, we may think. 436 00:52:00,790 --> 00:52:05,070 You know, the question of emotions and subjectivity is out of work, but you know, 437 00:52:05,070 --> 00:52:11,340 that's a conversation about embodied visions that we've been having for two very long time. 438 00:52:11,340 --> 00:52:16,890 But I think it's entangling these different embodied visions to think about the question of territoriality. 439 00:52:16,890 --> 00:52:20,070 And aesthetics is what we've not been having enough. 440 00:52:20,070 --> 00:52:25,920 And so I think those are the discussions to think about the comparisons, to think about the connections, 441 00:52:25,920 --> 00:52:34,950 to think about the entanglements. GB: We have a question Dipti from one of our DPhil students: 442 00:52:34,950 --> 00:52:42,510 Hi Dipti thank you for coming. I really enjoy your work. Building on Geoff's question on the politics of mood you cite, Sarah, 443 00:52:42,510 --> 00:52:47,970 Is it Ahmed? DK: Yeah. GB: In the introduction to your book, and I was wondering what you thought about her philosophies, 444 00:52:47,970 --> 00:52:53,450 applications to art, historical practise or just your thoughts on her work in general? 445 00:52:53,450 --> 00:52:59,120 DK: Yeah, I. Thanks for the question, and thanks for reading my work. 446 00:52:59,120 --> 00:53:01,070 You know, Ahmed's work is very, 447 00:53:01,070 --> 00:53:22,430 very helpful to me because she actually talks about that capacity of mood to go to historical spaces, experiences, grievances. 448 00:53:22,430 --> 00:53:33,150 And she talks about it and thinks about it to try to think about marginalised 449 00:53:33,150 --> 00:53:43,200 Feelings and grievances, as I said, but she also really emphasises the question of mood work, 450 00:53:43,200 --> 00:53:52,830 right, and mood work in that sense, always being about creating a certain kind of a collective. 451 00:53:52,830 --> 00:54:03,000 That's how mood works, a certain kind of a collective feeling which then in some ways has the ability to push certain things forward, 452 00:54:03,000 --> 00:54:11,160 even if we are thinking. So in that sense, if we are thinking about art history and thinking about see how you know, 453 00:54:11,160 --> 00:54:19,800 the 2020 the summer of 2020 tapped on to the streets in the US, 454 00:54:19,800 --> 00:54:34,260 the George Floyd moment, or we are thinking about how that tapped into the 2015 Cape Town moment, you know, as statues were toppled, right? 455 00:54:34,260 --> 00:54:41,220 And so in that sense, it's that layering the thickness of collective moods, right? 456 00:54:41,220 --> 00:54:50,790 And it's that kind of mood work that then enables you to push something in the local ground of a place. 457 00:54:50,790 --> 00:54:59,730 So that is something which I find maybe useful to think with and to keep this with the specificities of that to my 458 00:54:59,730 --> 00:55:09,570 own art is how they are devising some of these things to think about the capacity of these objects in that sense, 459 00:55:09,570 --> 00:55:13,710 which of course, you know, with very specific sources, 460 00:55:13,710 --> 00:55:21,870 but also in terms of thinking about the historiography of the field and how it goes through these ebbs and flows. 461 00:55:21,870 --> 00:55:29,670 And it's not like we have we've had various kinds of radical moments and how are they different from the one before? 462 00:55:29,670 --> 00:55:37,410 And what is the mood that enables to then push it farther so that you take it a step further? 463 00:55:37,410 --> 00:55:40,170 So I don't want that directly answers your question, 464 00:55:40,170 --> 00:55:47,280 but perhaps it gives you some sense of how I find, how I find these kind of conversations need to 465 00:55:47,280 --> 00:55:54,490 happen across disciplines through the specificity of different kinds of archives and time periods. 466 00:55:54,490 --> 00:56:01,050 GB: Interesting that you're sort of talking about a philosophy of mood almost by the sound of it, 467 00:56:01,050 --> 00:56:09,630 which can be conveyed across different fields. We have another question from another guest: You talk about - you have to correct my pronunciation- 468 00:56:09,630 --> 00:56:14,490 Baav (?), but you don't talk about Raza (?) and the Rasta (?) to Raza (?) as it were. 469 00:56:14,490 --> 00:56:23,170 Is there a reason? Perhaps you could explain the question, but you also have to come back on screen now. 470 00:56:23,170 --> 00:56:29,900 DK: Yeah, I know something happened as I was trying to go up to the question and then I tried to leave. 471 00:56:29,900 --> 00:56:36,520 Yeah, come back, OK, I'm back here. So, yeah, so please fill the question. 472 00:56:36,520 --> 00:56:45,270 And I think I got. I was trying to look at your name, but then I didn't do well and going between the screens, so. 473 00:56:45,270 --> 00:56:55,890 Yes. Raza (?), you know, translates as aesthetic taste, and Raza (?) has, of course, been seen as the centre of defining aesthetics, right now. 474 00:56:55,890 --> 00:57:02,020 The reason I talk about Raza (?) less is. 475 00:57:02,020 --> 00:57:12,010 Because of two things, one is that as Raza (?) was formulated in the third / fourth century and as the discussions continued, 476 00:57:12,010 --> 00:57:20,080 you know, in the long due to the 10th / 11th century, so on, that was the world, the systemization of Raza(?), types of Raza(?) 477 00:57:20,080 --> 00:57:27,420 of thinking about the Raza(?) of love, thinking about the Raza(?) of fear and so on and so forth. 478 00:57:27,420 --> 00:57:37,500 And but if one starts thinking through that kind of written sources and literary sources that we have from the 16th / 17th century onwards, 479 00:57:37,500 --> 00:57:44,370 the interest is not that much in classification and systematisation, but in exemplification, 480 00:57:44,370 --> 00:57:49,710 you know, this is traced very well by the late scholar Alison Bush. 481 00:57:49,710 --> 00:57:56,400 And so it's in this exemplification and the feeling of Raza(?) that Paab(?) really comes. 482 00:57:56,400 --> 00:58:01,230 And what causes certain emotions really becomes a bigger centre stage. 483 00:58:01,230 --> 00:58:08,520 Now, from my very particular archives, I have found that when one is thinking, when one is looking at 484 00:58:08,520 --> 00:58:22,900 Genres which are not just illustrated poetry, that is talking about specific, you know, aestheticised. 485 00:58:22,900 --> 00:58:25,840 You know, these systematic Razas(?). 486 00:58:25,840 --> 00:58:37,390 What I'm finding is that the emphasis in that sense is more on Paab, is more on, which can be applied, which is more it seems to be more porous. 487 00:58:37,390 --> 00:58:42,310 At least that's how it's treated, that it can be applied to a variety of things. 488 00:58:42,310 --> 00:58:49,810 And it's this porosity that in a way is what I have found and in a way which I've found 489 00:58:49,810 --> 00:58:55,180 applied to place and time that enables me to get into the history that I'm getting into. 490 00:58:55,180 --> 00:59:01,450 So it is this specific shift, which is a starting place. GB: Thank you so much. 491 00:59:01,450 --> 00:59:05,120 Typically, we run out of time. Thank you so much for the conversation today. 492 00:59:05,120 --> 00:59:12,280 We've just scratched the surface of your work, and I encourage people to indeed check out your book, 'The Place of many Moods'. 493 00:59:12,280 --> 00:59:19,630 But also, I should let our audience know that you've been working on what I assume is quite a major exhibition at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. 494 00:59:19,630 --> 00:59:22,780 When does that open Dipti? GB: Yeah, thank you so much for that plug 495 00:59:22,780 --> 00:59:33,730 It opens November 19 2022, but it'll be in Washington, D.C. for six months until the middle of May 2023. 496 00:59:33,730 --> 00:59:38,440 And then it'll travel to the Cleveland Museum of Art for another three months - 497 00:59:38,440 --> 00:59:46,360 - that's where the main exhibition format, we are actually really trying to think about the question of sensing 498 00:59:46,360 --> 00:59:54,040 histories in terms of the works and themes that goes beyond what is covered in the place of many moods. 499 00:59:54,040 --> 00:59:59,980 But it's also really trying to think about what does it mean to bring the sensory 500 00:59:59,980 --> 01:00:06,190 into an exhibition space and to historicise it for contemporary viewers, 501 01:00:06,190 --> 01:00:17,640 that question that you asked between? You know, this kind of interest in affect that is there in art history and museums and immersive ness. 502 01:00:17,640 --> 01:00:24,630 How do you how do you have the conversation with that also through specificities and how do you evoke it 503 01:00:24,630 --> 01:00:32,160 and how does that change or objects that have not been exhibited actually in this format ever before? 504 01:00:32,160 --> 01:00:36,690 Happy to talk about that more at another time. I realise that we are over time. GB: Sounds fantastic. 505 01:00:36,690 --> 01:00:45,150 And there's a I'm assuming a catalogue that comes with it, yeah, it must be an interesting experience to be able to return in a way to, 506 01:00:45,150 --> 01:00:50,810 you know, to your earlier project and but at a later time, if you know what I mean with a little more reflection. 507 01:00:50,810 --> 01:00:59,250 Interesting to read the book and the catalogue side by side and see how you shifted your own thinking in that chapter. 508 01:00:59,250 --> 01:01:08,040 DK: I like your choice to call it interesting when I am in the middle of trying to meet that deadline. All I think of if sleeplessness. 509 01:01:08,040 --> 01:01:16,800 And I'm going to find that interesting tonight. GB: Well, everybody, everybody will look out for it with that in mind. 510 01:01:16,800 --> 01:01:22,500 Well, thank you so much for talking with us today. It's been a great pleasure and I've learnt an awful lot about India and Indian culture, 511 01:01:22,500 --> 01:01:27,840 just from the conversation and from reading about you, reading your work. So it's been a really good experience for me. 512 01:01:27,840 --> 01:01:31,030 Thank you so much. DK: And likewise, thank you so much. 513 01:01:31,030 --> 01:01:36,360 Thank you again for the opportunity, and I look forward to continuing the conversations with your students. 514 01:01:36,360 --> 01:01:40,020 It's great to see so many of them here. GB: Great. Thank you. 515 01:01:40,020 --> 01:01:48,225 Bye bye.