BARK AND BITE

Performance artist Inder Salim’s latest work–a series of films based on Manto’s of Tithwal draws audiences’ attention to the insensitivity of people at large towards contemporary socio-political issues

TThe Yamuna may be dead, says the radical performance artist who famously chopped off his little finger and threw it in the river in 2002. But Manto’s dog lives on—and he’s making a series of films to show how.

In Manto’s Dog

of Tithwal, Indian and Pakistani troops kill the innocent canine for fun. For artist Inder Salim, who recently completed the first two of several planned films based on the story, the dog shows the insensitivity and disdain the human race is capable of. “The animal keeps coming to my mind, hinting about identity, society, violence, nationalism, freedom and the forces, not to mention how we sometimes are in the role of the soldiers, and as the dog at other times,” says Salim.

The Delhi-based artist shot his first version of the story on Mumbai beach last year as a search for the living dog. He made a second version in Basel this year. The first film was in collaboration with Turkish artist Alper Solaris and the second one with Swiss artist Pascel Lampert.

“Body as medium is easily available to the artist and proves cost-effective. So the performance artist has an advantage in that sense, but the body in isolation, as I have always said, is not the core of performance art but an integral part of the processes that go into the making of a performance art piece.”

That doesn’t mean he’s becoming any less radical. In the wake of

Union culture minister Mahesh Sharma’s call to purge Indian culture of “polluting” and “western” influences, Salim says the time is ripe for artists to work out their ideas against the enemy of freedom of expression. “I am an optimist in that sense. Something incredible is happening in India and artists are inventing a new vocabulary that talks about people and the times that engulf them.”

Stressing that present times call for newer strategies by creative people to make their voices heard, he says, “The time of the studio is over. Now artists need to go in the middle of the city… the place where everyone breathes collectively, come in contact with each other, and enrich everyone’s vocabulary and force.”