From AI weddings to massages, art that puts you in the picture - The Times of India

[Neelam Raaj]

Remember that not-so-iconic song by Himesh Reshammiya which went 'No touching, only seeing. Understand?' That kind of sums up the attitude of most museums and galleries. An attendant swoops in the minute it looks like you might lay your grubby little paws on their shiny masterpieces. But at the art exhibition curated by the talented duo of Thukral & Tagra (T&T) for Goa's Serendipity Festival, not only are there no paintings, the audience is encouraged to get touchy-feely.
You can have a massage, or a haircut, do a sculpting workshop in a dark room with renowned sculptor L N Tallur, walk on a canvas to create your own indigo painting, or find an AI spouse of your dreams. The last one got your attention, right? Artist Shailesh BR, who trained as a priest, has built an AI machine that poses a set of questions to find out if you're the right match. "Three people have been 'married' till now, and the last one had a big smile on her face," says Shailesh, who calls himself a mechanic on Instagram. Asked why, he points to the other device he has created - one that throws red rice at you as a bridal blessing. He also built a prayer machine earlier. "It's not just about having fun. I wanted the audience to examine why they take part in religious rituals without understanding or questioning them," he says.

But before you get up close with the art at Panaji's beautiful old GMC complex, viewers are urged to deposit their phones in envelopes and set them on silent. The idea, says Sumir Tagra, is not to see the art through your phones but feel it and touch it. Phones deposited, you can perch comfortably on Chainpreet's sofa to watch a satirical video and drawings created by graphic novelist Sarnath Banerjee. But, of course, the first question that pops up is who is this Chainpreet whose drawing room (the space looks like one) one has entered. "She's a mix of the Sardarnis that I have known. Like most of us, she hits the sofa in the evening and falls into a wormhole of doom scrolling. Besides her spineless boyfriend, I have shown some of her pet peeves through my drawings - overly optimized Indians only focused on winning and NRIs with their overdose of nationalism and nostalgia," says Banerjee.
A few rooms further on is more art you can sit on. Saurabh Dakshini, who runs an architecture and design studio in Delhi, has created twin chairs that set fans in motion when you rock but the breezy efforts of your labour are enjoyed by the person in the other chair. Talking of enjoyment, in a room enticingly called book massages, therapists encourage you to select a passage, listen to it being read aloud on headphones while getting a massage. So, an Arundhati Roy chapter can earn you a 15-minute neck massage. Thukral & Tagra's collaborative project titled Nafrat/Parvah (hate/care) invites you to deposit an object you hate with a note and in exchange you get care services such as a haircut or beard trim. While someone had put in their pack of cigarettes, and another a lip balm, one submission was particularly searing: A belt, hated because it evokes memories of a father's beating.
One can almost hear the questions popping up - How is this art? Does this new wave of interactive works constitute the gamification of art? Can we experience art by playing with it? "This is an experiment in participatory art," explains Tagra. "There are zero paintings but people touching the art is the picture." They can use it to express themselves too. Mobile balcaos - a traditional Goan porch - were parked in Panaji's markets, parks and even a bus stand so that locals and tourists could pen their thoughts on postcards. The angst about the 'Delhification' of Goa was clearly visible on the postcard wall.
As for what is art, the definition seems to be ever-changing. Remember the $6.2m banana artwork that gave everyone indigestion wondering why anyone would pay that price for it? It's now in the collector's stomach! "It's the artist's intention that makes it art," says Tagra, whose curation attempts to close the distance between artwork and audience though he would rather you not try eating any of the art. But you can listen to them. Just a floor above T&T's show are works by curator Veerangana Solanki who encourages artists to explore the links between touch, sound and memory.
Not just the art, the food lab too is about conversations. Every evening, it hosted 'Mock Wild' picnics where AI prompts were turned into actual recipes that people could taste or you could board games that introduced you to India's medicinal plants or go on seaweed-collecting incursions along the coast. The focus was always on the tactile, the live and the dynamic. As Sunil Kant Munjal, founding member of the festival and chairman of Hero Enterprise, puts it, "This festival cannot be explained, it can only be experienced."