CULTURE
New urbanscapes
A. SRIVATHSAN
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Cultural festivals like Mumbai's Kala Ghoda and the Bangalore Habba, held outside the coercive eyes of commerce and consumption, are welcome attempts at redefining the nature of urban spaces.
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These events are pushing the idea of public spaces, hitherto limited to parks, towards something more multipurpose and more public. They are not there yet, but certainly culture is getting spatialised.
PHOTO: RAJTILAK NAIK
PARTICIPATORY SPACE: The Goa Carnaval.
EUROPEAN cities now vie with each other to be nominated as cultural capitals. What started, in 1985, as a small attempt to bring together the European Union countries has grown into a severe competition. It has almost become like bidding for Olympics. Each city makes a well-crafted presentation and promises a large investment in cultural facilities. The prestigious winners this year are the Luxembourg City and Sibu in Romania. Luxembourg has pledged 56 million Euros solely for the purpose of functioning as the cultural capital of Europe. Sibu, a small-fortified town, has also vouched for a grand investment plan.
Culture is now a serious business and has become a route for urban regeneration. Such nominations not only promote tourism but also opens large sponsorships for the city facilities. The story of Glasgow city vouches for this success.
Successful model
PHOTO: K. BHAGYA PRAKASH
A clssical music performance by Hariprasad Chaurasia at the Bangalore Habba.
Glasgow surprised many when it was declared as the European capital of culture in 2000. It was an unlikely choice and unlikely centre for culture. Precisely for this reason it won the award from the European Union. The city of Glasgow convinced the Jury that it intends to invest heavily in cultural facilities and make the city an attractive destination not only for tourists but also to promote the city as a place for good living and investment. It won the nomination and realised its objectives. Glasgow gained a net economic benefit of about 47 million Euros through this exercise. Today, many cities aspire to do this cultural turn and the model has spread to American and Arabian cities.
This process turns around the traditional approach to city building. Earlier, cities took the utilitarian route where the economic and industrial activities were strengthened and the surplus produced was invested in cultural facilities. What we now witness is a role reversal. Culture holds the key in making a city desirable for living and thus improved economic activity. The base-superstructure relation between economy and culture looks inverted.
What is happening in Asia, especially Indian cities, is very different. The cities are promoted not on their cultural strengths but as sites of low total cost. They are cheaper places if not anything else. Culture is more relegated to tourism and its promotion. In India, cultural events such as the Khajuraho, Puri and Mahabalipuram dance festivals are primarily promotional activities and stand-alone events. The place and monuments stand as mere backdrops. Culture is more a part of the exotic and historical and never seen as a part of the place.
However, outside this tourism-cultural nexus, there is a tradition of cultural events that have evolved from within. The Carnival in Goa and the Thiruvaiyaru music festival are some of the examples. They are loosely organised and held for a few days in a year. Even their connections with the place are momentary or short term and do not greatly contribute to the place in terms of development. Though these cities lend a credible ambience, help legitimise and add to the symbolic capital of the festival, the festival does not give much to the place in return.
Redefining spaces
PHOTO: A. SRIVATHSAN
A Chennai Sangamam show.
In the recent past, Indian place entrepreneurs (a borrowed phrase) have tried to work with or developed local events that are actively integrated with the urban spaces. Kala Ghoda in Mumbai and Chennai Sangamam are interesting cases in point. These events are organised not necessarily to attract investments or make the city great destinations. They are more about restating the public nature of the cities and its spaces and discovering the usefulness of urban spectacle. In the process, they have seriously challenged the blurring of boundaries between consumption and culture. Increasingly, eating-places, coffee shops and malls are promoted as the new cultural and public spaces. Cities, by staging a wide variety of events in the public of public spaces, offer a powerful counter point. Now, entertainment can exist outside the coercive eyes of commerce. The events also point to the emergence of the confident urban, which seeks to create its own festivals and spectacles. But how inclusive are they?
Expanding boundaries
PHOTO: K. MURALI KUMAR
A stall selling handmade dolls as part of the Habba
Cultural festivals and investments have often been criticised to favour a few and include only a particular set of practices. However, festivals like Chennai Sangamam have carefully considered this. The definition of culture is now broadened and subaltern cultural practices are included. Urban is not seen as mutually exclusive of the rural. The city's complex interconnection with the rural in the form of migration, history and economic flows are implicitly acknowledged. Any urban event in an Indian city has to be compulsorily cosmopolitan. Instead of locating the events in secluded and exclusive spaces, they have to be spread out and held at places of congregation, including busy streets. While all these have been achieved through a single event, what remains to be explored is how to improve the cultural infrastructure of the city and what it would mean to the public domain of the city.
Increasingly many Indian cities are discovering the usefulness of cultural festivals and the likes of Bangalore Habba and Japiur Kitab festival are getting more visible. These events are pushing the idea of public spaces, hitherto limited to parks, towards something more multipurpose and more public. They are not there yet, but certainly culture is getting spatialised. Such events need not be mobilised only for investment reasons. A cultural turn may do good to rediscover the collective nature of streets and urban spaces and also help reassert the democratic practices that are part of city living.
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