ABSTRACT
I elaborate on the shift in narrative around art as a way to perform the politicized, and whether or not it might be empowering vast majorities of a new kind of public, a public of ‘the otherwise’. Here, using the words ‘the otherwise’ is an attempt to move away from the fraught lexicon of the left and the liberal. Let’s not reiterate the hierarchies inherent in the binary of the ‘Other’, or the tensions that are inherent in projects as a result of being co-opted by the workings of the neo-liberal beast. Instead, we need to shift perspective ever so slightly, towards a space of agency and of laying claim as we narrate the role of the artist and the kinds of local and trans-disciplinary publics they create within the specific dynamics of the socio-political landscape and cultural infrastructures in India. I am interested not just in making these practices visible in and of themselves, but also to locate disruptions, failures and collisions within the many public spheres such practices intend to improve, as a way to articulate instances of ‘being together, otherwise’.
