The festival that was not to be

Reacting to the events at the Shanaakht festival,

For me personally it is clear that the contested image is unproductive and simply too easy a collage in terms of artistic work. For this I would if Iwere in any way responsible offer a public apology. In all nations, notonly in the East, freedom of speech is debated. In the country I was bornin, Holland - Geert Wilders is stretching his limits and the least we cansay is that does not lead to more cooperation, understanding and trustbetween people of different religions, stories and opinions.

In the West there are also clear boundaries to what can legally be said. The Holocaust is incontestable. If you belittle or deny that charges will be broughtagainst you.The fact that the artist and the head organizer responsible are takingthemselves ( perhaps rightly and certainly understandably) out of thepicture should signal that the persons who take responsibility now can notbe associated with the process of selection, curation, and exhibit.They are concerned with the violent, hostile and irresponsible reaction ofcertain parties that led to the organizers feeling they could no longerensure the safety of the hundreds of children, families, young students,foreign artists and participants in the festival.

It is very unfortunate that the reaction resulted in halting a veryimportant cultural event that people from all walks of life were reallyexcited about.For this reaction has only strenghtened the already global view that theworld has of Pakistan. Here we do not politely discuss (although there isa longer tradition then anywhere else in the Persian region of a realmulticulturalism), here we do not engage in dialogue and maybe first tryto understand the others point of view (although the strong and mightySufi tradition brought the very idea of a pragmatic dualism into theworld), no here we barge in with men and guns, big bullies shoving peopleaside. How brave on a family festival.And although I certainly do not want to belittle the understandable reaction to this picture, I do feel that if this picture had not been there, another one could (would?) have been singled out to give such offense so as to cause this rioting. Maybe there are certain parties who can not stand that people come together for a week through cultures andthe arts and simply have a good time? As if this is possible in thecurrent climate! And it was.

Their irresponsible behaviour has caused that people will stop to wonder very hard if they are again willing to invest so much energy into organizing something positive for all, free for all. What they have probably only contributed to is that artistic events will go undergroundand into the galleries available for an elite. It is very unfortunate as this picture which could have served as the perfect test case. We must for sure take into account that the artist is not Pakistan based but living inan iconic culture in which collages of this kind are being discussed as pure form, any reference to the real living people reduced to a tinysecond shock moment, because nothing in imagery ever seems to get throughto us anymore. I'm certain that had she known that this could have happened, she would have withdrawn it.

The best thing that could now happen is a real open discussion between the party workers that stormed in, the organizers, and the artists. Then the protesters can share their pain and sorrow, the organizers can explain their curatorial philosophy of anything goes as it is a gift, and the artist can express her righteous anger for having to have to live abroad and not being able to work in the counrty of her origin because of the violence and hardheadedness of men who do not want to give up theirpriviliges,

Rob van Kranenburg

Rob van Kranenburg was present at the Shanaakht festival during therioting. He had come to Karachi as a guest of Mauj and Nukta Art Magazine to host a workshop on new media criticism, sponsored by Mondriaan Foundation and ASEF.