Jan 23 2016 69 mins
Is your (everyday) life repetitive and mundane? Does squirming life lie just underneath the layer of banality? Is the everyday always laced with fantasy and/or skepticism? What is the place of mythology in this context? Can a polluted river be a sight to behold, & might it be crucial to hold such ambivalent feelings? What is an event? Can household events be dreadful? What is totally new? Can a fleeting moment sometimes come as a gift? Equally, can dormant stories suddenly come into being again? Can a word or a gesture embody different temporalities? Can the norm and its transgression be joined together in everyday aspirations? What is extraordinary? Do concepts have sharp boundaries? (How) can something ordinary be designated as art? What does & can an artist do? Can the city go from feeling indoors to becoming outdoors? Do language, gestures and words have the capacity to produce certain kinds of resonances? Can the ordinary gesture of washing the face (say) mean a lot more? Is there a way in which the mundane changes over time? Can human subjectivity ever be fully colonized? What might be the future of experiencing and representing life (and death)? How would you describe a piece of dry wood? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from anthropology & philosophy (Prof. Veena Das, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA), & art (Sudhir Patwardhan, Mumbai). Listen in...