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Sustainability and Capacity-building through Art: Insights from Samar Jodha
February in Kathmandu is pleasant. As the valley begins its yearly spring cleaning, the fogs of winter and other sustainability themes begin to emerge and converge. Kathmandu was lucky, yesterday, to get an opportunity to understand and discuss issues of sustainability and art with Samar Jodha. As a thought leader, his body of work represents and coalesces many disparate strains of our built environment. People are central. Social communication is never easy but always best projected in experiential terms. We tend to reduce rather than mitigate. It could be a singular human condition.
How does a body of work such as Samar Jodha's begin? How will sustainability shape itself in the coming years? What are Kathmandu's strengths and threats that require advocacy, capacity building and focus? How can art, and more pertinently the visual medium, take the next step for sustainable development? How does an artist and photographer communicate these pressing social issues with impact? The questions arose with some cautious optimism. I am glad they were answered with precise conditionality.
Samar Jodha has worked for 20 years on sustainability issues. The key point of departure is and remains the new model of urbanization and the consumption culture that has and continues to marginalize not just developing countries but communities worldwide. This model is based on a historical dynamic whereby the few are more important than the masses. In latter day society, the masses are part of the mainstream but the impact of this dynamic is deleterious on everything from daily life to land rights. Samar is not as much an advocate as he is a proponent of the need for much tougher laws across the board, and in particular, how policy implementation is realized. The trickle down effect occurs not only in large corporations but also in local enterprise.
The boundaries and the threshold levels are often pushed wherein legal loopholes are exploited for maintaining the dynamic. This is everywhere, says Samar. His work in Brazil, Mexico and India can be applied just as effectively in smaller or less visible contexts. Grass roots Organisations too tend to perpetuate an unsustainable model. Samar lays emphasis on the fact that it is not about size - issues that have plagued the Ganges are the same for the Bagmati. Pollution and all the attendant environmental instabilities have not been monitored or addressed. In terms of sustainability itself as an ideal, rapid development and urbanization have occurred faster than in the last 100 years. The laws and forces of repair, both in situ and ex situ, have not been able to measure up with this speed or scale. If a model is created for profit making, it follows that profit sharing and human greed will rear their ugly heads.
A cycle of 'faster, higher, larger' has meant that human need has been severely aligned with profit. Laws and monitoring are, again, conspicuously ineffective. Visual media, in this reality, serves and must serve as a tool of education. Empowering people via art and messaging can and does build a critical mass whereby more and more people see the works, the issues and, thus, pressure is put on relevant authorities for change. Samar gives an example of a community in NorthEast India with whom he has worked. He stresses that photography is one element of the spectrum. Along with an education program, building a monastery in the area and revival of traditional forestry practices and textiles, his work and shows have helped highlight the larger issues and the macro picture.
Documenting any issue means that, with technology, it is shared. But what does this mean for the local community which is documented? To this day, very little in tangible terms has gone back into the community or, indeed, the issues themselves. What, then, is the overarching interest and motivation? When placed out of context and/ or showcased in a very different locale, the values tend to take on a different form. "Disaster porn is easy to sell because it gets reactions." Creative work, Samar opines, is not logical like mathematics. A music show, for example, is difficult to explain and elicits differing reactions. This is true for art or life itself. The experience of life is complex and invokes many senses and cerebral elements. Art, too, has disparate reactions. The onus of choice lies entirely upon the audience.
Kathmandu, for Samar, like any city in South Asia must work on waste management and associated issues. Waste management affects everything because it is all interconnected. Samar gives us Kathmandu people a vital piece of advice: given that Kathmandu and Nepal are strong traditional societies, we must work at the community level and involve people, starting with the neighbourhood. We can start by developing a prototype for sustainability - start small, engage communities, share on social media, build a solid fundraising plan and ensure that the project and prototype are managed by the community. Thank you, Samar!
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