Gandhi+ Festival
Events, workshops, seminars, lectures, concert, peace meditation
Vanløse Cultural Centre
January 19 – March 2, 2007
The project examines how the thinking of Gandhi may be used today, and takes its point of departure from Gandhi’s activist strategies and how by way of strongly symbolic actions he was able to bring about radical sociopolitical changes.
These strategies are to some extend the same which I try to use in my artistic practice – to use art to make concrete proposals and create symbolic-realistic models that via an artistic visual frame of reference may contribute to a sociopolitical situation or problem. In this way the festival is a kind of material research, as when a sculptor tries to explore new material in a sculpture. The strategies that Gandhi applied about for example nonviolence, conflict resolution and respect for “the other” can be used e.g. in the decoration / interior design of a new drop-in-centre for drug users on Vesterbro, which I have been invited to do.
The festival consists of part exhibition, an urban poster, and part a series of events. The exhibition is an experiment in how a “meeting room for development of Gandhi actions” might look. What settings and visuality can affect the possibility of, for example, nonviolent communication? It is in this room where the events will take place.
The events are a series of seminars, workshops, a concert, peace meditation and lectures with discussion. Such as Hervie Syan, an Indian/English composer-pianist who translates Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence into artistic form; Else Hammerich discussing everyday conflict resolution; peace meditation by Brahma Kumaris, performed simultaneously by 250,000 people in 70 countries.
Invitation text from the exhibition (translated from the text in Danish):
Vanløse Kulturhus / Vanløse Cultural Centre
19. January - 2 March 2007
Gandhi today
A year ago, I re-watched Richard Attenborrough's film about Gandhi. It struck me how much Gandhi was a man of action and an activist. Through his actions, he was able to analyse a given problem with amazing precision and point to its solution - a solution that often had to be found in people's hearts and ethics.
He made great use of civil disobedience. For example, when he did his famous Saltmarch, where he walked 387 kilometres in 24 days to the sea. He picked up a handful of water and let it evaporate - and in doing so he had violated the British salt monopoly. This act of civil disobedience, which was followed by the entire nation and the world press, gave many other Indians the courage to do the same, crumbling the colonial power's iron grip on the essential foodstuff.
At another time, he illustrated the idea of non-violence. In a protest against some injustices in a factory, Gandhi and his people lined up and advanced towards the police who had cordoned off the factory. Each team that came forward was brutally beaten by police batons. They were taken away and a new team of determined activists went forward - without putting up the slightest resistance. The resistance lay in showing their extraordinary courageous determination. They were by no means passive. At the same time, and most importantly, it clearly illustrated the evil of the English superior power. Those who struck and those who gave the order must have felt very uncomfortable with the situation. Unlike the policemen attacking the cobblestone-throwing youth centre people!
Martin Luther King, the American freedom fighter, expressed his inspiration from Gandhi as follows: What was new about Gandhi was that he built a revolution on hope and love, hope and non-violence. Some 30 years later, Nelson Mandela was inspired by Gandhi and, after his long imprisonment, proposed that the South African people should tell the truth about apartheid and its monstrous violence and then forgive each other.
But what do we owe to Mahatma Gandhi and how can we use his thoughts and strategies today?
The exhibition is organised as a festival with various events that involve the audience. I am fascinated by Gandhi and the result is a free artistic treatment of the subject. As a visual artist, I deal with socio-political issues. Among other things, I have designed a project for drug addicts, a homeless shelter and produced a TV programme about homeless people.
Famous quotes
The greatness and moral development of a nation can be measured by the way it treats its animals.
Even the most beautiful fabric has no beauty if it has brought poverty and hunger.
An eye for an eye ends up making the whole world blind
They can torture my body, crush my bones, even kill me. Then they have my dead body - NOT my submission.
The only tyrant I will accept in that world is the quiet voice inside.
You have to be the change you want to see in the world.
A thing that is achieved by violence can only be kept by violence.
I am prepared to die, but there is no cause that I am prepared to kill for.
Thank you to the Visual Arts Committee of the City of Copenhagen for financial support.