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swarnamanjari chellapandi

Beyond Criticality; towards a New Romanticism



Critical thinking is a step towards making sense of the world we live in. Beyond initial observations, pondering and ceaseless questioning, critical thinking makes us sharper and more robust in our intellectual inquiries. It helps formulate our questions about the complex systems that we inhabit. Other than from reading, criticality comes through from debating our epistemic differences with our peers and mentors. In my path to being an artist and designer, critical thinking has been instrumental in providing context, informing my area of enquiry and mapping the direction in which I want to progressively take my creative practice towards. It acts as a rudder within a sea of information, discriminating between island and sea, gauging the flow of currents. There are also moments when it makes me feel powerless, in a storm of confusion, like a sailboat toppled over with no land of clarity in sight. Lost in the depths of uncertainty, it makes me question my pursuits. Saturated with water in my lungs, it tries to drown me in self doubt. There is darkness all around me; I mistake it for my ignorance or nothingness, but within a split second, I see light. A beautiful sky. The dithering clouds bathed in faint hues of pink and purple, welcome me back into the world.


image taken on new year's eve, 2023 (Pamban, Rameshwaram)


(If you find the sailing metaphors a bit overwhelming, excuse me slightly - I was recently enraptured by a movie about the ocean. True Spirit - for anyone who wants to watch. I am also constantly inspired by my friend Sandhya, who has found a home for herself amidst the waves, and who's perseverance shines so bright.)


This constant oscillation between clarity and confusion; excitement and resentment; inspiration and boredom, toggle my creative spirit between highs and lows. Add to it, the echoing chaos of a fragmented world trying to hold it all together.



The wonderful world of tech criticism


When I launched URL, as a blog to write about technology through a critical lens, I was enamoured by the promise that such criticality offered. By practice, I was able to see the interconnections and hierarchies within social systems and the impact of them on people as the agents. A systems thinking framework helped me cut through the clutter and sieve through them to create distilled viewpoints. I positioned my skillset as a sense-maker who was good at picking apart things and connecting them into cohesive threads.


The initial idea of URL was also to remove the idea of the binary, revealing human stories behind the technology.


For example, to support the claim that generative AI is built on the foundation of data theft, I talked to writers and artists whose work was being stolen, and also those who were in favour of the same tools. This role of researching and writing became like that of an investigative journalist.


The unjust practices that I documented via secondary research gave reason for much scorn and contempt for these institutions. By nature, critiquing technological advancements always led to taking a side that was reactionary and transformed into bitterness and distaste in the real world. I became disinterested and hopeless. It was a dangerous cycle which prevented me from observing things around me for what they were: a crucial skill I had always relied on as an artist.


At the same time, I also noticed publications around me shifting their lens around what criticism meant to them. In the feminist computing zine that I designed for WTDA, the last frame about the future of computing says, "The future of AI is female. But it has one major problem, burnout." I remember Nadia Piet, founder of AIXDESIGN, reaching out to me to say that she resonated with that sentence so much. Recent projects that AIXDESIGN have spearheaded such as Slow AI and Better Images of AI have been evidence of the pivots towards alternative imaginaries that artists are feeling drawn towards. Logic(s) magazine, whom I adore, in the December 2023 issue featured an interview with Safiya Noble who spoke about the burnout she faces and the enormous space for joy that she has.


image taken in nov 2022 (Hassan, Karnataka)

**Safiya** *on burnout and exhaustion: "So many Black women in particular that I know who work around academia and/or the tech industry are unwell. We need to be hypervigilant about the way the tech sector is completely remaking society. We are also exhausted. This tension is always on my mind because it’s part of my life: we can’t afford to rest because the consequences will be too steep."


(This applies to many socially minded workers, especially women, who have found for themselves causes to work towards and yet are broken down by the rigid prejudices, social hierarchies that exist in a discipline. At every juncture, they have to assert their rights, fight for attribution and shout louder, again and again for their voice to be heard, and for their personas to become visible. )


**Safiya** *on freedom and joy: "Blackness is painted out of these modalities and ways of living and ways of knowing. I’ve been thinking about this so much because my son, who’s twelve, just got into surfing. I see him in the water and how free he is, so motivated to deal with the structures of white supremacy in his education and in the city because he has access to being in the water and feeling the freedoms that come with that and the way in which the dynamic nature of the ocean, it forces one to never be static or make a firm set of assumptions because you don’t know how that wave is going to come at you and you have to actually be fluid. You have to be in sync with the ocean in order to survive it."


These excerpts are from Logic December 2023 Issue:# Resetting How We Think of Policy: A Conversation with Safiya Noble*



surfing the wave: foresight as a substitute for the ‘imagination’


Event horizon: Dec 2022 (Goa, India)

This feeling of surfing gives us the potential for change. As people of colour, and by belonging to marginalized communities, there is sorrow when we interact with oppressive systems. And yet, when we find solidarity, there is reverie and joy, a space for collective thinking. I find the surfing and sailing metaphors representative of the need to carve out that space in our daily lives. While critical thinking offers a methodology to sift through these structures, it can also make us lose sight of what is right in front of us. This is where I move towards foresight and speculation, as a tool to imagine, and sometimes escape. Imagination thrives on being perceptive; to be aware of something happening in our local environment, and observing it keenly. These observations act as a springboard leading to revelations often unfound in peer reviewed articles, and serve as great research.


It was akin to finding an old tool in my toolbox, something I had misplaced after my childhood. My acquired knowledge that I had read was pressing itself as the priority, and reducing my field of view. A reminder to observe and imagine, was a simple way out. One tool that I use in foresight, is to expand upon weak signals, which was similar. I search for trivia and facts that interest me and build on from them. Using the same tool in my physical environment was an exciting new deal.


I started observing people in my immediate environment.


*For example, instead of following the campaigns of various political parties during the elections on social media, I followed the candidates campaigning in my constituency through rallies held near my neighbourhood. One day, as I was passing through a party meeting literally held by blocking traffic on the road, I stopped by to hear a campaigner speak about social change. They were saying the change is often boring, and that it doesn't happen within five years. Change takes time, perseverance and consistent action. They were advising people to not believe the shiny manifestos promising them free goods, but to take a deeper look at the policies they were offering. In a digital media landscape filled with so much hatred and mudslinging, it was a refreshing perspective to hear.


This activity made me more attuned to people around me. Instead of imposing my critical frameworks upon social situations and reacting to them theoretically, I was able to see why things happened to take their forms and also respect the people in the process. I realised that the ability to zoom into the local when needed is essential for sense-making in a world as colourful as ours.



stories, newfound sincerity, pragmatic ideals


image taken on Feb 2022 (Goa, India)

I soon sought refuge in fiction. Observing things around me gave me impetus to write. This time, however, it was from a fertile ground of 'what it is' and 'what could be' rather than 'why it is'. Criticality was still present, but only in thought. The process of writing gave me joy and a feeling of moving forward. Something akin to surfing. I was not stuck with deconstructing but rather reconstructing a path with the broken pieces in my head.


I moved away from trying to imagine alternative narratives (because the reference point from which you are alternating is always something negative) to just imagining 'a' narrative. This gave me more freedom; by expanding upon the things I had learnt and lived through. Before embarking on writing my stories, I widely read those of others. I grew to be able to curate them according to one common theme reflected in a myriad ways; this became an evidence of a universal humanity that breaks the boundaries of social conditions. If the theme was *Language*, I found authors from different countries who dealt with it in their own styles. These stories were reflective of the frays in the social fabric but woven together by the vision of the author.


Language - "Periyamma's Words" by Jeyamohan, "The Flight of Birds" by Fahida Riaz, "Give Me English" by Ai Jiang, "The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling" by Ted Chiang


Reading such varied narratives offered me a newfound sincerity. A world away from hatred and malice. To reiterate, these stories never shied away from talking about violence, death or betrayal. The difference was presenting them as something from life, and not examining them from a socio- political- technological lens. Examining was for researchers, these were writers.


  1. During this time, the Tamil writer Jeyamohan was hugely influential on me. His stories reinstating faith in idealism and his clear eyed views on visionaries like Gandhi provided me with a pro social perspective. His literary criticisms impressed me the most, with some of them being the best pieces of unbiased critical writing I have ever read.


  1. Dhara Parekh's short story collection "Take a Seat at the Cosmic Campfire" was also instrumental in giving me the kind of pragmatic idealism required to handle prevalent themes within the science fiction literary environment today with added cultural nuance without falling prey to dystopic/ utopic narratives.



moving away from utopia


Rishikesh, India (June 2023, on my 23rd birthday)

I sit at the intersection of art and design, and the influences often seep into one another. As a child, I was fascinated the most by science. Now when I look back, my foray into speculative design almost seems inevitable.


During a speculative mentorship program, my mentor Radha Mistry always mentioned how 'Stories are a way to prototype futures.' I would think of physical artefacts and systems that might exist in the fictional world, but soon realised that a story is one of the effective ways of communicating. Artefacts, and installations provide an enhanced experience with larger number of affordances but a book is a simple narrative narrative environment with a limited one. Language.


In recent times, one can see a rise of utopia- fueled narratives in the world of speculative design. This is an active response to the plethora of existing dystopian ones - even in film or literature. An example of this is solarpunk - an exciting genre that is filled with themes like renewable energy, gardens, and decentralised systems. I love the solarpunk aesthetic and the community that surrounds it. However, writing within the genre seemed to impose more restrictions than I had imagined.


(Monika Bielskyte, speaker and speculative design practitioner, suggests a newer framework called the Protopia framework, one that includes elements of both utopia and the challenges of dystopia. It is an interesting proposition to keep in mind.)


*When I think of it, protopia is the real world


Design often requires a form of control that the designer exerts. Utopian environments reflect that sense of control. Protopia seems far more realist, an apt setting for exposing current deficiencies while prototyping future ones. The very promise of speculative design is to become comfortable within uncertainty and explore that 'which could be'. Constraining ideologies into being problem solving, or utopian only shrinks our playing ground, and refrains from dealing with pertinent questions.


towards romanticism


a temple courtyard in Rishikesh, June 2023

In times of largely uninspired design that has become homogenised throughout the whole world, (I might be staying in a Pinterest themed apartment, in Bangalore or Barcelona, they would look exactly the same) I believe that designers have a lot to borrow from art and literature - or just from history. Situating your creative work with the knowledge of erstwhile art movements, and within a historical context provides a far more informed argument. Allowing inspiration to flow from one discipline into another also prevents stagnancy within your particular silo.


Witnessing a theatre performance lit by candlelight while tracing it back to the origins of opera or the first paintings drawn by man offers a more wholesome way of belonging to the tradition of creative pursuit. Browsing through 'content' or moodboards for inspiration will only churn out the same cattlefeed from human designers, and in an age of AI, it will become even more important to experience something through sensory perceptions, to be inspired and create something truly worthy.

Social media has skewed the identity of what it means to be someone who creates. Be an artist, musician, writer, filmmaker, designer or architect, there is an imposed need to be socially and politically compliant with an ideology. I am not advocating for ignorance of social issues, but rather for simple observance. It is natural for social environments to influence creative work, irrespective of wanting to mindfully create socially aware work. Exhibitions and design briefs nowadays contain guidelines to solve climate change or reduce political polarity, but I argue that fulfilling these goals with motive to make art is not the role of an artist. It is to make good art. This shifting landscape into solutionism or even prototyping multiple solutions, as a requirement to exist as a creative person is an iron shackle. Artists creating work as a response to what informs them and moves them is far more utilitarian to society than a person being asked to create along the themes of societal issues. This limited view is also consistently reinforced by social media, within a vicious cycle of manufactured news that emotionally tingle moralities albeit temporarily. Creatives who do make socially important work advocating for the impact of the topic that they've handled also become false activists or plain preachers.


We do not need to tell feminist stories. Nor do we have to tell stories about mental health. Or those of climate change, gender equality or oppressed classes.


Rather, we definitely need to tell 'a good story'. That story will irrespectively be informed by and contain the life experiences of the person who is telling the story. The story will also be critically analysed by others in regards to where the creator comes from including their social background and other artistic influences.


To move away from such a socially compliant environment, I've left many social media platforms choosing to put out work only wherever absolutely necessary. I have been writing about my personal experiences and what drives me in longer formats for those who have the time and space to invest in such narratives. I've chosen to distance myself from the design of such platforms, exhibitions and shows that end up clearly defining the boundaries of what I'm needed to create or to express myself.


 

I invite you into my space, those who wish to follow my journey, making this little blog a home. I will be writing more here, forgetting media etiquettes, and being utterly honest. I'll be writing about things that I love and experience, read and watch, sharing little experiments that I do, and other reflections that reside in my head.


I encourage you to write back to me, to say what you felt after reading something, if you agreed, disagreed or had any questions. Review the work, critique it or praise it. The idea is to go back to an honest exchange of thoughts and emotions, less regulated by externalities and more driven by intention.


Happy reading, and for those who are reading me for the first time, welcome to my blog!


--- Swarna


p.s : There is an option for a newsletter that you can sign up for, where I will send out notes, highlights of important essays, recommendations, bits from conversations or other inspiration. I might not be posting update links on every platform, and hence recommend that you sign up if you wish to be reminded. Otherwise, simply bookmark the website, and read whenever you feel like. I've not decided upon a frequency, but I hope to post every week and send out the newsletter every month.

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