Witness

LBF and historical accuracy

The Lahore Biennale Foundation (LBF) has assigned itself the inaugural role of initiator of  “The First Biennale of Pakistan”. This claim has been published in the most recent issue of BLOUIN ARTINFO (March 17^th 2016). However in view of substantial evidence contrary to this assertion, I have reason to contest the validity of this claim. I believe it warrants a careful examination. The self-proclamation by the Lahore Biennale Foundation lacks correspondence with the genealogy of events. It eschews the human contribution and devalues the important work by some of the leading lights of our time. A process of natural selection appears to be at work here insinuating survival of the fittest as the operational paradigm. Needless to say, the appropriation of a Darwinian ontology as the singular path to examining the existential moment is a debatable proposition. Its espousal can lead to un-reflexivity and epistemic injustice. Given the inconsistency of the assertion with the archeology implicit in the forces that construct the trajectory of contemporary art in Pakistan, it appears that the Lahore Biennale Foundation has instituted a blur between fact and fiction in an over-determined move to reinvent the social archive. Social action presupposes a set of assumptions, protocols and values by which cultural practices are conducted. The afore-mentioned claim by the Lahore Biennale falls short of fulfilling an essential moral ethic that is mandatory and a prerequisite for the social effervescence of communal experience.

As witness to the unfolding of history I pledge to speak the truth and nothing but the truth so help me God:

The first Biennale of Pakistan was held in 1988 at the Alhambra Art Gallery Lahore under the auspices of the PNCA i.e. Pakistan National Council of the Arts. The biennale was the brainchild of the executive head of PNCA Dr. Khalid Saeed Butt, an enigmatic presence prominent by his absence from the dominant discourse of art in Pakistan. Dr. Khalid Saeed Butt earned his “Doctorat d’ universite’” from Sorbonne in 1966. His doctoral thesis was centered on The Theme of Don Juan in English and French Literature of the Twentieth Century. Subsequent to his appointment as the first Director General and co-founder of the Pakistan National Council of the Arts, he was entrusted with this portfolio by three successive governments. In the course of his tenure from 1972-1994 Dr. Khalid Saeed Butt was absorbed in articulating the complex relations between consensus and constraint central to the subsistence of human freedom. Working with competing social groups he navigated dissent and conflict, recognizing in its wake the integral features of robust community action. In addition to his deep engagement in examining the social meaning of collective life he was able to articulate the disjunctures at the intersections of a stratified society that is continually disrupted and dislocated by the contingent order of social contract. In determining the normative systems implicit in the ritual of art as an enabling social practice he underscored the role of the artist as a reflexive social actor. With this end in view, Dr. Khalid Saeed Butt was responsible for the realization of the PNCA, the initiation and completion of the Shakir Ali Museum, the inauguration of National exhibitions, awards and bursaries for established and emerging artists, provision of space and proposal for the construction of the National Art Gallery, establishing the precedence for an indigenous model for the first Biennale of Pakistan and notwithstanding formidable opposition stood his ground in sanctioning the official endorsement for the implementation of Dance as a legitimate art form during the tenure of President Zia ul Haq.

The Lahore Biennale Foundation is undoubtedly ‘a part of an ongoing effort to reclaim a space for the arts in the country’s public discourse’. However, it commenced with the concerted efforts of Dr. Khalid Saeed Butt ‘to help support a balanced and humane society”. Notwithstanding the dubious claim by Lahore Biennale Foundation, I am greatly pleased to learn of this event and its location in the historic city of Lahore and am happy to enlist my support and solidarity with the organizers, the CEO Osman Waheed and the curator Rashid Rana. However, in a spirit of reciprocity, mutuality and best practice I deem it appropriate to de-doxify the dominant discourse that Lahore Biennale Foundation presumes to represent with a counter narrative that keeps alive the tension between the social good and individual freedom. By virtue of this supposition, the afore-mentioned discourse is an attempt to reassert moral agency and epistemic sovereignty in the new urban economy of creative industries seemingly fraught in a constellation of discriminatory practices. Hence, in the cultivation of individual autonomy and subsistence in striving for the hypergood, the disciplinary moves of a repressive hypothesis that seeks authenticity in the systematization of oppression by an exclusionary discourse and the suppression of merit through prohibition and covert censorship must be resisted.