Not the final frontier...
Dear All,
Star Trek has been resurrected.
Just when we were coming to terms with the fact that perhaps Kirk and Spock, and Star Trek generally had reached the end of the line, they have been resurrected (or resuscitated) courtesy the new film called, simply, Star Trek.

Pakistan is facing a humanitarian crisis of gargantuan proportions. Close to 1.5 million people are on the move, their numbers growing by tens of thousands every day, running away from fierce fighting in the north between the government forces and the Taliban-al-Qaeda types. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says this is the biggest in-country conflict-triggered displacement of population on the planet of the last 15 years. You can tell -- the media coverage in Pakistan is wall-to-wall about the crisis. Journalists in half a dozen major languages are reporting from IDP camps for dozens of TV channels, radio stations and newspapers virtually round-the-clock, much of it in real-time.

Some patterns are becoming clear by arguably the largest and most extensively reported event in the Pakistan's history: the government is inexplicably conspicuous by its proportionally disproportionate absence from the scene. The scale and consequence of the development (mass-scale displacement) is not matched by the size of official response. The president and prime minister as well as the governor and chief minister of North West Frontier Province have not been to any IDP camp yet. Nor have the ministers, federal or provincial. Civil society groups, NGOs and other impromptu self-help groups seem everywhere. Even most media groups, perhaps influenced by their own heightened reporting of the crisis, have set up organised appeals for donations and mounted relief operations for the affectees but, curiously, there's not much relief money circulating.

Most of this seems eerily familiar to the earlier stages of the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that primarily struck NWFP and Azad Kashmir in 2005, killing 70,000, injuring 150,000 and displacing 3.5 million -- a general emergency response paralysis on the part of the government, which took its time getting its act right and pressing national resources into helping the affected populations on a scale and scope that could have a comparative positive impact. Likewise, there are plenty of citizen sector-led relief initiatives now, which seem more customised and smarter than the government's.

However, the media's coverage of the unfolding humanitarian crisis throws up several troubling questions that relate to the quality of emergency response of the state authorities as well as that of the media itself. For instance, some ministers in a federal cabinet meeting a few days ago made some startling assertions that amount to self-indictment. For one, they said the private media is giving an extraordinary amount of information about the travails of the IDPs, bringing their stories into our homes even as they are on the move whereas the government is missing in action on the information business. For another, they said, the media coverage has exposed the inadequacy of the government's response, raising the spectre of the militants turning this to their advantage and craft a strategic propaganda advantage for themselves.

By acknowledging independent media's role in informing both the citizen and state about the size and scope of the humanitarian crisis, the cabinet implies not just that the intelligence agencies are not providing crucial data to the elected government but, more importantly, the government instead of moving to manage the crisis seems to be waiting for divine assistance: it has no adequate plan. Reportedly, the cabinet, at one stage, had a few ministers blaming each other for not visiting the IDPs. One minister even said, if the prime minister has a security problem, so does he.

As for the cabinet's worry that the burgeoning humanitarian crisis and its extensive media coverage may be used by the militants to neutralise any military victories, it is lost on the government that a better response could, perhaps, be to give out information on whatever relief measures it is taking (even if inadequate) on a daily basis by its oversized ministry of information to at least match the formidable military PR machine that has a sole monopoly on the state's version of the fight against militants.

This brings us to the media's coverage of the humanitarian crisis. Extensive coverage of IDPs' woes is dominating everything else. There is little analysis of the link between the military action against the militants and the ensuing displacement. Apart from the opinion shows that are a dime a dozen and peddle more conspiracy theories than probably there are Taliban and al- Qaeda men, there is little investigative reporting on the military operational strategy that could have been smarter (or whether the government planned it – which it didn't because the prime minister announced an operation at midnight without a preceding cabinet meeting or a parliamentary session), or of the government's foresight in anticipating the outrageously huge displacement and, therefore, a plan to limit its fallout. In the race to get as many IDPs to complain about their travails on TV, radio and print, the media is dangerously amiss in asking crucial questions. It is also telling that the Swat valley, where the battle is centred, is now empty of journalists. We only have the military or the Taliban's word for how things are faring. Predictably, neither is talking about a setback.

Is there a link between an information overload on just one aspect of the crisis (IDPs woes and breathtakingly sad visuals on never-ending tents in refugee camps) and the creeping compassion fatigue that can be measured by the trickle of money that people are raising for the affectees? It's hard to tell without a proper survey but it does seem like that the coverage of the earthquake, for instance, triggered an amazingly long-sustaining donation drive by the public. This seems to be missing now. Maybe the reason is the relative failure of the media to link the humanitarian crisis with the cause properly? Who knows? At least in the case of the earthquake, nature was the villain and the people responded to the calamity by generosity and hard-nosed survival. This time, the villain is not visible (due to inadequate media attention), the media consumers, at some queer level, consider it a government problem. In the meanwhile, 1.5m suffer and more seem set to join the ranks.

Whether painting beautiful women who seem just out of reach, shimmering Modernist interiors, or half-empty glasses after an evening's bacchanal, Moeen Faruqi conveys an affecting blend of glamour and isolation, optimism and loneliness. What emerges is a strange, painstakingly composed, eerily silent world in which routine encounters between people become jarring, surreal and sharply iconic, if not downright baffling.

Faruqi's careening humour, by turns lacerating and playful, sets his work apart from his contemporaries, whose figurative paintings feel uptight by comparison. Another distinction lies in his pace. No matter how carefully executed his paintings are -- and they have become increasingly so over the years -- or how long it takes to notice their many details, it always seems as if a surfeit of ideas propels them along at breakneck speed. It is this rush of ideas, rather than feelings, which makes Faruqi's new work so bracingly alienating. Here is the 'expressionism' that is routinely harnessed to supposed emotional honesty, deployed instead to serve a cerebral, mechanistic agenda.

So those who condemn these paintings as 'reactionary' understand at least that they represent an absolute break with the usual liberal pieties. Irony is essential, and Faruqi uses its distancing effects to calibrate his feverish stream of conscious outpourings. One is immersed in a cosmology of vaguely familiar, low-level luminaries that ineluctably cycle through. Faruqi has a knack for endowing these often ridiculous beings with the capacity to actually arouse emotions in a viewer, sometimes these can also be conflicting emotions. Embedded in this portrayal is a commentary on the vagaries of fame and the delusion of those who expect success to last. Like any good purveyor of satire, and in contrast to the anarchic side of his vision, Faruqi can be something of a moralist, in the tradition of Hogarth and Daumier.

At first glance, Faruqi's artworks appear to be conceptually wrapped or packaged situations. But his rhetoric has an underhanded virtuosity, capable of producing unexpected effects with a bit of black humour tossed in discreetly to pervert the final ensemble. There is something very seductive about Faruqi's kind of buttoned down, retro cool and his stable of well-coiffed, fastidiously attired figures that seem at once glamorous and bewildered. At the same time there is something unsettling about how this coolness is infiltrated by unruly elements that push the pictures to the point of imminent mayhem. It's this uneasy mixture that, amid the current resurgence of figurative painting, makes Faruqi one of the more compelling practitioners around.

By fabricating and staging his own image of reality, he takes complete control by contrasting banal situations and a subliminal world of conflict. Faruqi's works map a territory for the construction of interior spaces that include people. His work explores meanings that exist in-between these materials and theoretical interpretations of ground. These meanings are developed through a focus that masquerade as truth, such as: masculine/feminine, work/site, object/space and real/represented.

Working for decades now, Faruqi's art has no indication of a particular place. Most of his works are portraits -- the subject, model, actor, artist -- which makes the performances coincide with the person. Sobriety, immobility and close-ups of isolated individuals compose more than they express. The artistic elements chosen are always sufficiently eloquent. Faruqi always presents a small thread of tension or suspense in all his works, but he does not resolve the complete atmosphere of physical tension. The lack of resolution entices the viewer to long for another scene from these narratives, but unlike a series of movie stills, the next image or scene never appears.

Faruqi's approach is to find compelling photographic images in magazines. He tends to isolate figures against featureless, single-colour grounds or to subdivide the surfaces of his pictures into blocks of colour that frame individual figures or scenes, his placement of the protagonists in each case serving both the implied narrative and its expressive potential. In 'The Cat that Belonged to No One', a couple appears at the lower left corner. Behind them is an assemblage of painted and printed papers, upon which are perched a man and a woman sitting apart, their postures conveying anguished states. Are we looking at two different couples and perhaps a sequential narrative? The seated woman is at the centre of the painting, the remaining three quarters of which is a flat, bright red that seems at once to echo her pain and signal the danger of her precarious position. Numerous small-scale paintings included in the exhibition likewise delve into relations between the sexes, most of them involving betrayal and raising issues of power and control, as revealed in such telling titles as 'Come Sit With Me' and 'Card Players'.

Creating images in painting, Faruqi stretches our everyday actions -- crying, sleeping or smoking. He uses his images as the most recognisable signs of a hyper-reality-based world while pushing the limits of time and space. The bridge that Moeen Faruqi's art makes between space and theoretical work is more usually characterised as a web than a trajectory. This web is fragile in places, merely touching or pointing to some issues of contemporary practice and noting the layering of work which may have progressed beyond certain traditional art historical texts.

Moeen Faruqi's substantial works on canvas, paper and board of slack-jawed men and dazed women are pleasingly disarming. Their success lies in the invigorating contrast of stylised, impassive subjects and incongruously chaotic interiors. The withdrawn figures vie for attention with vivid stripes and drips of paint.

'Dirty Old Men' is an upfront view of a room with three figures in it, their forms superimposed on a busy surface of discordant colours and patterns. We stare at a girl's upturned head, her mouth gaping open. The cleavage of her bust is faintly visible through her crimson camisole in a mild provocation. Competing checkerboard patterns flatten the image into a patchwork of pulsing colours and set off the girl's pale exposed skin. Faruqi continually challenges us to make sense of complex spaces that compete with the girl's illicit magnetism.

The exhibition also contained a series of paintings of masks cast in fibre glass. Faux naïf works like appear to be afterthoughts to the large canvases and lack their graphic complexity and aesthetic pleasure. Garish paint quickly laid over opaque backgrounds yields tepid results that don't quite take advantage of Faruqi's considerable pictorial talents.

In many different ways, Faruqi puts the spectator in the position of realising the transitory nature of perception by emphasising the process of re-context. We enter these spaces. We recognise the formats. We take for granted certain situations. It is the role of the artist to affect the subsequent series of reversals, combining recognition with the unknown. This exhibition, organised by Canvas Gallery, Karachi, consolidates Moeen Faruqi as an artist who parallels the two.  

In the past few years, Alhamra has been focusing, relatively speaking, on the classical forms of music. The recently-held two-day festival demonstrated its resolve to promote the forms that do not have a readymade commercial base as such in our society.

All the leading artistes took part in the festival, along with their younger counterparts. The general impression one gets at the classical music concerts or about classical music is that it is about people who are not young. This age division by which popular forms such as pop is meant for the younger generation, ghazal and folk for the middle-aged, and classical music for those close to superannuation holds true, though not necessarily in its full rigidity.

The older generation of artistes is almost in their 80s now. Ustad Fateh Ali Khan and Ustad Ghulam Hasan Shaggan have, for the better part of their lives, struggled to keep the classical forms alive in an environment that was not particularly keen to patronise the classical forms. The partition was a watershed that not only changed the demographic and religious pattern of the population it also -- in many ways -- changed the cultural landscape of the northern part of the subcontinent.

Ustad Shaggan, Ustad Salamat Ali Khan and Ustad Fateh Ali were young when they decided to migrate to Pakistan. Their youth and enthusiasm made them overlook the changing musical taste of the emerging classes. But their persistence, despite many personal losses and heartbreaks, can only be termed as heroic. Many others compromised with these changes and decided to switch over to the more rewarding forms of music. Many of the leading families decided to give up music altogether, taking up other jobs instead.

Though Ustad Fateh Ali Khan was not part of the festival, Ustad Ghulam Hussain Shaggan was, and he sang in his customary style for about an hour. He was being assisted as usual by his son Qadir Ali, who also has diversified to become a composer in films and television.

Ustad Fateh Ali Khan Hyderabadi, who also took part in the festival, is now the leading vocalist in this genre of music. Somehow one gets the feeling that he is the last musician who has been trained in the traditional manner, more under closed-door supervision when all other outside influences were rejected. The entire world of the recipient was the music that he was receiving from his ustad and was based on the very strict discipline of the oral transfer without any other aid and intervention. It guaranteed chasteness in style and a particularity of voice culture. Both these attributes are there in Fateh Ali Khan while these have to be discovered in musicians trained in a more contemporary environment.

Hussain Buksh Gullo, too, has been singing for many years the various classical forms as well as the semi-classical numbers, which have made him more famous. He has also been keen that his younger generation should stick to the classical forms, and if they have to experiment it should be studied experimentation not falling in the runaway category. His sons, Chand Khan and Suraj Khan, also performed. They are gradually climbing the ladder of maturity as they go along.

Among the younger performers the one who promised immense potential is Shafqat Salamat Ali Khan. After Salamat Ali Khan stopped teaming up with his brother Nazakat Ali Khan, he first sang alone and later with his elder son Sharafat Ali Khan. In his later years, he selected his younger son Shafqat to sing in partnership with him.

Shafqat showed immense promise. He was also praised by his father and soon he was singing like full-fledged gawayya. The audience perhaps sees Salamat Ali Khan in him and expects him to perform in emulation of the father. This expectation has been rather premature and has probably pushed the son to a stage where he may be harried to prove a point. It would be so much better for music if Shafqat Salamat was allowed to perform according to his free will, with the gradual unfolding of the raga in the vilampat lai -- for this steady and sure poise will bring out the musical creativity within him and release him from the expectation of knocking the audience over with virtuosity. He has the craft and the music ability. The problem really has been to bring the two together in a most fruitful equation.

Similarly, the children of Hamid Ali Khan have been performing for sometime and in a number of genres and styles. The one label which has become almost generic is fusion. And, what it means is anybody's guess. But it legitimises the mixing of the sonic cultures and instruments. The Ragaboyz too are in the process of discovering their style. It is being hoped that gradually with the passage of time they will be able to discover their true style and genre to enrich musical expression.

Other performers who took part in the festival were Mubarak Ali Khan with his usual competent performance, Akmal Qadri and Shabbir Jhari.

It will be so much nicer if performers from other cities are also invited. Ustad Salamat Hussain Khan, Nafees Ahmed Khan, Turab Ali, Asad Qazilbash ,Ustad Bashir Ahmed to name but a few can be invited to perform in such festivals. These artistes do travel and perform in parts of the country other than their own. It will be so much better if the festival is given a nationwide platform for the very best musical offerings.

Of late, our art galleries are showing a new trend -- of showcasing contemporary art, a genre that was not visible in the last 15 years or so. Earlier we were more engaged with traditional art forms, such as paintings, sculptures and prints, or in the historic genres, like calligraphies and miniatures.

Three simultaneous exhibitions of Pakistani artists, recently concluded in Lahore and Karachi, can be classified as shows of contemporary art. Solo exhibition of Amna Ilyas at Zahoorul Akhlaq Gallery in Lahore, group show by Amber Hammad, Ayesha Sultana and Farwa Ibrahim at Alhamra Art Gallery in Lahore and another group show by Nazakat Ali Depar, Amjad Ali Talpur, Hammad Malik and Nizam Dahiri at Canvas Gallery in Karachi denote a remarkable shift in the present art scene. These reveal that the majority of young artists, even if trained in conventional disciplines like painting or miniature, are aiming to experience something new. 

Each artist, viewer or critic may have a different version of the new yet this new denotes a visual vocabulary that is rooted in history and heritage, at the same time, is relevant and easily understood in the art centres around the world. Like the English language, which according to Susan Sontag, is a widely used lingua franca among pilots and aviation staff all over the world -- contemporary art, too, is growing to be a language that is independent of regional discrimination and national demarcations.

So, the popularity of contemporary art is inevitable in Pakistan. Amina Ilyas with her glass constructions, which creates multiple shadows on the gallery wall; Amjad Ali Talpur through his 'deconstructed' miniatures, Nazakat Depar in his painted rail tickets and Nizam Dahiri with his shaky, double and triple images of known visuals such as 'Mona Lisa' or a landscape by Allah Bux or a local currency note, all contribute to the development of the new art.

The three shows held simultaneously are significant for many ways. These affirm that our artists are working for change. Also, it highlights the divide between contemporary and modern in our art, which in evident when mid-career painters, who are faithful followers of heritage (and explorers of marginalised gender problems), compare their work with that done by new artists. They accuse them of imitating the West and alien experiences. In fact, their condemnation is based on the new artists' level of international success, which they themselves are unable to attain, despite their national recognition and respect among colleagues and students.

Whether it's the issue of identity, male gaze, female gender or traditional content/imagery, today, the scope, range and impact of modern art in Pakistan is somewhat shrinking compared to contemporary art. Modern art is being exported, yet its popularity cannot match that of contemporary art. At home, too, the contemporary idiom is gaining popularity. Public and private galleries which were reluctant to support contemporary art earlier are now eager to display it -- because they have become conscious of its high market value in Pakistan and abroad.

This eagerness and acceptance of contemporary art has a positive as well as a negative side to it. It inspires artists to acquire a language that has not been much popular, practiced or produced here, and to express/shape their ideas in the new and exciting formats. At the same time, it has caused an abundance of contemporary art, created for the sake of necessity -- to be up-to-date and able to sell in the international arena!

Nonetheless, a lot can be benefited from this development because it signifies that we are at the threshold of the mainstream art.

Dear All,

Star Trek has been resurrected.

Just when we were coming to terms with the fact that perhaps Kirk and Spock, and Star Trek generally had reached the end of the line, they have been resurrected (or resuscitated) courtesy the new film called, simply, Star Trek.

The Star Trek film is a prequel to the story of the characters that we saw in the 1960s TV series and begins with a glimpse of James T Kirk's father commanding a Starfleet ship in pretty difficult circumstances. We then get to see young Kirk and young Spock on their respective planets and then see how their paths crossed and brought them to the enterprise. There are lots of time travel, plenty of thrilling action and lots of the crisp dialogue and the winning one-liners one expects from Star trek material.

Familiar themes are present: loyalty and friendship, trust and responsibility, rules and discipline versus bold initiative, tolerance versus prejudice, redemption rather than revenge.

I was initially quite reluctant to see the movie because I just did not like the idea of having a new cast as the main characters, but after having seen the film (courtesy the initiative of my charming young investment banker nephew who organised a family outing), I have to say the casting is excellent. Chris Pine as Jim Kirk is terrific. He is Shatner's Kirk without some of the recurring smugness of Shatner's portrayal. Zachary Quinto is Spock, and he is excellent too, his physical resemblance, his gestures, his physique are all vintage Spock (even though aficionados of the TV series Heroes are reported to be having some difficulty detaching him from the image of the rather nasty character Sylar that he plays in that).

The film takes more liberties with the other command characters: Chekhov is a bright-eyed seventeen-year-old Russian prodigy; Uhura is a pony-tailed beauty with a romantic interest in... Spock! McCoy and Sulu are similar to their TV characters but Scotty is a bit more hyper and entertaining than he was in the original. And Leonard Nimoy, the original Spock, is in the film too. This is quite thrilling except that when you see how old he looks, it hits you how very old the original Star Trek is...!

The good thing about the film is that it captures the flavour of the original series in a satisfying high-tech sort of way. It picks up on themes or facts mentioned in the original series and elaborates on them. It maintains the unlikely friendship of Kirk and Spock as the central relationship of the narrative ("I have been and always will be ...your friend"), and evokes the mood of the best of the Star Trek films i.e. The Wrath of Khan.

Star Trek was a ground-breaking show in the mid-1960s. It expressed a vision of unity and universal tolerance, adventure and commitment. It looked at many classical myths and retold them. It looked at ethical and political dilemmas and explored the issues around them. It was the first mainstream show to have a black actor as a main character (Nichelle Nichols as Uhura was about to quit the show, but then Dr Martin Luther King told her how ground-breaking her presence on prime time was), it featured a Russian officer as part of the good guys at the height of the Cold War, and a Japanese officer as key player in the post-WW2 years. It was bold. Tt really tried to go where no TV series had gone before.

The new film is good entertainment and the time travel and alternate realities theme is pretty thought-provoking also. Beating the speed of light was fine, but the idea that Space is moving too, will provoke lots more thought, debate and discussion.

Anyhow, live long and prosper.

Umber Khairi