[Music]
[Applause]
so this is a good news/bad news scenario
I’m here to tell you about the secret
ingredient which makes the creative
world go round that’s the good news it
is something that anyone who’s ever been
creative is engaged with which is also
good news but very few talk about it
which is bad news but the real bad news
is that this secret ingredient has a
very bad record but let me digress just
a little bit and talk to you about an
incident which happened recently I had
got to present my poetry at a Poetry
Festival in Chennai to a group of high
school students and these were students
who were liberally endowed with the
three C’s and by that I do not read the
three C’s of consumerism such as company
customers and competitors which is
rampant today but the three C’s that we
hope our future generation will we have
we would like them to be confident to be
considerate and above all to be curious
so these students with that you know
they were curious and they listened with
great attention to what I was saying but
at the end what they wanted to know was
whether there was some quality without
which no creative work could be made was
they perhaps a magical formula a secret
tool with which creativity could be
jump-started well yes and no I said no
magic formula no secret tool but there
is a quality without which I believed no
creative work can be made and it is a
quality that is largely overlooked and
so drumroll please this secret
ingredient is discipline I know I’m here
to make a case for that much maligned
quality of this
and I’m here to rescue discipline from
the rubbish heap of the 21st century and
if that is not a startling enough idea
it’s not just any kind of discipline
that I’m talking about I’m talking about
rebellion and discipline I’m talking
about the art of rebellious discipline
in that auditorium as probably this
auditorium this was not the answer that
they wanted to hear to the question what
is the secret ingredient of creativity
there is this preconceived notion of the
artist as this talented creature who
loves about waiting for inspiration to
strike well you do need inspiration and
you know do need talent but without the
discipline to make something of these
things
nothing creative can be achieved so I do
accept that discipline is not a sexy
word it’s not even a cool word but give
me the opportunity to make you rethink
this word by looking at discipline both
as an action and a verb and as an
activity and a noun so this is a picture
of my parents when they were very young
my father was a general in the Army and
I do believe that one of the greatest
gifts he gave me by example was an
understanding for the need for
discipline not as an act of
unquestioning obedience or as an end in
itself but as the great enabler that
gets things done he would always say
discipline is self motivation and at the
end of the day that’s the only thing you
can rely on and he had a favorite story
to illustrate this I think all fathers
had favorite stories he did have one too
and it was about a group of birds who
made their nests on the tree in a
farmer’s land one day the farmer said he
told his farmhand I would like the
street cut down because I want to use
that land to plow more crops so all the
birds were very worried and they went to
the mama matriarch burdens
we’ve got to move and the matric bird
didn’t break a sweat and she said relax
nothing will happen and nothing did the
next week the farmer told his son you
know when you have the time please cut
down that tree I need the land so more
crops again the birds flew up to the
matriarch bird and again she said don’t
worry the next week the farmer told his
wife could you cut down that tree when
you have the time again the birds went
to the matriarch bird again she said
don’t worry and this went on till one
day the farmer as he was walking by he
stood with his hands on his hips and
looked at the tree and he said with some
exasperation you know I think I’m going
to have to wake up early next morning
and cut down this tree myself at once
the matriarch bird got up fluffed out of
feathers and said right guys time to
move in other words if you don’t have
the self-discipline to do things
yourself nothing in your life will move
I mean think about it from the point of
view of an artist I mean who really
cares whether I wake up every day and go
to my studio and make and destroy and
remake refashioned rescale to rethink
ponder my art if I don’t have the
self-discipline to engage with my
practice every single day nothing will
get made so to this idea of
self-discipline that I’ve been talking
about I would add the word rebellious
and admittedly they seem as far apart as
digital and analog discipline and
rebellion how do they come together to
fuel creativity
well for starters creative people and
artists should not do as they’re told
I’m an artist to travel that road less
traveled I’m there to look within myself
and find a truth that has not been
explored before I’m there to take that
leap of creativity without a safety net
art is a provocation to the imagination
art creativity these are not things that
should be
find unlimited it is an invitation to
grab experience with both hands and see
where it will take you creativity and
art are ways at pushing the boundaries
but to push the boundaries you do need
to know where the boundaries lie and
this brings me to the idea of discipline
as a noun which refers to a discipline
as a body of learning which in my case
is Fine Arts a body of learning that you
typically study as a higher form of
learning in a college so this is not to
privilege the student with a master’s
program behind him over an autodidact
but in order to push the boundaries you
need to know where the boundaries are
what has gone before you otherwise you
could find yourself reinventing the
wheel and hand on heart it’s great to
study art I mean it’s great to study
because just as with any other
discipline Fine Arts too has behind it
this weight of praxis and politics and
knowledge and learning and trial and
error and a philosophy and it’s
rewarding and enriching to experience
this but with a healthy dose of
rebellious discipline when I say this I
have this amusing memory and I should
add that it’s retrospectively amusing
because at the time it was not going
through my own master’s program where
the teachers would constantly tell us to
push to destroy to change what we were
doing to try out new things it was very
rewarding and very enriching but also
fairly hazardous exercise with its ups
and it’s downs but what great discipline
I embraced this idea I tried to try out
the new forms of art they were talking
about such as performance I tried the
anti aesthetic and making ugly art I
pushed and I tried and I pushed and
pushed and pushed till one day I
rebelled I thought there was no need
really to change the core of why it is
that I make
so I rebelled against newness for the
sake of munis and turned to the oldest
art form there is which is drawing with
a very humble pencil so these are
examples of my art and they’re all done
with just a pencil this is called
nocturnes three movements of a crossing
and as you will see there is an enormous
amount of details and Bedard in the work
and it’s all done with just a pencil so
you see I was trying to rebel against
the hierarchy of you in art where you
draw and then you paint I thought why
can’t I paint with a pencil the other
thing I thought about was how can
drawing become an experiential encounter
rather than things on a wall and I
created these architectural
installations these labyrinths these
mazes that you would navigate and
experience the art in your own very
personal space as a very intimate
encounter and the drawings and the text
would lead you to a very specific
journey there was sometimes mirrors
where you would walk you see yourself
walking through this labyrinth and
become a participant in the art these
are slides from a work called I sing the
body electric which talked about choice
and chance the other thing I did was to
appropriate the language of science for
my art science is not my subject matter
but it is a language and by looking
through telescopes and microscopes and
scanning tunneling electron microscopes
you come to where the cutting edge of
knowledge and thinking of human activity
is today and these are used for my art
for example the dots which make up my
work is not really an ode to pointillism
but to the thought that a coagulation of
tiny infinitesimal particles make up the
living universe and the tiny collection
of these particles make up the world of
my drawing so you see this combination
of
discipline and creativity took me to
places that I never thought that I would
go to and here is another work of mine a
serial work showing a series of drawings
and I admit that it is an oxymoron
rebellion and creativity coming together
as rebellious creativity and not
something that’s necessarily easy to
practice in your everyday life but it is
possible with you know thinking about it
and doing it to make it a gift to your
creative self for each of you whether
your students or educators or doctors or
lawyers or engineers each one of you has
that creative space within you it is
when you get in touch with that creative
space that you’re able to scale Heights
that you never thought you would scale
make things that you never thought you
would make and so if there is one
thought I can leave you with today it is
this in your creative sphere be
disciplined about rebelling every single day thank you
[Applause]
so this is a good news/bad news scenario
I’m here to tell you about the secret
ingredient which makes the creative
world go round that’s the good news it
is something that anyone who’s ever been
creative is engaged with which is also
good news but very few talk about it
which is bad news but the real bad news
is that this secret ingredient has a
very bad record but let me digress just
a little bit and talk to you about an
incident which happened recently I had
got to present my poetry at a Poetry
Festival in Chennai to a group of high
school students and these were students
who were liberally endowed with the
three C’s and by that I do not read the
three C’s of consumerism such as company
customers and competitors which is
rampant today but the three C’s that we
hope our future generation will we have
we would like them to be confident to be
considerate and above all to be curious
so these students with that you know
they were curious and they listened with
great attention to what I was saying but
at the end what they wanted to know was
whether there was some quality without
which no creative work could be made was
they perhaps a magical formula a secret
tool with which creativity could be
jump-started well yes and no I said no
magic formula no secret tool but there
is a quality without which I believed no
creative work can be made and it is a
quality that is largely overlooked and
so drumroll please this secret
ingredient is discipline I know I’m here
to make a case for that much maligned
quality of this
and I’m here to rescue discipline from
the rubbish heap of the 21st century and
if that is not a startling enough idea
it’s not just any kind of discipline
that I’m talking about I’m talking about
rebellion and discipline I’m talking
about the art of rebellious discipline
in that auditorium as probably this
auditorium this was not the answer that
they wanted to hear to the question what
is the secret ingredient of creativity
there is this preconceived notion of the
artist as this talented creature who
loves about waiting for inspiration to
strike well you do need inspiration and
you know do need talent but without the
discipline to make something of these
things
nothing creative can be achieved so I do
accept that discipline is not a sexy
word it’s not even a cool word but give
me the opportunity to make you rethink
this word by looking at discipline both
as an action and a verb and as an
activity and a noun so this is a picture
of my parents when they were very young
my father was a general in the Army and
I do believe that one of the greatest
gifts he gave me by example was an
understanding for the need for
discipline not as an act of
unquestioning obedience or as an end in
itself but as the great enabler that
gets things done he would always say
discipline is self motivation and at the
end of the day that’s the only thing you
can rely on and he had a favorite story
to illustrate this I think all fathers
had favorite stories he did have one too
and it was about a group of birds who
made their nests on the tree in a
farmer’s land one day the farmer said he
told his farmhand I would like the
street cut down because I want to use
that land to plow more crops so all the
birds were very worried and they went to
the mama matriarch burdens
we’ve got to move and the matric bird
didn’t break a sweat and she said relax
nothing will happen and nothing did the
next week the farmer told his son you
know when you have the time please cut
down that tree I need the land so more
crops again the birds flew up to the
matriarch bird and again she said don’t
worry the next week the farmer told his
wife could you cut down that tree when
you have the time again the birds went
to the matriarch bird again she said
don’t worry and this went on till one
day the farmer as he was walking by he
stood with his hands on his hips and
looked at the tree and he said with some
exasperation you know I think I’m going
to have to wake up early next morning
and cut down this tree myself at once
the matriarch bird got up fluffed out of
feathers and said right guys time to
move in other words if you don’t have
the self-discipline to do things
yourself nothing in your life will move
I mean think about it from the point of
view of an artist I mean who really
cares whether I wake up every day and go
to my studio and make and destroy and
remake refashioned rescale to rethink
ponder my art if I don’t have the
self-discipline to engage with my
practice every single day nothing will
get made so to this idea of
self-discipline that I’ve been talking
about I would add the word rebellious
and admittedly they seem as far apart as
digital and analog discipline and
rebellion how do they come together to
fuel creativity
well for starters creative people and
artists should not do as they’re told
I’m an artist to travel that road less
traveled I’m there to look within myself
and find a truth that has not been
explored before I’m there to take that
leap of creativity without a safety net
art is a provocation to the imagination
art creativity these are not things that
should be
find unlimited it is an invitation to
grab experience with both hands and see
where it will take you creativity and
art are ways at pushing the boundaries
but to push the boundaries you do need
to know where the boundaries lie and
this brings me to the idea of discipline
as a noun which refers to a discipline
as a body of learning which in my case
is Fine Arts a body of learning that you
typically study as a higher form of
learning in a college so this is not to
privilege the student with a master’s
program behind him over an autodidact
but in order to push the boundaries you
need to know where the boundaries are
what has gone before you otherwise you
could find yourself reinventing the
wheel and hand on heart it’s great to
study art I mean it’s great to study
because just as with any other
discipline Fine Arts too has behind it
this weight of praxis and politics and
knowledge and learning and trial and
error and a philosophy and it’s
rewarding and enriching to experience
this but with a healthy dose of
rebellious discipline when I say this I
have this amusing memory and I should
add that it’s retrospectively amusing
because at the time it was not going
through my own master’s program where
the teachers would constantly tell us to
push to destroy to change what we were
doing to try out new things it was very
rewarding and very enriching but also
fairly hazardous exercise with its ups
and it’s downs but what great discipline
I embraced this idea I tried to try out
the new forms of art they were talking
about such as performance I tried the
anti aesthetic and making ugly art I
pushed and I tried and I pushed and
pushed and pushed till one day I
rebelled I thought there was no need
really to change the core of why it is
that I make
so I rebelled against newness for the
sake of munis and turned to the oldest
art form there is which is drawing with
a very humble pencil so these are
examples of my art and they’re all done
with just a pencil this is called
nocturnes three movements of a crossing
and as you will see there is an enormous
amount of details and Bedard in the work
and it’s all done with just a pencil so
you see I was trying to rebel against
the hierarchy of you in art where you
draw and then you paint I thought why
can’t I paint with a pencil the other
thing I thought about was how can
drawing become an experiential encounter
rather than things on a wall and I
created these architectural
installations these labyrinths these
mazes that you would navigate and
experience the art in your own very
personal space as a very intimate
encounter and the drawings and the text
would lead you to a very specific
journey there was sometimes mirrors
where you would walk you see yourself
walking through this labyrinth and
become a participant in the art these
are slides from a work called I sing the
body electric which talked about choice
and chance the other thing I did was to
appropriate the language of science for
my art science is not my subject matter
but it is a language and by looking
through telescopes and microscopes and
scanning tunneling electron microscopes
you come to where the cutting edge of
knowledge and thinking of human activity
is today and these are used for my art
for example the dots which make up my
work is not really an ode to pointillism
but to the thought that a coagulation of
tiny infinitesimal particles make up the
living universe and the tiny collection
of these particles make up the world of
my drawing so you see this combination
of
discipline and creativity took me to
places that I never thought that I would
go to and here is another work of mine a
serial work showing a series of drawings
and I admit that it is an oxymoron
rebellion and creativity coming together
as rebellious creativity and not
something that’s necessarily easy to
practice in your everyday life but it is
possible with you know thinking about it
and doing it to make it a gift to your
creative self for each of you whether
your students or educators or doctors or
lawyers or engineers each one of you has
that creative space within you it is
when you get in touch with that creative
space that you’re able to scale Heights
that you never thought you would scale
make things that you never thought you
would make and so if there is one
thought I can leave you with today it is
this in your creative sphere be
disciplined about rebelling every single day thank you
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