15X4 week

The Fantastic Four: Tapu Javeri, Amean Jan Muhammad, Izdeyar Setna and Arif Mahmood (after photographing Meera ;)

Those who are also a part of my non-digital life also know that we have been working towards this exhibition for the past two months. have had several very productive, very good meetings. have suffered several heart attacks. we've all suffered with the sponsor. all spent sleepless nights over it. despite everything, the fact that work for this exhibiton to happen was underway and that it was going to happen was what excited us the most :)

3 days before the exhibition opened, the photogs sacked the sponsors. they were taking too long to come to a "decision" — a decision they should have made months ago. henceforth, the exhibition was being done by the photogs individually on gallery space booked under my name and the marketing plan that had been decided upon while the sponsors were here, went on as usual.

the photogs were sweet enough to tell me everytime we spoke that i was a member of the team and i had to be there at the exhibition. and my meetings with the head of department of fine art at Indus Valley went on as usual. our radio partners were, off course, Radio1FM91 who had begun to play promos related to the exhibition on their airwaves. everything was going according to plan and we were all ghareeb.

and oh, the official title of the exhibition had been changed from "4X15" to "15X4" — Tapu's suggestion.

now comes the part where Indus Valley acts in such a way as to piss one photog off (he used it creatively) and after that me, completely off and to this day, i carry a bitter taste in my mouth related to it.

one day before the exhibtion was supposed to go on view, i find Tapu in the gallery taking out his photo of Meera from the frame... the rest about what had happened and so on, can be read here: Four photographers, Fifteen subjects, One controversial photo <-- yes, had it published in The Metropolitan, Dawn.

how they managed to piss me off is... on the day of the exhibition (Friday, April 13, 2007) i get to IVSAA at 5.45pm, the exhibition starts at 6:00pm. i go to N who was curating in place of usman ghouri, not only do i get a very chilly attitude from her but she tells me she doesn't know nothing about no radio and no standees and so on. i tell her i've spoken to RA (HOD, Fine Art) and the photogs are also aware et cetera. and then i go to RA, who walks out of his room. and this is the conversation that follows...

me: the radio1fm91 team is here with the standees, i need to know where to place them.
RA: **quiet, looks at nurraya as if he is worried**
me: mr. RA?
RA: **turns towards me** what are you doing for this exhibition?
me: excuse me?
RA: i thought you were out of it, so why are you still here?
me: **is completely confused** i dont understand what your saying, i spoke to you yesterday about radio1fm91 and the standees, the team is here i need to know where to place them.
RA: i have a statement with me stating that the photogs are doing this independantly, so why are you here?
me: **is frustrated** the marketing plan is going ahead the way it had been laid out in the begining. the only difference now is that we dont have a sponsor. we all had a very detailed conversation about this with you. you know that a)press and media are coming, b)that we had radio1fm91 as our radio partners.
RA: but why are you getting involved into this?
me: **seriously feels like whacking him, i mean, what is wrong with this person?!** would you rather i get one of the photogs to vouch for me?
RA: **looks at N, turns towards me** we need to talk about this, i'll get back to you.

madeeha, all huffy puffy goes towards the photogs and tells them about the conversation she just had, they are obviously concerned and photog1 tells me i should have gotten everything done in writing — people like RA who have a tendency of suffering from temporary amnesia and going back on his own words, cant do this to me again

**N walks towards us**
photog1: N, we need to have the standees placed somewhere.
N: **light dawns on her that photogs are actually backing me on this** yes well it will have to be outside and cannot be placed on the campus walls.
photog1: its a standee N, it stands independantly.
N: a what?
photog1: never mind.

**photog1 and photog2 go with madeeha to help radio1fm91 team figure out where to keep it**

what angers me, to this day is that, i had been going to IVS every day for that past week, discussing every IVS and exhibition-related detail with him including the marketing plan and radio et cetera and he knew everything and was okay with it. it also disappoints me that members of the faculty of a reputed institution would act that way.

The opening of the exhibition itself was brilliant :) it was boiling hot in the gallery itself. but everyone turned up! from Iraj, who had been there from 6pm to 8pm, to ali azmat, cowasjee, hameed haroon, hamida khuhro, maheen khan, nadey ali, mohsin saeed, mtv vj mahira, dr setna and wife, hoshang, sikandar mufti, umbreen butt and more. Lyna told me that was the largest turnout for an exhibition they had so far :) almost every other television channel was there, people from the press was there and anoushey from radio1fm91 was also there interviewing everyone.

there were chai and samosa's outside and Tapu brought his ipod and ipod-stereo so there was music playing in the hallway :) had a pretty good conversation with cowasjee :) he's pretty fun to talk to!

at 8.30, IVSAA started flicking the lights to indicate to everyone that it was time to go home, but they still didn't ;)

the exhibition is still on till april 19 and my reccomendation to those who haven't seen it yet would be: go see it. seriously. it's worth it :)

Post-4X15 weekend:

needed a break. desperately. was going nuts. bayl to the rescue ;) spent all day saturday with her and kurt, and saturday night at her place. spent a couple of hours at the beach. what i found incredibly nasty was that there were clumps of sea weed on the beach, in the water and they tangled with one's legs in the most disgusting manner. ew. after about 15 minutes in the water, i got out, changed, sat down and scribbled away. and kept scribbling.

for once it was nice to be away from civilisation where i didnt have to worry about a gazillion people calling me, deadlines, interviews and so on. i could just.... "be". life was simple. and my feet were all covered in sand.

i took lots and lots of photos though. can't help it. might post them on flickr later. bayl, K and i took some whacky photos in the car on the way to bayl's home as well. i might post those on flickr too.

at night, bayl and i ended up watching this movie which was explicit enough to pass as porn and spent the rest of the night dreaming it out. it was disgusting. after that, nothing seemed sacred anymore. whats slightly amusing is, when we wikipedia-ed the person on which the movie was based, almost every single detail within the movie turned out to be true. it's somewhat disappointing to know that there did exist civilisations that lived the way they did (in the movie).

have a gazillion other movies to watch, if anyone, however, has any suggestions... do let me know :)