Written by: Varda Nisar
Posted on: January 17, 2019 | 
(L-R) Naziha Ali, Dr. Gul Hassan Kalmati, Aquila Ismail and Shahana Rajani
With its first event of the year, it can be safely stated that the official program for the second edition of Karachi Biennale 2019 (KB19) has taken off. The 2019 edition would focus on Ecology and the Environment, and how artists and social activists are addressing these concerns. The first KB19 Roundtable, held on 11th January, at Alliance Francaise, focused on the theme of “Displacement and Social Ecology,” and was part of the Discursive Programming.
As explained by Niilofur Farrukh, Chair for the Discursive Committee KB19 and CEO KBT, a total of 3 roundtables are scheduled for this year, focusing on themes which are diverse in nature and include issues like Security Architecture, and Fake News. The roundtables were first introduced during KB17 when a total of 4 were held, and filled the void that exists in the Pakistani Art World in terms of documented or archival material’s availability for research purposes. The Discursive was meant to correct this by providing a strong component to go hand in hand with the exhibition, bringing together different practitioners to contribute to this realm. Another component of the Discursive, the “South-South Dialogue” which also made its debut in 2017, with its focus on Latin America, will be revised for this edition and shift the spotlight to Africa for 2019.
The speaker for this round of discussion was Shahana Rajani, whose work focuses on research-based projects and collaborations, through which she explores alternate discourses and counter-geographies. Exploring cities and urban centers as the theme of the evening, she discussed the notions of development within the context of Karachi by talking about two of her projects, which based themselves on visual politics and visuality, and how facts and fiction come together in the visual domain to create a narrative that isn’t always accurate. Both of her projects document the often unresolved and forgotten history behind any development and the violence that is complicit in achieving those goals.
Starting off from the city tours that she had co-created with Zahra Malkani under the banner of Karachi LaJamia, she talked about how development is designed to push certain elements of society to the fringes by those who hold the power, and is never as random as it is made out to be. For example, the shifting of Karachi University to the outskirts of the city was a calculated deliberation on the part of those who saw the power of student unions during the 1953 protests. The same is the case for the Quaid-e-Azam Mausoleum – the site of which was home to around 5000 people, who were forcefully removed to Korangi at the outskirts of the city, to eliminate the eye-sour from the city center. However, despite these brutalities, Shahana emphasizes the silence of the Archives, history and the narrative around development. To correct this, one approach that has been taken by her is to document the houses that existed on the site of the Mausoleum, thus effectively creating a counter-geography and narrative.
Another project, “Gadap Series” again focuses on the visual and its link to promote ideals that favor development. The project has been undertaken in collaboration with the Karachi Indigenous Rights Alliance, and highlights how Gadap has been overtaken by giants like Bahria by presenting Gadap as a barren, desert site, much in need of a developmental project that epitomizes straight lanes and roads. The issue then becomes of how to counter the visuality that is created to promote a certain idea in favor of another. The result has been an interactive website ofstruggle.com which documents the violence and subjugation of Gadap under Bahria.
The presentation was followed by a panel discussion, whose first speaker Aquila Ismail presented a link between displacement and dispossession. She touched upon her personal history, of first migrating in 1947 to East Pakistan and then in 1971 to West Pakistan, and the feelings of loss of home and social fabric each time one is displaced. She discussed the work that had been done by Parveen Rahman, the social activist and Director Orangi Pilot Project, who was working to document many of the goths (small settlements) which came under the wrath of such development projects. Despite being on those lands for decades, their legal status was often used against them to displace them in favor of multimillion-dollar projects and housing schemes. However, by documenting these goths, their existence was put down on paper and gave them legal rights– which is what led to her untimely death.
Dr. Gul Hasan Kalmatti further emphasized the repercussions of displacement, and how females are the most impacted by this, whose livelihood is dependent on these lands in a number of ways, including vegetation, and harvesting of seasonal vegetables. Beyond this, it is also the intangible cultural aspects which come directly under threat when a goth is destroyed.
Naziha Ali opened up with how it was her research into Parveen Rahman’s death that led her to explore the underbelly of developmental projects, particularly Bahria, about which no one was talking. This was despite the fact that this development had led to people not only losing their homes and culture, but also translated into extreme ethnic violence, rifts amongst families and communities, and further sidelining and silencing of indigenous voices.
It will not be wrong to say that the first roundtable has set a bold tone for what one should expect from this edition of Karachi Biennale. It will also not be far-fetched to emphasize how it has brought to the foreground the work of social activists and artists attempting to awaken the social consciousness of our society. Their work is critical in highlighting the many voices that have been silenced, and it is this work that makes artists such an important part of any society.
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