¶ A Sound State and the State of Sound
M. In your practice you have ventured into visual art, theatre, video and ... so I guess that is natural that sound has become part of your practice. What do you think is the current state of art education in india as you are familiar with some of the leading art institutions from your teaching experience. Are these colleges preparing for contemporary self-expressions using different mediums that touch our lives? Your views?
Murali: I belong to an agrarian family, where all those folklore elements were part of the ordinary life. I grew up listening to folk songs like Thottam songs and witnessing to rituals associated with the rural life. In a sense it was the very physical activities in my environment that drew me towards theatre at a very young age.
Later, during school and college days, it became sort of habit for me to seriously watch movies as well as theatre. And these experiences slowly drew me towards doing plays, often my own scripts. With this involvement in theatre, I also started looking at the art of sound, and its possibilities, from a different perspective.
For me, every expression finds a place in my practice as part of my socio-political and aesthetic discourse.
I feel that almost all institutes that I have associated with, still miss the good side of contemporary art and, to be frank, they are bit too conventional in their approach. Though the experiments done by some individuals are capable of bringing about some changes for good among students, I still sincerely feel that our educational institutions should implement some basic changes in their vision about education. Only then they will be able to know and understand contemporary trends thus opening the paths for social transformation.
