Dhaka Lit Fest 2023: Creativity, storytelling and art in a world torn apart
The aesthetic role of art is perhaps the most popular, but can this view serve the world we inhabit now? Can the artist forget about the wars, partitions, and climate crises and concentrate on pure aesthetics, unmediated by any of the crises persisting in this world?
A few days ago, I was going through the programme schedule for Dhaka Lit Fest 2023 (DLF), mostly to find out which sessions would interest me.
But something seemed very odd. I could not find any synopsis or thesis for any of the 170 sessions taking place from January 5 to January 8. So, on the first day of DLF, almost blindly, I stumbled into a session titled "Torn Apart". That, of course, paid off; novelists Nuruddin Farah, Geetanjali Shree and Shehan Karunakantilaka from Somalia, India and Sri Lanka respectively, engaged in a lively discussion about our world and where artists and writers stand in it.
The role of the artists and their creativity, storytelling and art in a world torn apart by wars, partitions, pouring refugees, rampant misinformation, and climate crises can by no means be discussed or determined in depth within a small window of an hour and 15 minutes.
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However, the novelists, with moderator Barbara Epler, still tried their best to delve deep into this topic.
While talking about the roles of the writers, Shehan Karunakantilaka, the 2022 Booker Prize winner for his novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, said, "We are taught right at the beginning when we start writing stories that conflict is the source of the drama. And perhaps that's why we have so many interesting books coming out in South Asia and South Africa, because there are plenty of conflicts to draw on."
But what is the position of the writer and the artist in this conflict? Do they take sides? One of the most common and essential marks of a great artist has always been their dispassionate objectivity.
In ideal classical standards, art cannot have any agenda. Great art is born outside of politics.
This aesthetic role of art is perhaps the most popular and is being promoted from the time of Aristotle to this day. But can this view of art and artists serve the world we inhabit now? Can the artist forget about the wars, partitions, and climate crises and concentrate on pure aesthetics, unmediated by any of the crises persisting in this world?
Perhaps not. At least that is the insight the audience of "Torn Apart" could take home with them. In that case, two questions arise: Where does the artist stand then? And what can they do?
Karunakantilaka's comment partially answered these questions.
"We tend to look at things in dichotomies — it is us vs them, left vs right, good vs evil. I suppose a writer can take sides and argue for that side, whatever the medium is, and dismantle the narrative of the other side. But I think what most writers tend to do is look at the middle ground, at the grey areas, at the contradictions. And in an ideal world, which is not the world we live in, it is the role of the writer to look at both sides of the debate and identify commonalities."
The thesis of "Torn Apart" revolved around "truth, social media and climate change".
However, the time constraint of the session did not allow the speakers to engage in the topic of climate change and the role of the writers in that. But another separate session titled "Everything Change," right after "Torn Apart", did a great job in dealing with the issue of the relationship between creativity and climate change.
The speakers of "Everything Change" were Bangladeshi poet Kaiser Haq, Nigerian-born Bangladeshi-American writer Abeer Hoque, and Bangladeshi writer Saad Z Hossain.
The title of the session was curious. Why "change" and not "changes"?
This is in fact a forum that started in the summer of 2021. Rooted in Wales, but with a global focus, this forum is produced by Taliesin Arts Centre and Swansea University Professor in Creativity Owen Sheers, who was also the moderator of this session.
"Everything Change" is a series of discussions and events that explore the roles creativity, thinking and storytelling can play in overcoming the challenges of climate change and other ecological crises.
The title is inspired by Margaret Atwood's quote, "I think calling it climate change is rather limiting. I would rather call it the 'everything change'."
Climate change is indeed at the heart of everything in this torn apart world. But how exactly does the world at large, especially the powerful and the decision-makers, react to it?
Saad pointed out that much of the climate change debates and discussions revolve around heavy information and hard data bombing. He said, "Basically climate sciences are a little bit too much information. And it's really difficult to assimilate all this. I can understand why people don't want to deal with this."
Against this data-driven climate science, he proposed another method of tackling the dialogue of climate crises. "I think regular people process information through stories and through lighter media. It's not so much based on facts and figures," he said.
The intervention of storytelling, creativity and adaptive thinking may help make people more aware of the grim situation of climate change. However, to what extent people can contribute to reverse the damages or prevent the ecological crises of the world through individual behavioural change demands consideration.
The narratives of the big corporations often place the blame on the public for their carbon footprints, use of single-use plastics, and so on, whereas in reality, most ecological crises are caused by big corporations, rather than the people. So, the focus should be on policy-making and accountability on part of the corporations instead of individual behavioural change.
Kaiser Haq said the only hope is to make a loud enough noise, so that "we can force the people with powers to act in a decisive way."
The artists and the thinkers do have significant roles to play in "everything change". But ultimately, the ecological crises of the current world are controlled by the rich, the powerful and those who sit at the top. So once again, the question comes to the front. What do the artists do or can do? None of the speakers had any definite answer to this. And that seemed oddly fitting.
Continuing the dialogue about the role of the artists, and the writers, in battling the climate crises in this torn apart world, one of the audience members asked at the very end of the session, "If I assume the world is like the Titanic and it is sinking, me as a literature student, or you guys as art creators, are we like the musicians who are sinking slowly and playing, doing our parts?"
Everyone, both the audience and the speakers, laughed. We do oftentimes deal with hope, hopelessness and grief with humour and wit. This is perhaps especially appropriate for a topic like the role of creativity, storytelling and art in a world torn apart. What can the artists do? What can anyone do?
With those questions in mind, I left the halls of Bangla Academy and the Dhaka Lit Fest 2023 remembering WH Auden's remark, "The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet, 'For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages,' what just reason could [they] give for refusing? But nobody says this."
