Here’s what inspired Sarnath Banerjee to create the ‘Gallery of Losers’… why is the idea of winning vulgar and there is grace in losing.
What inspired you to come up with the ‘Gallery of Losers’?
I was in Sao Paolo doing a series of interviews, using the comic book format in 2008. My project was to understand the sort of inner workings of Sao Paolo and I chose about fourteen people, whom I would include in this series. There was a liftman, a football philosopher, there was a maker of B-grade movies (like those cult horror films), a fashion promoter, a security guard and one of them was a Judo Olympian – Douglas Vieira.
At the Los Angeles Olympics, he lost at the finals to a Korean underdog because the Korean was good at floor and he was good at throwing. So, when I was interviewing him in his small 1 bedroom flat in Santana, at the end of the interview, his daughter got this bag, those blue Scandinavian Airlines bags, and inside this bag were paper cuttings of Douglas Vieira. Very tentatively, he brought those papers out, which spoke of his past achievements and things like that. When he did that, suddenly this hulk of a man became extremely vulnerable. It was very human that he still had those yellowish papers.
So the next day, Douglas Vieira invited me over to his dojo in central Sao Paolo. In the dojo, he threw me twelve times, to show me how it is like to fall. And as he threw me, he didn’t actually throw me, he would pick me up and gently throw me on the floor, and with each fall, I understood more and more that judo was not about throwing, but about falling.
And that whole art of falling, four years later, became a proposal, which was the “Gallery of Losers”. It’s basically about people who almost made it, and Douglas Vieira was definitely the inspiration for that, because when Olympics asked me to put forward a proposal, this is what came to my mind that Olympics should not be about winning, but all about losing. And that’s it. One thing led to another, and that’s how the project happened.
You talk of the art of falling, how do you define the fine line between losing and not winning?
I did not start playing whatever I wanted to play, just to win; it was more about the participatory aspect to it. That sort of prompted me to play sports, and also I didn’t win much. Actually I never won. Even when I was winning, on match point, I would get the nerves, and I would end up losing. I was a bit like Pargat Singh, a neat dribbler but could not convert it into a goal. I think sports, like literature, music, cinema should also be process driven and not so much result-oriented as it is. I think the process of preparation, the process of playing, or the process of getting better at it, is perhaps of more importance to me, than winning.
Incidentally, I get a lot of these emails now; it almost feels like that I have developed this cult of losers. I get emails saying that I am perfect because I am outside this idea of winning, I create my own yardsticks and this that. I try to tell them that maybe you are right, but what I have tried to portray in this project are not people who are out of the whole ‘winning theme’ , they are not as elevated as human beings who believe that winning is not the most important thing, they clearly want to win. They worked very hard to win but they somehow could not make it.
You talk highly of the participatory nature of sports, of how participating is more important than winning, do you believe that the definitions of victory need to be re-imagined, not only in terms of sports, but other walks of life too?
Yes, I think so. I think we should complicate the idea of winning and losing and take away the similarity of it. We should flatten out the conversation around winning and losing. You know firewalkers, right? You have to be scared, because when you are scared, it creates the sweat on the soles of your feet and that creates the fear, which protects you from fire as you walk through it. One day if you lose that fear, your feet won’t sweat and you will burn. Similarly, I think you need to be vulnerable. The vulnerability is very much a part of my work. I do not mean an underdog or a victim. A victim is a commodity and I don’t want to be a victim. If we talk about titles from the third world countries, published from the West, you need to automatically bring in that victim.
Vulnerability is the root through which you can enlighten yourself, you can empower yourself, and this ability to feel vulnerable is very important, for me. What I practise, comics and cartoons, graphic novels… there’s no dadagiri about me. When writers become famous, there is this dadagiri about them, they are powerful and can dictate terms. If you are an artist, you make tons and tons of money and you start dictating terms. As a comic book person, you are sort of out of that fringe, your influences are quite limited. You are sort of an island, sort of the outsider kid, or the kid who entered the party much later. That creates a vulnerability, and I feel it’s important to feel vulnerable. It’s nice to be closer to losers, than to winners. Probably I am not making sense…
No, no, you do… as you say it’s better to be closer to losers, than winners… do you think there exists a dignity in loss too?
I remember, after I passed out of school, in Calcutta, a bunch of us went to Free School Street to drink. I was not much of a drinker then and now I don’t drink at all. Anyway, I think I got a little frisky, I think I had one too many a drink and the guy said that… the guy was a Muslim bartender and he said in Hindi,“Piyo, lekin itna piyo ki girne ka tameez rahe”(laughs). And I think that answers your question very succinctly, that girne ka tameez, the whole ritual, the art of falling… yes, the dignity, the “dignifiedness” of a loser. Someone coming out and saying that, “Listen, I tried my best, I gave it everything I could… still couldn’t better my timing and I am a winner in my own eyes. I might have come seventh, but I did my best and this is my humility. So shall it be… and I should be allowed to lose.” And I think these bits need to be articulated.
What happens to the high jumper when he loses, he practises for like seven years and then he can’t make it through to the finals, but then he cannot abandon and become a doctor the next day or become an accountant. He still has to go and jump. So what motivates that jumper despite the loss? There must be something, some kind of poetry in that, some kind of a Sisyphean… not tragedy, but a Sisyphean situation. And that I find very interesting.
In this melee of victory mongers, how lost is that class of hard workers, who tried their best but do not have the ‘winner’ tag to their name?
Interesting question. We all know how celebratory we can get about winners, and how media celebrates winners. I think perhaps… I don’t know how to answer that question actually.
A loser’s role is not much. Some people say that losing is also a kind of winning. No. Losing is not winning, and only losers can tell you that. I have always been sort of suspicious of competitive sports myself. But then, if there’s no competition, then why play sports? Sports basically teach you how to deal with loss. I am not saying that take away competitive sports, just that, make it more complicating – the idea of winning and losing. It’s not like I want to send a message out, I just felt all this self congratulation that was going to happen in Olympics needed an antidote, and perhaps my work was an antidote for that matter. There is so much celebration, my god, like Anish Kapoor’s mini liquid hydrone cyclotron, the sheer size, scale and money… Lakshmi Mittal… it’s just vulgar. I mean that one could make a smaller, more sophisticated gesture, one doesn’t need to spend the educational budget of a small African country to produce art.
Talking of vulgar, you once said in an interview that you find winners vulgar. Why so?
I just do. Not so much winners, but yes, I find the idea of winning vulgar. The population, in general, likes winners, right? You have almost everybody flocking around you if you have won something ridiculous. You become the mainstream, it just sort of psyches you.
Does this thought also inspire that particular hoarding where you show the huge crowd surrounding the winners?
Yes, it’s actually the only researched drawing. Every drawing has a little story behind it. That gives the drawing perhaps a sense of mystery, that there’s something behind that drawing.
I was flipping through an abandoned library in East Germany, which was entirely dedicated to publications. I was flipping through these old Olympic books, compilations, and I was looking at the winners because it starts with all of them holding their medals and all winners, from West Germany, America, South America. And suddenly a pattern started forming inside my head. They all looked like characters from Julius Caesar; those senators. They had these G-4 summit, world dominators kind of feel to them… that sort of a cocky confidence. I am sure they were not like that, but just that pattern formed in my head. So I started to take a lot of those pictures with my mobile phone camera, bought a few of those books and then drew and created a composition. At the end, it kind of made sense because it was the concept of my whole work. So, the historical winners, throughout all the Olympics, put together a foreground of a mass of winners, and a background of cheering audience. And then it felt a bit gladiatorial, you know (smiles). Like ancient Rome, that horrid Roman crowd and the winners. Can you picturise it?
Yes…
Drawing is a map of extremes, which is why I find that word ‘illustration’ quite terrible. I don’t illustrate anything, everything comes out from the extremes of feeling something.
Of all your drawings in this series, with which did you connect most, personally?
All these people are imbued with my own personality. All of those guys’ losses are my own losses.
How would you explain that all their losses are your losses?
How would I explain that? Umm… The emotions and everything that goes on in their minds… like the pole vaulter, just before the jump, thinks if he has chosen the wrong profession… or the boxer, whose main job is to dodge punches, does not think about the fact that he is also allowed to throw in a few… or the steeple chase racer, whose head walks toward the finishing line, but his legs don’t… or the table tennis guy who is waiting for the last ball. All the things that are going on in their heads, at that point of time, are potentially all the things that are going on in my head, if I transplant myself into their position. So, all the losses are personalised.
But if you ask who I am closest to… I am probably closest to Hasan Sardar, the erstwhile Pakistan captain. I feel closest to him because here I have my ready-to-take penalty shot, and I have got three people correcting my posture, but I have a whole wall of bureaucracy, of this social miasma, stopping me from striking that goal. Things that are beyond my power. And that’s slightly autobiographical because I am currently in Berlin, since I can’t live in India. So, that’s quite close to my situation, and there is also this high jumper, who you haven’t probably seen because he hasn’t been published yet. It’s a story of a high jumper who eats light food, reads light literature, listens to light music so that he can jump higher and achieve that levitation. But every evening, when he looks at the shelf in his living room, there is this single medal; a bronze medal at the end of a long period. He cannot help but feel a certain weight coming down, darkening his spirit. But next morning, he is fine again because as long as there are things to jump over, he’s fine. So, I feel very close to the high jumper.
Do you think we Indians are extremely result-oriented?
Not particularly. Not more than the Chinese people or the Britishers or the Americans are. Our education system perhaps is… but I don’t think we are any more result-oriented than the other countries of the late capitalist world. At least India has spaces, where you can slip out. So, I don’t think India can be singled out in this matter. Corporate middle class India is… and it is like shit. But we cannot judge entire India through the mirror of a small section of people who are into lifestyle, who eat rubbish, read rubbish and go to the gym. I mean one cannot use the same prism to look at India.
Is this series connected to your bengaliness? You are a Bengali, and Bengalis are known for celebrating or romanticising everything, so does that relation exist, with respect to this series?
The self is created through language, through people… and it is the self that generates all this art and stuff, you are not trying to emulate someone. You are just bringing out what is inside. And that whatever is inside you is perhaps the mixture of all the influences that created the self. I grew up in Calcutta and read a lot of Bengali literature, still do. I think I would be unfair upon myself and of course to Bengali language and Bengali people to say that I look at things from the prism of a Bengali. That is probably one of the yardsticks of looking at things. So, I don’t think that regional or language thing works beyond a point. However, after saying this, I should say that yes, some of my characters, as my mother puts it, looks dangerously close to someone who could be from Maniktala Market as well. Doesn’t matter whether they are from Serbia or from Hungary. But that’s because of an assimilated self of a certain childhood. But then I have perhaps, spent not an equal amount of time, but a reasonably large amount of time in Delhi. And later on England, then France and now, Germany. So, your self goes through lots of modifications that’s coloured by a lot of things and you don’t remain an inner being. So yes, it’s a dangerous question to answer. My foundations are based in Calcutta and of course, I look at things from that prism, but that’s just one of them.
From this issue, our tagline is changing from ‘Critical Reflective Journalism’ to ‘Ideas. Imagination. Dialectics.’In that context, if you were to re-ideate the way we play sports, and re-imagine the world and the definitions of sports, then how would you?
Wow. Are you seriously asking me that question… haha… I am not trying to reimagine anything. I am just a surveyor and interpreter of other peoples’ imaginations. I hardly ever try to reimagine things, rather work with the knowledge that is floating around from the foundations, and then make sense of the world, the way it is. I am not an ideologue or someone who tries to redefine pathways. I am more like a William Bogart kind of a character, who reports but with his own bias. I am not a Leo Tolstoy sort of a character who opens up knowledge forms and proposes reason. I know my limitations and I stay within that.
