Rishabh Kaul's Weblog » Popular culture

Initial thoughts on Anish Kapoor’s Flesh

Rishabh — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 11:34:15 +0000

I had written a tiny piece for my writing class last week. The assignment was to take an art object and describe how we felt when we first saw it. To begin with I wrote about an Air Conditioner. After further discussions, I decided to write about another art object, this one more mainstream as far as recognizing it as an art piece is concerned. So here is my attempt at recreating the moment when I first saw Anish Kapoor’s “Flesh” last year at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.

Next step is to take an idea from this and write another essay. But that is for later.

Core

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As always, feedback welcome in the comments section or directly to me at rishabhkaul at gmail dot com

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

Will all your base are belong to us?

Rishabh — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:28:15 +0000

A few days ago I wrote an essay as part of the writing class at the Young India Fellowship. The essay demanded that we take the central idea from one of the essays discussed in class, and use that to write about a personal experience referencing 2 other essays (including the one from which the central idea was taken).

I present to you the result. It’s titled “Will all your base belong to us?” and is about the nature of communication under the influence of the internet’s various subcultures.

http://bit.ly/lOMXRO

Feedback, roses and tomatoes welcome either in the comments section or at rishabhkaul at gmail dot com.

kthxbai.

What I have been watching lately

Rishabh — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 21:17:00 +0000

2 interesting documentaries that I have seen recently

Religulous

Comedian Bill Maher goes through great lengths to find merit in religion and ends up creating an entertaining satire. His journey takes him across the world where he meets a catholic priest who tell him that Jesus is the 6th most popular figure in Vatican (and not 1st), head of the Human Genome Project (who is deeply religious), a guy who claims to be Jesus reborn. Bill also goes to Speakers Corner in Hyde Park where he preaches about Scientology.

Obviously the documentary has little original material, however the delivery is killer Its directed by Larry Charles, the same chap who made Borat.

My favorite scene is when Bill goes to a gay bar in Amsterdam which is run by a muslim gay couple and strikes up a conversation with them telling them that

they aren’t really against you being gay, they are just against specific actions of yours, say like anal sex, which well if you that out of picture in homosexuality, what are you left with, just the blow job.

The movie becomes a drag at certain points and Bill gets on your nerves b’coz he does a little Karan Thapar where he simply doesn’t let the other person speak and keeps on enforcing his views and trying to sound funny.

But, surely go for it.

The other documentary was E Athletes. Teja (more popularly known by his backronym @jet in BITS) told me to watch this one. The documentary is about professional gaming, more specifically professional Counter Strike gaming which speaks of fierce rivalry between the big players and how they get the big bucks. The conclusion being that there isn’t enough money in professional gaming yet to sustain one’s family but its getting there especially with onset of professional leagues.

Inspiration for Ghajini

Rishabh — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 11:51:00 +0000

Aamir Khan was always thought of as a perfectionist. A thinking actor. During his earlier days, he took up roles in movies such as Hum hain rahi pyar ke, where he plays a responsible single parent and Sarfarosh where his Indian nationalist supersedes everything else (yes the one hit wonder of John Matthew Mattan who recently came out with his second movie Shikhar). Sure there was a Baazi too somewhere in between where he got to experience what it felt like to dress as a woman, but well it was all in good spirit.

All in all, with him it was more about articulation rather than flaunting his naked body.

And then came Lagaan. Well one could argue that since he was playing a poor farmer and living in a land which received direct sunshine for over 300 days a year, the role demanded it from him.

Probably even for Mangal Pandey or as I like to call it: Retro Alpha Male, one could again use some sort of reasoning to justify this:

This is in accordance with the fit yet not overly masculine AK that we have known throughout the ages. Either ways, the real Mangal Pandey wasn’t known to have a smashing bod either. So alls still well.

But then he does this:

Now, is it just me or does this look similar to another fine fellow with a well chiseled body:

This puts in league with the Grawp whose graphical impression was inspirated by Alfred Neuman.