Ravikumar Kashi says that his curiosity in flex banners started round 2007 when he started photographing them for a sequence of his artworks and to make use of as materials for an artwork appreciation course he teaches on the RV School of Structure, Bengaluru.

“For the course, I introduce them to the basics of artwork language,” he explains, stating that issues like measurement, scale, proportion, form, place, affiliation, framing, and proximity play a major function in our notion of any picture, whether or not a flex board or an artwork object. “I used to be utilizing these photos as a part of a classroom train to point out how the visible language we have been discussing in school may be seen on the road,” says Kashi, who not too long ago delivered a chat titled Bangalore/ Bengaluru Adjustments on the Alliance Literary Competition, Bengaluru.

Kashi began this pictures journey utilizing a digital digicam that he would lug round with him. “If I see one thing, I take an image and doc it,” he says. “It was multi functional large folder. These days, I’ve began placing it in numerous sub-folders, however it’s nonetheless not correctly segregated. ” He admits that again when he began, “it wasn’t very deliberate. I had no clear concept why I used to be doing it, however I knew in my intestine that these are vital as a result of I’ve studied the historical past of visible tradition somewhat.”

Just a few years down the road, nonetheless, the undertaking’s raison d’être grew to become rather more evident. “All I’m doing now could be gathering, however as I accomplish that, increasingly more, I realise the worth of it,” says Kashi, who has shot between 7000-8000 photos to this point and intends to maintain doing so. He thinks of this train as dwelling documentation of types. “Flex banners, which often vanish in just a few days, are one thing in flux. Except you doc it day in and time out, it isn’t going to be there,” says Kashi, who went on to publish Flexing Muscle tissue (2019), a bilingual sequence of essays linking these banners to town’s consistently evolving socio-cultural and political landscapes.

Asserting identities

Flex banners, and by that very same logic, posters, cutouts, statues, and automobile photos, have develop into a method to assert numerous identities, believes Kashi. “Persons are repeatedly speaking who they’re and what they need, after which, as a result of they’ll’t discover a voice in different methods, they use this medium of public visible tradition to say one thing.”

Within the first essay of Flexing Muscle tissue, Kashi talks about how senes, “armies to safeguard Kannada land, language and tradition” utilizing flex banners to speak their energy and place. “It turns into a device by means of which they announce and symbolize themselves,” he says, tracing the evolution of linguistic identification politics within the metropolis.

There’s a stark distinction between what Bengaluru is immediately, “with its high-rise buildings, congested roads and saturated visible stimuli,” and what it was: a laid-back pensioners paradise with glorious climate. However quickly, the IT revolution began within the metropolis, with Texas Devices being the primary to arrange store again within the mid-Nineteen Eighties.

Whereas the altering climate and the site visitors have been probably the most obvious manifestations of town’s transformation, writes Kashi, the cultural demographic and languages used within the metropolis additionally underwent an incredible change. “The non-Kannada talking inhabitants dwelling in Bangalore elevated sharply, leaving Kannadigas feeling marginalised in their very own land,” he writes, including that this, in flip, led to the rise of pro-Kannada teams that have been looking for methods to treatment the state of affairs.

Delicate messages

On the current speak, Kashi shared samples of a few of these photos, shot during the last 15 years, and expanded on their meanings. “This stuff provide you with every kind of delicate messages. They’re good issues to watch and doc as a result of you possibly can learn a lot into it.”

As an illustration, one of the vital ubiquitous sights in Bengaluru’s visible panorama continues to be the visage of Kannada actor Dr. Rajkumar, who “grew to become the face of the Gokak motion, which was an agitation to put in Kannada as an official language. Due to that, he grew to become related to Kannada tradition and language in an enormous means,” he says. “He by no means did another language film in any respect. In order that grew to become an extension of his persona.”

In the same vein, a photograph of a red-and-yellow Kannada flag propped on a big wall with a equally colored background on that are painted Kannada movie heroes “is an assertion of Kannada identification in a public house” as are the numerous photos of the Chalukyan emperor, Pulikeshi and freedom-fighter Sangolli Rayanna which have cropped up within the metropolis in the previous couple of years. Many of those visuals are additionally getting used to speak dominance.

“In my space now, the Congress MLA has gained the seat. So the BJP MLA can not put up his banner anyplace, all over the place. He’s confined to his space,” explains Kashi. “So, it’s a means of marking the territory,” he says.

Placement issues

Placement is one other means of speaking significance. Mahatma Gandhi’s picture, for instance, will invariably have him within the centre, surrounded by different freedom fighters. “You’ll by no means put Gandhi on the sting and another person within the centre. Who stands within the centre reveals the facility influences in that group.” Kashi additionally discusses the importance of using particular colors, the places through which these banners are positioned, and the way gender performs out in these banners and posters.

“More often than not, girls are positioned on the backside,” he says. However, if events try to get extra girls voters, the position could change. “The girl candidate could possibly be within the centre, with males defending her,” he says. “This displays how a lot illustration we’ve got within the political enviornment for ladies candidates.”

Personalising automobiles

Kashi additionally highlights the phenomenon of individuals making an attempt to personalise their automobiles with photos akin to these of tigers, lions or Rudra Hanuman, “additional asserting masculinity” and town’s statue tradition.

“Final yr, with two of my colleagues, Salila Vanka and Madhuri Rao, each architects, we documented greater than 800 statues within the metropolis,” he says, recounting among the knowledge garnered from this train. “Out of the massive quantity, there have been solely 11 statues of ladies… round 100 or so have been Ambedkar statues… about 200 statues of Rajkumar,” says Kashi, who thinks of this work not as political however as “bearing witness to my time.”

“It is a undertaking of ardour. Panels and posters are very ephemeral. By documenting them, you might be constructing an archive,” says Kashi.