Paper short abstract

Reflecting on the status of chaos and civilization in the cultivation of creativity among contemporary artists in Chennai, India, I explore the ways these ideas are expressed through the establishment of the Cholamandal Artists’ Village, located on the outskirts of the city.

Paper long abstract

Reflecting on the status of chaos and civilization in the articulation of creativity among contemporary artists in Chennai, India, I explore the ways these ideas are expressed through the establishment of the Cholamandal Artists' Village, located on the outskirts of the city. In particular, following Scott (2005), I consider how the Village operates at several levels of cosmological (or ontological) action. As a co-operative endeavour, the Village can be seen as an attempt to create artistic identity and economic security in the difference-producing, clamorous, and chaotic conditions of postcolonial India. This is an image of chaos that is full and in which creativity entails difference. However, the Village can also be understood as articulating a particularly Tamil vision of chaos as empty, uncivilized land, the cultivation of which through practices of work ('artistic creation') involves the flow of substances between land and people. I discuss how these complementary notions of chaos and creativity reveal the contradictions and tensions of artistic personhood and place in South India today.