[Reader-list] Is painting a currency note which can not be forged unless you act illegally?

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear Inder,

Thank you for posting a wonderful essay. I look forward to the second part.

I think this essay reflects a lot of issues, questions and dilemmas that I
am grappling for last four years regarding the not so clear notion of
identity.

The similarities of debate in the art world, regarding fake and the
original, seemingly creative solutions like  Ela Menon's to deposit her
thumbprint on her work, and the anxiety to identify the-one-as-the-one, are
not that dissimilar, it seems to the current neurosis of many a nation state
to introduce national identity cards.

It was interesting to note how the writer of this essay choose Rosset's
words to argue,  "The  real is not threatened by its double today it is
threatened by its very idiocy". I am curious what Rosset's take would be on
the crucial issue of national citizenship because essentially it is about
identifying the real from the fake.

To issue a national identity card, any state would have to act as a
collector of personal and financial information. Of collectors he states,
'collectors, for the part, invariably have something impoverished and
inhuman about  them'. Will he harbour the same opinoin for a nation state as
a collector too?

I wonder what prompted him to use such a strong language. As a reader one
does not really understand why he articulates the act of collection as
impoverished and inhuman.

If for a moment we leave the sensitive nature of politics around the
imagination of a nation state and talk purely in terms of politics around
the art world, I would be happy to know your views in so far as the debate
around the fake and original is concerned.

As the essay suggests, one of the reasons for the existence of this anxiety
seems to be money, the other seems to be ownership or maybe authorship.

As an artist and a practitioner of an art form, to what extent, you think
Inder, that one could formulate ideas about fake and original.

Warm regards

Taha