I Don’t Know Who Needs to Hear This, But:

A year has gone by since Vidha and I started the work for NO NIIN. When we got the grant from Kone, I made a bunch of deals with myself:

-This time, I’m not going to overwork myself to death.

-This time, I’m not going to try and prove how worthy I am or our project is to any individual or institution.

-This time, I’m not going to allow anyone to prioritise work over my well-being.

-This time, I’m not going to prioritise work over anyone’s well-being.

-This time, I’m not going to jump into a collaborative project without doing the groundwork.

The list goes on. Vidha and I decided to make a point of these promises by making them visible in our magazine, in the way we work together and with others, and in the way we introduce NO NIIN in different settings. A few days ago, we had a session with MFA KuVA students to talk about how we have managed to set up the magazine. After the talk, Vidha said, “Having these talks now feels like making omelettes.” We don’t need to rehearse or prepare; we know what we’re doing. Well, for the most part, at least.

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How qualified are we to do this job anyway? Throughout this year, we have been asked to give exact measurements of our prior experience in publishing, either directly or via sugar-coated comments that didn’t bother to be sweet enough to hide their unnecessary aggression. I do appreciate ‘professionality’, but I wouldn’t go so far as to carve it as a headstone and hold it over mine or anyone else’s heads. What I love about our work in NO NIIN is that we’ve made a solid effort to value learning over proficiency. I’d like to think that in this field, genuine interest and curiosity-especially when it stems from a place of love, trump the vague idea of ‘skill’. We worked with many contributors who had never done interviews, had never written essays or reviews, and the results were more often than not fascinating. I am so grateful to those contributors who accompanied us in stepping out of our comfort zone by accepting to carry out our commissions despite not feeling fully qualified for them. If there is any magic in NO NIIN-which I’d like to think there is-it is thanks to them.

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So, what other projects are we working on apart from NO NIIN? Another question we constantly get that makes me spiral down in anxiety. Co-editing a monthly magazine is a full-time job. Is that not enough? What else should I do to prove my artistic flair to you? Well, nothing, because as mentioned above, I’ve made myself a promise that I don’t owe shit to anyone, and honouring that promise is worth more than a handful of projects that I’d take on as evidence of my hyper-productivity. One might say this is the Kone grant privilege speaking. To those people, I’d respond, “Yes, I have a two-year grant, which means I have a temporary residence permit that will end the minute my grant ends, and if I can’t find another grant or at least a part-time salaried position, I will have to pack up my bags and leave the country. So shut it, and go check your own damn privilege and leave me alone with mine.” I see I just proved Vidha’s observation that “the third point of conversation in a setting where there is an immigrant is always the ‘residence permit’.” I try not to think about these things as I can’t bear the idea of allowing Migri to rule over my life decisions.

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Last year, Globe Art Point held this amazing online dialogue session, 'Reclaiming Boundaries: Dialogue On Harassment And Inappropriate Behaviour In The Finnish Arts & Culture Field’ in their info sheet was a list of behaviour that constitutes harassment and inappropriate behaviour. In my previous working relationship, I had been subjected to most of the items on that list.

In NO NIIN, I found a friend and colleague, Vidha Saumya, who helped me recover from all that. Something I cherish in our friendship and work is that Vidha never shies away from giving me credit for my good ideas, and she never takes note of my bad ones. She has never held any of them against me or even mentioned them in passing. If you were in a position where the opposite of that happened to you, then you’d know how much these gestures mean.

Taking on an artistic project in which you inevitably have to work with and communicate with many people, each from a different background, is an extremely taxing task. Add to that the fact that the outcome of your work is publically available and free for all to see anytime they wish, which automatically makes you vulnerable to different sorts of scrutiny. Some come to you with what we like to call their ‘griefcases’, which is a combination of accusations, unsolicited trauma dumpings, and worse of all, expectations of who you should be and what role you should play. And god forbid you say no, which we have, repeatedly, I think partly because, as brown women in their 30s, we know when we are being bullied.

When the year (2021) began, Vidha and I made plans every month to visit exhibitions and events, read, research, and discuss ideas, but the deeper we got into the work, the less regularly we had time for any of this. As creative people, we often like to forget the administrative part of the job: attending to contracts, making payments, board meetings, and emails, emails, emails. It’s not an overestimation to say that at least half of our time is spent on attending to these things. The remaining time goes to making commissions, reviewing Open Call submissions, meeting with contributors, editing texts, and, of course, checking up on what’s happening in the art scene in Finland and occasionally elsewhere in the world.

In the midst of all these, Vidha and I have always made a point of finding time for what I’d like to call ‘play’, which usually consists of Bollywood talk. I have to confess, in my early 20s, I was a horrible snob, one of those that would judge you relentlessly if I caught you enjoying Britney or any other product of the ‘mainstream’. I have an auntie whom I’m pretty sure I’ve traumatised by my constant eye rolls every time she mentioned how much she adores Shah Rukh Khan. Well, auntie, the joke’s on me; I’ve joined the club, and so has Vidha. It’s never too late to fall for Shah Rukh Khan. In him, we’ve found an abundance of charm, playfulness, humour, vulnerability and love. On November 2nd, Vidha and I gathered in my apartment to celebrate his birthday. We drank wine and ate carrot cake, and Vidha got me to wear a saree for the first time, which made me feel like a queen. If this doesn’t help you partly recover from Kiasma’s response to the question of roles and responsibilities, then I don’t know what will.

During this NO NIIN year, we’ve had a few difficult challenges alongside moments of immense joy. The fact that our collaboration has survived those challenges is a testimony that NO NIIN may come and go, but this friendship is here to stay.