Art, Power, and the Politics of Failure
In a riveting and reflective closing address, musician and activist T.M. Krishna challenges the very foundation of how we define success and failure especially in the world of art. He begins by questioning the boxed-in idea of “classical” music and how social hierarchies have shaped art through caste, class, and gender over centuries. Drawing from his own journey in Carnatic music, Krishna reflects on how his early success as a performer masked his complicity in perpetuating exclusivity. Art, he argues, should never feel too comfortable because comfort often comes from privilege and exclusion.
He delves into the complex entanglement of aesthetics, identity, and history, using examples like Bharatanatyam’s appropriation, and his own experimental work such as Peromboke, a classical song set in an environmentally devastated space. He raises difficult questions: When does art succeed? When it is celebrated or when it provokes? Can a song be successful even if the conversation it sparked fades within six months? For Krishna, art must serve as an intervention, an opening into the hard, uncomfortable truths we’d rather avoid.
Krishna refuses to tie things up neatly. He admits he doesn’t have the answers. Instead, he invites us to dwell in ambiguity. Can artists be catalysts without taking responsibility for what comes next? Can beauty exist without confronting ugliness? Until we reckon with the failures of social and cultural conversation, he warns, our economic and civic interventions will remain surface-level. This powerful talk isn’t just about art, it’s a call to reexamine where we locate failure, and what we are truly willing to change.
