MONDAY, APRIL 29, 2024
Vivek Menezes
This is my long-overdue tribute to an intriguing senior citizen, known only by the cryptic Internet moniker of JoeGoaUk. Over many years, this intrepid anonymous correspondent has shared tens of thousands of photographs, along with hundreds of hours of video, in an invaluable online contribution spanning many different genres: citizen journalism, cultural documentation, political commentary, Konkani Mog, locavore connoisseurship, train spotting enthusiasm, and much more besides.
Who is Joe? It doesn’t matter. What’s really important is his work: an exhaustive archive of our times, that is continually being augmented in almost-real-time. This is shoe leather journalism at its best, in crucial areas of collective interest: urban infrastructure, essential commodity prices, all aspects of public transport, and the ins-and-outs of bureaucratic procedure. Make no mistake about this “news you can use” from one marvellous man of mystery: he provides better coverage of his interests than all of the legacy media combined.
“There are limitations on how much of the “story” a camera can tell,” says veteran journalist, Frederick Noronha. “Yet, JoeGoaUk does a fascinating job of reporting on the grassroots, and informing us about culture (especially tiatrs, for which he has earned some ingratitude). It shows what is possible if the average citizen is empowered to speak out and report. JoeGoaUk’s is an extreme case though. I can’t imagine how many could sustain it for so long, on such a range of topics and places, without getting paid a rupee.”
Noronha says “for work to gain a longer lease of life, I would suggest the adoption of Creative Commons licenses, by all those willing. It would be great if JoeGoaUk could share his work, say, on Wikipedia or spaces like archive.org (a free global archive). Such attempts might just outlast us all, who knows? People often believe they could lose earnings by sharing their creative work; In most of their cases, they neither earn their millions, nor do others get to share it. Of course, credit for all such work should be scrupulously given; it’s most irritating when people just lift it and reuse, as if they have some right to it!”
Joe’s archive has already proven its value for any number of purposes. Valmiki Naik of the Aam Admi Party (he is on its national council) gave me one example: “I am fighting a legal battle against the atrocious Captain of Ports terminal building coming up inside the waters of the Mandovi. The state was insisting that this is just a reconstruction, but. I knew it was not the case. The proof was found in Joe’s fantastic archive – he had documented the old terminal from many different angles. Using those photos, supplemented with drone images, I was able to prove that this was no reconstruction at all, but something entirely new being imposed within the river waters and not on land!”
Naik says he believes “Joe simply loves Panjim – and Goa – so much that he wants to document everything about it: good, bad, ugly. It gives me comfort that he cares so much. However, we as citizens need to do more to use this treasure trove of information, to save what we are rapidly losing. That’s the beauty of his work – selfless and unglamorous, but an expression of true love. He is, in a way, the Banksy of Goa, creating his own version of art in the form of photojournalism and online activism.”
It’s an apt comparison, which has also been on my mind, because Joe is an unironic, unapologetically no-frills photographer - the opposite of Instagram-friendly - but aspects of his work unquestionably cross over to the realm of galleries and museums. His extraordinary Fish Curry Rice series in particular (available in different Flickr locations) is absolutely biennale-worthy. Image after image after image of annotated fish thalis, and various other accompaniments, from an infinite variety of local “joints”. You start off intrigued, and then – after all we’re Goan - taste buds get triggered with a bit of FOMO. Strong feelings arise: childhood, your granny, the environment, questions of sustainability. This cumulative effect is one of the greatest contemporary artworks about Goan identity.
“Thank you so much for introducing me to the work of JoeGoaUK - it is delightful” wrote back the brilliant critic, curator and cultural theorist Ranjit Hoskote, after I emailed a link to Joe’s photos earlier this week, accompanied by the basic query: “Is it art?” My friend responded, “Yes indeed this is art. In our present epoch, creative expression has necessarily distributed itself across a variety of media and platforms - and the work of JoeGoaUk is consonant with this tendency. In his images, I see an interplay between the ephemeral and the archival - a series of meals, for instance, which builds into a large portrait of appetite, culinary culture, shifts in cuisine, what is constant and what is experimental, and yet also, apart from this archival presence, this suite of work stands as a robust, organic element of everyday culture, a guide to specialities and eateries.”
Hoskote reminded me that “anonymity, camouflage, masking have all been integral to art practices after the 1960s - think, for instance, of the Guerrilla Girls or Banksy, in each case modelling such interventionist practices on paramilitary insurgent protocols. In the classical art world, anonymity tended to be part of a larger existential paradigm in which creativity was a gift of the Divine and therefore not necessarily to be signed with a finite human authorship. But even here, we know from the mason marks in ancient and medieval Indian temple architecture, that the human will to assert its presence and agency will always find a way to do so, despite the prevailing custom.” He said “I would situate JoeGoaUk’s Fish Curry Rice series along a spectrum of iterative art practices, ranging from On Kawara’s high-conceptualist everyday practice of painting the date in severe bichrome on the one hand, to numerous practices that enshrine the additive everydayness of meals, walks, phases of rest, each with its own rhythmic interplay of routine and surprise.”
I asked Hoskote if it was possible to conceive of 21st century Indian art in ways that include Joe’s work, and was absolutely delighted with this response: “Yes, indeed. Art cannot proceed from closed and self-confirmatory definitions at any time - what makes art significant, relevant and dynamic is precisely an openness to experimental forms, a curiosity about new and even radical ways in which the creative imagination responds to experience. The challenge is to frame and develop exhibitionary formats - physical, online, hybrid - that can bear adequate witness to such practices. Goa should celebrate JoeGoaUk.”
