What Bengaluru’s flex banners say about who we are

Ravikumar Kashi says that his interest in flex banners began around 2007 when he began photographing them for a series of his artworks and to use as material for an art appreciation course he teaches at the RV College of Architecture, Bengaluru.

“For the course, I introduce them to the fundamentals of art language,” he explains, pointing out that things like size, scale, proportion, shape, position, association, framing, and proximity play a significant role in our perception of any image, whether a flex board or an art object. “I was using these images as part of a classroom exercise to show how the visual language we were discussing in class could also be seen on the street,” says Kashi, who recently delivered a talk titled Bangalore/ Bengaluru Changes at the Alliance Literary Festival, Bengaluru.

Kashi started this photography journey using a digital camera that he would lug around with him. “If I see something, I take a picture and document it,” he says. “It was all in one big folder. Nowadays, I have started putting it in different sub-folders, but it is still not properly segregated. ” He admits that back when he started, “it wasn’t very planned. I had no clear idea why I was doing it, but I knew in my gut that these are important because I have studied the history of visual culture a little.”

Kashi has shot between 7000-8000 images of flex banners so far, and intends to keep doing so.
| Photo Credit:
Ravikumar Kashi

A few years down the line, however, the project’s raison d’être became much more evident. “All I am doing now is collecting, but as I do so, more and more, I realise the value of it,” says Kashi, who has shot between 7000-8000 images so far and intends to keep doing so. He thinks of this exercise as living documentation of sorts. “Flex banners, which usually vanish in a few days, are something in flux. Unless you document it day in and day out, it is not going to be there,” says Kashi, who went on to publish Flexing Muscles (2019), a bilingual series of essays linking these banners to the city’s constantly evolving socio-cultural and political landscapes.

In the first essay of Flexing Muscles, Kashi talks about how senes, “armies to safeguard Kannada land, language and culture” using flex banners to communicate their power and position.
| Photo Credit:
Ravikumar Kashi

Asserting identities

Flex banners, and by that same logic, posters, cutouts, statues, and vehicle images, have become a way to assert various identities, believes Kashi. “People are continuously communicating who they are and what they want, and then, because they can’t find a voice in other ways, they use this medium of public visual culture to say something.”

In the first essay of Flexing Muscles, Kashi talks about how senes, “armies to safeguard Kannada land, language and culture” using flex banners to communicate their power and position. “It becomes a tool through which they announce and represent themselves,” he says, tracing the evolution of linguistic identity politics in the city.

There is a stark difference between what Bengaluru is today, “with its high-rise buildings, congested roads and saturated visual stimuli,” and what it used to be: a laid-back pensioners paradise with excellent weather. But soon, the IT revolution started in the city, with Texas Instruments being the first to set up shop back in the mid-1980s.

While the changing weather and the traffic were the most apparent manifestations of the city’s transformation, writes Kashi, the cultural demographic and languages used in the city also underwent a tremendous change. “The non-Kannada speaking population living in Bangalore increased sharply, leaving Kannadigas feeling marginalised in their own land,” he writes, adding that this, in turn, led to the rise of pro-Kannada groups that were trying to find ways to remedy the situation.

One of the most ubiquitous sights in Bengaluru’s visual landscape continues to be the visage of Kannada actor Dr. Rajkumar, who “became the face of the Gokak movement, which was an agitation to install Kannada as an official language. Because of that, he became associated with Kannada culture and language in a big way, says Kashi.
| Photo Credit:
Ravikumar Kashi

Subtle messages

At the recent talk, Kashi shared samples of some of these images, shot over the last 15 years, and expanded on their meanings. “These things give you all kinds of subtle messages. They are nice things to observe and document because you can read so much into it.”

For instance, one of the most ubiquitous sights in Bengaluru’s visual landscape continues to be the visage of Kannada actor Dr. Rajkumar, who “became the face of the Gokak movement, which was an agitation to install Kannada as an official language. Because of that, he became associated with Kannada culture and language in a big way,” he says. “He never did any other language movie at all. So that became an extension of his personality.”

In a similar vein, a photo of a red-and-yellow Kannada flag propped on a large wall with a similarly coloured background on which are painted Kannada film heroes “is an assertion of Kannada identity in a public space” as are the many images of the Chalukyan emperor, Pulikeshi and freedom-fighter Sangolli Rayanna that have cropped up in the city in the last few years. Many of these visuals are also being used to communicate dominance.

“In my area now, the Congress MLA has won the seat. So the BJP MLA cannot put up his banner anywhere, everywhere. He is confined to his area,” explains Kashi. “So, it is a way of marking the territory,” he says.

One of the flex banners found on Bengaluru streets.
| Photo Credit:
Ravikumar Kashi

Placement matters

Placement is another way of communicating importance. Mahatma Gandhi’s image, for example, will invariably have him in the centre, surrounded by other freedom fighters. “You will never put Gandhi on the edge and someone else in the centre. Who stands in the centre shows the power influences in that group.” Kashi also discusses the significance of the use of specific colours, the locations in which these banners are placed, and how gender plays out in these banners and posters.

“Most of the time, women are placed at the bottom,” he says. But, if parties are trying to get more women voters, the placement may change. “The lady candidate could be in the centre, with men protecting her,” he says. “This reflects how much representation we have in the political arena for women candidates.”

Personalising vehicles

Kashi also highlights the phenomenon of people trying to personalise their vehicles with images such as those of tigers, lions or Rudra Hanuman, “further asserting masculinity” and the city’s statue culture.

“Last year, with two of my colleagues, Salila Vanka and Madhuri Rao, both architects, we documented more than 800 statues in the city,” he says, recounting some of the data garnered from this exercise. “Out of the huge number, there were only 11 statues of women… around 100 or so were Ambedkar statues… about 200 statues of Rajkumar,” says Kashi, who thinks of this work not as political but as “bearing witness to my time.”

“This is a project of passion. Panels and posters are very ephemeral. By documenting them, you are building an archive,” says Kashi. Get the latest information delivered straight to you from https://du88.com/, follow our website