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M.T. Karthik

~ performances, works, writings from 1977 – 2017

M.T. Karthik

Tag Archives: thyagarajan

Hola, Hello, Bonjour et Bienvenue

31 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by mtk in Final Post

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Tags

archive, artist, author, ffptp, Karthik, m.t., m.t. karthik, madras, mtk, mtkarthik, thyagarajan

I’m artist and author M.T. Karthik, known as Karthik or MTK.

This is an archive of some things I wrote and did until I was 50; more current MTK can be found during baseball season on my SF Giants blog, Giants Baseball Corner, and there’s stuff up to 2021 on my Youtube chan:

Here on this blog, you’ll find original writing, images and documentation of things I made and performances I gave until the age of 50. As I find and uncover things I dropped along the way and recollect them, I add to it over the years.

I wrote everything on this site – the poetry, essays, fiction and reviews – and shot or produced all the video and photographs (all the images in the headers above) and have occupied the node mtkarthik dot org and removed advertising so you can peruse free of distractions.

In the four decades covered here, I circled the world several times, living for years mostly in California – the San Francisco Bay Area,  Los Angeles – but also in New York City, New Orleans, Austin, San Antonio, Japan, India and Taiwan.

I have not landed. I don’t own property. I am mostly of nowhere and homeless; mostly unknown in both my birth nation and the nation to which I’m naturalized as a citizen. I’m most like ash on the wind or a stone skipping across a lake that studies the taxonomy of species around it.

Love,

M.T. Karthik

Oakland, 2012 and San Antonio, 2017

The Judge Who Holds the President-Elect in the Balance, 2000

13 Monday Nov 2000

Posted by mtk in clips, elections, journalism, NYC, press clips, social media

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13, appointed, Bush, Donald, election, Election2000, Florida, George, Gore, judge, Karthik, magazine, Middlebrooks, mtk, november, recount, State, stopped, thyagarajan, vote

Where They Stand, The Source Magazine, 2000

01 Tuesday Aug 2000

Posted by mtk in clips, journalism, NYC, press clips, protest

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2000, 3, acoli, angola, aug, Karthik, leonard, magazine, mtk, mutulu, peltier, shakur, source, stand, sundiata, the source, three, thyagarajan, where

The Source had a circulation of 450,000+ at the time, so maybe a half a million people saw this piece – my widest reach at the time.

MTK, age 33 in NYC.

The Voting Chamber, installation, 2000

01 Wednesday Mar 2000

Posted by mtk in Austin, collage, elections, installations, journalism, MTKinstalls, protest

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1st, 2000, austin, Barnes, Bush, canvas, chamber.movements, currency, death, gallery, George, John, Karthik, killed, logo, m.t., March, McCain, mtk, No, Odell, painting, party, Penalty, primaries, Primary, real, Republican, rights, State, super, texas, the, thyagarajan, timeline, Tuesday, voter, voting, W., wrongly

The Voting Chamber was an art installation at Movements Gallery in Austin, TX, six blocks from Governor George Bush’s Mansion, and the exhibition was open during the Super Tuesday Presidential Primaries of Election 2000 and the South x Southwest (SXSW) Arts and Music Festival of that year.

COMPONENTS:
No Real Choice [2000], 5’ x 3’8”, acrylic, currency on canvas
The Voting Chamber (metal rods, fabric curtain, tabletop, audio component
Civic Dimension (acrylic on stairwell walls; chalk on pavement
Internet Component, including data from State Website and Death Penalty Opponents

I flew into Austin from Brooklyn and immediately went to a local chapter meeting of an anti-death penalty group and introduced myself publicly as an artist planning to do an installation at Movements Gallery on 6th Street:

installed for about ten days:

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

OPENING RECEPTION: FEBRUARY 22, 2000
GEORGE WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY
6-8 P.M.
MOVEMENTS GALLERY
SIXTH STREET
AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA

“THE VOTING CHAMBER”

FEBRUARY 22-APRIL 22, 2000

A MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATION IN PROXIMITY TO THE TEXAS GOVERNOR’S MANSION

THE STATE OF TEXAS EXECUTES MORE PEOPLE THAN ANY OTHER JURISDICTION IN THE WESTERN WORLD. THE CURRENT GOVERNOR OF TEXAS (1994-2000) HAS OVERSEEN THE EXECUTION OF MORE PEOPLE THAN ALL FIVE PREVIOUS GOVERNORS TAKEN TOGETHER. HE IS CURRENTLY RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND EXECUTING AT LEAST 18 MORE PEOPLE.

ACCORDING TO A TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY STUDY, MOST TEXANS FAVOR ALTERNATIVES TO THE DEATH PENALTY OR ARE UNDECIDED:

47.5%    FAVOR LIFE SENTENCE
39.5%    FAVOR EXECUTIONS
13%     ARE UNSURE

Source: http://www.lonestar.texas.net/~acohen/tcadp

“THE VOTING CHAMBER” HAS BEEN DESIGNED BY NEW YORK-BASED FORMER TEXAS RESIDENT AND UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS GRADUATE M.T. KARTHIK, TO PROVIDE A PLACE TO REHEARSE FOR THE UPCOMING PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES AND ELECTIONS.

The State posts the Execution Schedule online

Texas State Execution Schedule: 23 Feb – 27 APR 2000

23 FEB 2000 Cornelius Goss, born May 25, 1961
24 FEB 2000 Betty Beets, born March 12, 1937
01 MAR 2000 Odell Barnes,Jr., born, March 22, 1968
15 MAR 2000 Timothy Gribble born, August 27, 1963
22 MAR 2000 Dennis Bagwell born, December 27, 1963
12 APR 2000 Orien Joiner, born, October 27, 1949
18 APR 2000 Victor Saldano, born October 22, 1971
26 APR 2000 Robert Carter, born March 7, 1966
27 APR 2000 Robert Neville, born October 5, 1974
27 APR 2000 Ricky McGinn, born March 11, 1957

Source:  http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/statistics/stats-home.htm

OUTLINE FOR INSTALLATION

COMPONENTS:
“No Real Choice 2000” (5’ x 3’8”, acrylic, water, American currency on canvas)

“The Voting Chamber” (metal rods, fabric curtain, tabletop, agit-propaganda, and audio component)


“Civic Dimension” (acrylic on stairwell walls and sheetrock; chalk on pavement)
4.  “Internet Component”

THE INSTALLATION:

“No Real Choice 2000” was installed on the wall opposite top of the stairs to Gallery space. The 33’ wall was painted sympathetic to currently existing artwork in gallery while extending the theme of the canvas, including:

“The Voting Chamber,” a simulated voting booth: U-shaped curtain rod with a red curtain. This curtain is to be drawn around individual viewers to simulate a voting booth and allow a private viewing space of the canvas and of specific propaganda material. A looped, repeating audio component of the attorney of one of those on Death Row was played next to an empty chair.

The stairwell from the street to the Gallery floor and the sidewalks from the Governor’s Mansion to the gallery door (as practicable) were marked to point to the booth and to present statistics (see Statistics that follow) regarding the death penalty in Texas.

The Internet component contained elements: from http://www.georgewbush.com, the “Calendar of Events” describing the Governor’s current itinerary, and from http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us, the “Calendar of Executions.” and etc

CONCLUSION, 2008

It’s taken me more than eight years to write anything of what happened in Austin in the Spring of 2000. I installed The Voting Chamber and came to find out that Odell Barnes, Jr., was scheduled to die though likely innocent of the murder of which he was convicted.

The installation included an empty chair with the name “Mr. Bush” taped to the back, sitting beside a cassette player that continuously played a ten-minute audio loop of Mr. Barnes’ lawyer explaining that he needed more time to present the strong evidence of a frame-up he had discovered in Odell’s case.

The installation inspired a march of hundreds in Austin who chanted as they marched around the Governor’s Mansion against the Death Penalty:

This all occurred during the Super Tuesday Presidential Primaries as George W. Bush, the Governor of Texas, fought Arizona Senator John McCain for the Republican nomination, Spring 2000. The installation was up during the SXSW music festival, and the venue was a site for the Austin festival so thousands saw it.

George W. Bush and The State of Texas murdered the innocent 22-year-old, Odell Barnes, Jr. on March 1st of the year 2000. The message was clear as Bush ran for President on an active record of becoming the single individual Governing the execution of more people in U.S. history.

Odell Barnes, Jr.s’ last meal request was for “justice, equality and world peace,”

and his last words were:

“I thank you for proving my innocence although it has not been acknowledged in the courts. May you continue in the struggle and may you change all that’s been done here today and in the past.”

Nine months later, George W. Bush was appointed President of the United States by the Supreme Court – contravening democracy at the most basic level –  thanks to massive problems with vote counting and issues of voter suppression in the State of Florida, where Bush’s own brother, Jeb, was Governor.

The canvas “No Real Choice 2000,” finished two months before the election, was startlingly prophetic.

Shanti, fiction, 1999

31 Friday Dec 1999

Posted by mtk in clips, fiction, NYC, press clips

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Tags

2000, Condé Nast, Conde, Inc., Jane, Karthik, magazine, mtk, Nast, Shanti, short, story, thyagarajan

amtkShantiJane2000001
bmtkShantiJane2000b001
cmtkShantiJane2000c002
dmtkJane2000002
emtkJane2000toc001

Condé Nast, Inc., featured my short story, Shanti, in the January/February 2000 issue of JANE magazine, which it had very recently purchased from Fairchild Publishing.

This was the very first issue of Jane as published by CN.

I can remember feeling thrilled because my check had the logo of The New Yorker prominently printed on it – as a design element! My one and only check from CN in the 1990’s.

I got paid on December 31, 1999 to be exact. Which means this may have been the last piece of fiction published by Condé Nast, Inc., in the 20th century – no idea if so, I just know the first thing I bought was a pair of long, camel-colored boots for my editor, and the second was rent in Brooklyn.

I was paid what I asked for as a freelance writer with the intention of setting a rate: $1 a word.

Shanti is a chapter in my first novel, Mood [1997]

Letter to Salman Rushdie

01 Monday Mar 1999

Posted by mtk in appeals, Letter From MTK, maturation, NYC, thoughts

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City, family, help, henry, Holt, Karthik, letter, m.t., new, NYC, request, rushdie, salman, story, thyagarajan, york

Salman Rushdie

Henry Holt and Company, Inc.

115 West 18th Street

New York, New York 10011

1 MAR 99

Sir:

I am an Indian-American man, 32 years old, unmarried, living in Brooklyn, New York. My father was among the first post-independence Indians to emigrate to the United States – in 1957 as a post-doctoral fellow in Organic Chemistry at Northwestern University.

He went back to India in 1959 and then worked to bring his family to the US in the years that followed. My mother, sisters and I immigrated from Madras to the US in 1969, four days before the first lunar landing.

My father struggled to bring us here only to have his family disintegrate in a bitter divorce. The story is still whispered among our society of Ayer Brahmins in Madras. The bitterness in our family has been taxing.

My father is an old man now and I’m his only son. I believe that telling our story will bring some peace to our broken lives and help other immigrant families who face similar difficulties. I seek help in this matter.

My eldest sister chose to return to India and lives in Madras. She married into a Punjabi family that had emigrated to our city from the North in the forties. My sister was, by the magic between two Indian newlyweds in the autumn of 1958 in Evanston, Illinois, born an American citizen.

She was taken back to India at two, brought back to the US at 12 and then returned to Madras at 15, back again at 20 and finally returned to India in 1982 to marry.

The repeated trans-continental travel at a young age reduced her emotionally and exacerbated the divide between my parents who had very different views on raising Indian children in the US.

Both my sisters and my mother are now estranged from my father. They have exchanged a handful of words in fifteen years. I am the only person who speaks to everyone, though I have not been back to India since 1991. There is a sadness among us all.

My father moved us to San Antonio, Texas in 1974. My second sister and I were raised Texan. She is now a converted Baptist living in Denver, Colorado. Three years ago she changed her name to Kate. She has assimilated to an American life.

I live in the New York metropolitan area among the largest population of Indians in the US, but I am lonesome and not close with the community here. With my eldest sister being in Madras and my parents divorced in Texas, we are a wholly divided family. Separated by geography and our anger.

My father was born in a hut with a dirt floor in South India with five sisters, while my mother was raised by a wealthier Madrasi family. Both families were orthodox Hindu Brahmins. The forebears in our patriarchy were strong-willed, powerful men. My fathers father was an idealist, a Gandhian who was jailed during the pre-Independence days when he marched the salt satyagraha. My mothers grandfather was a Congress member and a barrister, esteemed in Madras society circles. His sons were raised as anglophiles. My parents were a “love match” that went terribly wrong in the US. My sisters and I were raised in a chaotic and discontinuous way.

In 1981, the year I became an American citizen and you wrote “Midnight’s Children” there were perhaps 200,000 South Asians in the US. By 1989, when I graduated from University, there were more than 800,000. By 1995, when I finished Graduate School we numbered more than one million. My father was among the first 1,000 to arrive and I was among the first 40,000. That’s my generation.

Soon I will have to move back to Texas as my father is alone at 70 and will need care. I have come to New York to ask for help to write (and in many ways reconcile) the story of my family. I believe the telling will be a healing experience for us and a literary work of significance for other immigrants to the United States. I turn to you as a student seeking a teacher. Can you help me?

with utmost respect,

Karthik Thyagarajan

Brooklyn 718/ 383-9621

Rigo 95: More Marlboro Men Than Maos in China …, *surface,1995

15 Wednesday Nov 1995

Posted by mtk in clips, conceptual art, journalism, press clips, reviews, S.F.

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*surface, 1995, 95, architecture, art, fashion, Francisco, Karthik, m.t., magazine, mtk, mural, paint, Rigo, Rigo 95, San, thyagarajan, thyagarajian

This was a very disappointing edit and when it appeared, I was enraged. My name was spelled wrong – and it’s the third typo on the page!

The first is in the image where the images of his work are labelled, “(Rigo)” – which isn’t his name, and shows the overactive hand of the newly minted fashion magazine’s editors –

whose next immediate typo is in the HEADLINE – an extra apostrophe where it should be “Maos”. The piece is also edited considerably from what I submitted and the editors took liberties adding and removing text that changed the meaning of full paragraphs. But anyway here is how it ran:

I began a friendship and apprenticeship with Rigo after this November interview, in the year 1996, which lasted ten years.

Image

Arbor Day, 1977

29 Friday Apr 1977

Tags

antonio, arbor, day, elementary, festivities, hill, Karthik, locke, mtk, plant, San, texas, thyagarajan, tree

ArborDay04261974001

Posted by mtk | Filed under flora, performance, San Antonio, TX

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Arbor Day, 1977 – 2014 [feat. MTK]

29 Friday Apr 1977

Posted by mtk in features

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Tags

antone, antonio, arbor, day, elementary, hill, home, in, Karthik, Kartik, light, locke, Peggy, San, school, students, thyagarajan, Weyel

arborday04261974001

M.T. Karthik

This blog archives early work of M.T. Karthik, who took every photograph and shot all the video here unless otherwise credited.

Performances and installations are posted by date of execution.

Writing appears in whatever form it was originally or, as in the case of poems or journal entries, retyped faithfully from print.

all of it is © M.T. Karthik

a minute of rain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYLHNRS8ik4

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