Art can't find solutions, but it sure can dare to ask difficult questions & raise vexatious issues

HE PACKAGES ARE mounting. They are everywhere. We see the atrium of an electronics market in Shanghai, where ordered goods are being boxed, taped and prepared for dispatch. We see nothing but the parcels, hear nothing but the sound of tape unrolling and tearing. It's as if a concert is being performed by the workers, where the sounds blend into an orchestra. This is the Opera of Trade and Commerce, on display at the ongoing ninth edition of Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa. And, while Swiss artists Marianne Halter and Mario Marchisella capture a Chinese establishment, it is true of the world as well, particularly India, where the list of goods delivered in ten minutes grows longer by the day.

- IVINDER GILL

We are a consumerist society, and the billions of packages piling up at airports and dispatch centers daily, waiting to be delivered, can't be reminder enough. Damian Christinger, curator of Ghosts in Machines, of which Opera is a part, says: "We just see our packages. We don't see the delivery person. Do you even know the name of the person who delivered a package last to you? I hear in Delhi you can order anything in, what, 10 minutes? This, by the way, is not true of Europe, yet."

Exploitative labor practices are nothing new. Sonia Mehra Chawla, in her work Paat (Jute), builds a narrative of colonial capitalism and legacies using Bengal's jute industry as a trope, sketching the working and labor class since the colonial era to contemporary times. "A man standing in a jute factory, masked, depicts the facelessness of the labor," says Christinger.