D Anup Singh therefore my sense of being out, my sense of dislike, my sense of reacting against that kind of space-building, but at the same time I have to have one foot inside, maybe even half of my head, otherwise it's going to be impossible. Kumkum Sangari: I think that in the question being raised here, of the realization of the individual as an artist really through a notion of tradition, means several different battles being fought. On the one hand, they concern the dehistoricizing of the image 31 and the need to restore it to history, and the restorative is seen as something that belongs to the realm of myth and the unconscious. Really here the idea of tradition is of something that is obsessive and compulsive, while Geeta would emphasize another realm, of conscious choice and selection. This seems to be a much more complicated matter—because the relationship between these three things itself, myth, unconscious aspects of traditions like images of myth, and history, will themselves only be revealed by an awareness of the several histories of these terms in the past... SK: I am interested in the difficulties many of us have had with the sense which has come out of the paper that's been presented. Pardon me if my response goes into a totally wrong direction, but it seems to me that the question which you are asking is a question which arises out of pure artistic practice, and what it gestures towards is a direction where the answers will not be given through art. You are giving answers which only an artist can give; you are ironical when you say that you have a foot inside and perhaps your head inside too. One feeling I have is that you are essentially complaining against film not having an aesthetic of its own, not having a philosophy of its own, which is of course a major aspect of the development of the self-consciousness of the particular form of art. The reason why you don't have that is that you are still too close to the beginning, in a sense. As the art moves forward, in time, the tendency to have to negate your relationship with your practice comes out less. The philosophy of film you are using is not a philosophy of film as such, but part literature and part music and other forms, which doesn't satisfy your need. You're asking for a philosophy that can function in a much more unitary way, and it seems to me that there are three things, three ways in which you can negate your relationship with the history of film which you find suffocating: one is the ironical relationship with practice itself, the other is simple history, but the third thing is a philosophic mediation through history. AS: First, the idea that there is a philosophy of cinema that is not obtainable to us is not that correct. Secondly, that we have to refer to other philosophies is correct but that is actually our concern. Finally, when you speak about an ironical relationship with one's practice, I would turn that a little, thinking of what Anuradha said yesterday about the stage curtain to focus as well as to de-centre. And I was thinking that if the focus of the person who sees is decentred, it is not just the image that is de-centred, it is even the Numbers 20-21