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Of great importance is the monetary value that one decides upon for one’s work. Often we are blinded by our privilege in accepting low paying projects. While the project itself generates great value - monetarily or in creating presence for the client, it seldom meaningfully adds to anything more than spare change in our pockets.


We might be tempted to do these projects for the prestige they bring, a passion that aligns to ours or worst of all, speculated future work. As our real world needs are taken care off by a stability that we have worked over for years (or simply have been handed down in inheritance) we might think it harmless to pick up a no profit no loss gig.


But for this action that we mindlessly do, there is a very real cost. The cost is not paid by us but by the people belonging to the lower social and economic stratas of our field. The ones who are talented but constantly exploited and underpaid because of our actions. The ones who can more than serve the value requirement of the client but are forced to accept lower and lower fees as we childishly mess around with the value - demand - cost trinity of the economics of our fields.


By accepting such projects, we use our privilege foolishly to add gallons of value into an already large pool and throttle the meagre flow of the one’s dying of thirst. We shove them out of our fields before they can blossom and then wonder why there is a dearth of talent in our community.

There‘s a lot of hoopla around the insider and the outsider in the world of art. For a field that is obsessed by critical thinking, it is rather strange that one should be judged by the geography that one is born in.


One’s cultural belonging is not necessarily exclusive to the person, privileged (or doomed), to have geographically been situated in a particular part of the world at the time of exiting the womb. It is just one of the many heuristics that we fall prey to on a daily basis. Simple minds need simple answers that are quick and do not tax the limited brain calories.


Culture affects differently on different people, like its biological definition, it transforms some mediums more effectively than others. Its impact on a person might occur because one is born in a particular environment but not necessarily, or limited to.

“A genius is the man who can do the average thing when everyone else around him is losing his mind.” - Napoleon

It just struck me the other day that the word ‘extraordinary’ is in fact made up of ’extra’ and ‘ordinary’. The person who is ‘extraordinary’ or ‘the genius’ as Napoleon puts it, is a person excessively grounded in the ordinary.


A grounding that roots him. The persistence of an unwavering mind, constantly progressing in the thing that it believes to be pursued, is capable of taking something ordinary to special heights.


Its not easy though, self-belief intertwined with self-love and patience are not abundant commodities in this day and age. Thats what makes it special

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Images and Text © Rohit Karandadi unless stated otherwise.

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