SINGH I don’t want to be a book on a bookshelf. I don’t want to be a print on your wall. I want my book on your desk, so that you will bump into it, rearrange it, physically engage with it. That tactile quality is very important to me. I’ve made wooden boxes with loose image cards in them—you can change the card every so often and see a new image every day over a month if you want. If you own two different boxes, you curate between them—and so on. Slowly, my archive builds in your home.

It is a privilege to be in the collection of major museums, but it is an equal, if not greater, privilege to have my artworks alive in your house. When I see a little box of mine in someone’s home, I feel that I’ve managed to activate the work, not let it get fossilized behind a frame and glass. I first realized this in 2000, when I had an exhibition in Saligao, in Goa, where I invited the people whom I’d photographed to literally peel the images from the wall and take them home, so that the exhibition lives on in different homes in the village where I live.

Photography allows for these kinds of personal connections, but the art world and the market get in the way. There are too many restrictions from photo festivals and galleries, as if photographers were not defined enough. I hope that people in the younger generation at least will start to think of different forms—not form for form’s sake, and not making books just to make books. It’s always good to ask why: Why is it a book? Why is it an exhibition? Why is it in a frame?

Manifesto for everyday Life:

by Lars Høie

1. Individual creativity is a dogma of contemporary softcapitalism, rather than the domain of non-conformist artists: fiction is everywhere.
2. Roland Barthes’ ‘Death of the Author’ revealed that authorship is a capitalist construct. It did not stop authorship; it only showed its hollowness.
3. If we had to ask for permission, we would not exist.
4. Art is a license to do things wrong. The rest of the world just tries to get it right. We aim to fail, to not know, to run fast and break things.
5. Start copying what you love. Copy, copy, copy. At the end of the copy, you will find yourself.
6. You can be copied but you can’t be imitated.
7. We must seek to explore new frontiers of creativity, for they are the last hope.
8. Ignore your inner voice. Seek instead to adopt voices and opinions that are not your own. This will make them your own.
9. If you do something wrong for long enough people will eventually think of it as right.
10. Innovate only as a last resort.
11. Choice is authorship! Legitimate authorship!
12. The moment you stand up in front of people, you are no longer authentic.
13. Acting is plagiarism.
14. My intention is simply to create work that contaminates history.
15. Anyone can do what I do, but they do not dare it. They are afraid of being called frauds, fakes, thieves.
16. Art is something that makes nothing happen.
17. Love art, hate the art world!
18. Every word I say is stupid and false. All in all, I am a pseudo.
19. If something is not false, do not trust it.
20. I want the freedom not to be great.