An affair with the archive
Duration: 00:03:58; Aspect Ratio: 1.778:1; Hue: 19.618; Saturation: 0.283; Lightness: 0.219; Volume: 0.102; Cuts per Minute: 10.066; Words per Minute: 34.980
Summary: This was a video made by Gaurav and me together in a workshop themed around Gender and Art, organized by reFrame Arts, Delhi. The work was an assemblage of my childhood polaroids interposed with Gaurav’s unfulfilled childhood desire of dancing Kathak adorned in a saree and ghungroo being played out and performed in the present. This work deals with the question of memory, queer childhood trauma and remembering as an act of reassembling. It was through the impetus of this work that we are developing an archival project called ‘queer childhoods’.
The ‘queer’ in queer childhoods functions both as an adjective as well as a verb. The broader aim of the project is to queer childhood in a manner that questions the hegemonic position of the hetero-normative conception of childhood. Instead of situating ‘queer’ as a marginal identity in relation to ‘normal’ childhood, the idea is to show queerness as being an inherent characteristic of childhood that gets marginalised and suppressed within the confines of the heteronormative home. This is to be done through creating an animated archive of childhood photographs of queer individuals along with their personal histories of the photograph as narrated in the present. Through utilising various audiovisual forms in a collaborative and participatory mode of recording with the participants, the idea is to open up the childhood narratives, memories, objects, and places as not just past sites of subjectivity-formation (whether positive or negative) but also as speculative spaces in which agency can be reclaimed. Below, I am putting three propositions that we have been thinking about:
1. Remembering as reassembling
While in their childhood, they were not allowed to dance kathak wearing a saree; Gaurav finds solace and affirmation of their queer identity in some childhood photographs where they are supposedly cross-dressing in a saree. Aware of the context of these photographs, they know that these pictures of them wearing a saree are not avowal of their queer identity by the family but rather an allowed transgressive play for the camera; It is a moment of play that defines the limits and the rupture of the hetero-patriarchal order with the fleeting temporality of photography. That is to say, their queerness is like a fleeting transcendence that they are allowed to perform only for and in the photograph and not beyond it. Yet it still gives Gaurav a way to move beyond childhood just as a site of trauma towards a generative space. They can reassemble their queer selfhood through such ruptures of photographs, they can reclaim some form of agency in childhood even if itt is through a retrospective gaze at the self. I wonder if we think of memory as fuzzy and remembering as a form of reassembling, then can we think of remembering not just what was but also what was not? How do we remember something that did not happen?
2. What images DO instead of what they represent?
One of our friends whose gender identity is transman talks about how in his childhood, he was made to pose and dress a certain way in photographs in order to portray traditional femininity. Therefore, his childhood photographs represent a feminine subjectivity but it is an imposed subjectivity mediated through family and photographs. Our interest is to move beyond the representative schema of the photograph that conceives it in a form of indexicality and truth-making towards interrogating how these mediations engender specific forms of subjectivities through their enunciatory and performatory potential i.e. what kind of subjectivities can be performed for the photograph and how is this performance mediated by family, culture, society, discourses as well as the medium? We are thinking of performance in the photographs but also performance of the photograph (specifically in queer lives).
3. Listening to the images that you cannot see
The same friend also talks about the kind of pictures he wanted of himself to be clicked but were not clicked, images that would affirm his subjectivity but are absent from his childhood in a material form yet existent in the imaginary of his childhood. Therefore, one wonders whether imbricated in the indexicality of the photograph are ghostly spectres of images that do not exist but are equally real (if not more). These are images that you cannot see, these are images that you can only listen to.
"Then came the affair"... this is a particularly devastating/ beautiful moment as it seems to contain a double move... partly by accident between the poem and your photo and voice. It converts idea and material remembering on its head.. into an event of some kind of anticipation, futures from the childs view, and also fear.
Excerpt from Hala Alyan's poem 'Spoiler' used in the video:
I imagine it like a beach.
There is a magnificent sand castle that has taken years to build.
A row of pink seashells for gables, rooms of pebble and driftwood.
This is your life.
Then comes the affair, nagging bloodwork, a freeway pileup.
The tide moves in.
The water eats your work like a drove of wild birds.
There is debris.
A tatter of sea grass and blood from where you scratched your own arm trying to fight the current.
It might not happen for a long time, but one day you run your fingers through the sand again, scoop a fistful out, and pat it into a new floor.
You can believe in anything, so why not believe this will last?
The seashell rafter like eyes in the gloaming.
I’m here to tell you the tide will never stop coming in. I’m here to tell you whatever you build will be ruined, so make it beautiful.
The flow of desire in the plane of immanace
This was a video made by Gaurav and me together in a workshop themed around Gender and Art, organized by reFrame Arts, Delhi. The work was an assemblage of my childhood polaroids interposed with Gaurav’s unfulfilled childhood desire of dancing Kathak adorned in a saree and ghungroo being played out and performed in the present. This work deals with the question of memory, queer childhood trauma and remembering as an act of reassembling. It was through the impetus of this work that we are developing an archival project called ‘queer childhoods’.
The ‘queer’ in queer childhoods functions both as an adjective as well as a verb. The broader aim of the project is to queer childhood in a manner that questions the hegemonic position of the hetero-normative conception of childhood. Instead of situating ‘queer’ as a marginal identity in relation to ‘normal’ childhood, the idea is to show queerness as being an inherent characteristic of childhood that gets marginalised and suppressed within the confines of the heteronormative home. This is to be done through creating an animated archive of childhood photographs of queer individuals along with their personal histories of the photograph as narrated in the present. Through utilising various audiovisual forms in a collaborative and participatory mode of recording with the participants, the idea is to open up the childhood narratives, memories, objects, and places as not just past sites of subjectivity-formation (whether positive or negative) but also as speculative spaces in which agency can be reclaimed. Below, I am putting three propositions that we have been thinking about:
1. "Remembering as reassembling"
While in their childhood, they were not allowed to dance kathak wearing a saree; Gaurav finds solace and affirmation of their queer identity in some childhood photographs where they are supposedly cross-dressing in a saree. Aware of the context of these photographs, they know that these pictures of them wearing a saree are not avowal of their queer identity by the family but rather an allowed transgressive play for the camera; It is a moment of play that defines the limits and the rupture of the hetero-patriarchal order with the fleeting temporality of photography. That is to say, their queerness is like a fleeting transcendence that they are allowed to perform only for and in the photograph and not beyond it. Yet it still gives Gaurav a way to move beyond childhood just as a site of trauma towards a generative space. They can reassemble their queer selfhood through such ruptures of photographs, they can reclaim some form of agency in childhood even if itt is through a retrospective gaze at the self. I wonder if we think of memory as fuzzy and remembering as a form of reassembling, then can we think of remembering not just what was but also what was not? How do we remember something that did not happen?
2. "What images DO instead of what they represent?"
One of our friends whose gender identity is transman talks about how in his childhood, he was made to pose and dress a certain way in photographs in order to portray traditional femininity. Therefore, his childhood photographs represent a feminine subjectivity but it is an imposed subjectivity mediated through family and photographs. Our interest is to move beyond the representative schema of the photograph that conceives it in a form of indexicality and truth-making towards interrogating how these mediations engender specific forms of subjectivities through their enunciatory and performatory potential i.e. what kind of subjectivities can be performed for the photograph and how is this performance mediated by family, culture, society, discourses as well as the medium? We are thinking of performance in the photographs but also performance of the photograph (specifically in queer lives).
3. "Listening to the images that you cannot see"
The same friend also talks about the kind of pictures he wanted of himself to be clicked but were not clicked, images that would affirm his subjectivity but are absent from his childhood in a material form yet existent in the imaginary of his childhood. Therefore, one wonders whether imbricated in the indexicality of the photograph are ghostly spectres of images that do not exist but are equally real (if not more). These are images that you cannot see, these are images that you can only listen to.
I imagine it like a beach.
Gyan - Childhood memories se nikal kar kese apni identy banai jo iss video ke through process pata lag raha hai. Jo samz me kese ek nazariye se dekhte hai. Samaz se khul ji sakte hai.
Frozen time in the calendar.
Question of agency in the childhood pictures.
There is a magnificent sand castle that has taken years to build.
The event is more then the point of time an image projects.
hands that hug the present
The event is more then the point of time an image projects.
This reminded me of my fluffy chair when I was 3.
A row of pink seashells for gables.
Rooms of pebble and driftwood.
Interesting proposition, it's a beautiful piece. curious to see how the form develops over time while closely dealing with gaze.
From stills to a moving image- the control of narrative through medium, pictures that are chosen and set in motion to bring in a certain narrative as opposed to or with the video - staged and performed. Archive vs/with cinematic.
The moment of picking up the sound of ghungaroos is like a voice picked up or maybe visible in the outside domain. The image has its sound. I am thinking more toward the shift from one medium to another.
This is your life.
Then comes the affair.
The event is more then the point of time an image projects.
In the domestic framework we tend to see the practice of cross-dressing by others like mostly by the parents in the form of using different clothing, accessories but the acceptance of the different identity in the domestic space is usually highly unacceptable.
Reminded me of my cousins (heterosexual male) photographs of the family album, playing around feminine costumes and make up.
hands that touch the present
Nagging blood work.
A freeway pileup.
The tide moves in.
And the voices starts to merge, switching the identities and association of voices with images.
I like the juxtaposition of images and moving from childhood to the present along with the text. It creates simultaneously thinking pasts and thinking futures moving from one to the other, and time is somehow non-linear, and we are moving from memories, aspirations, and present realities.
The water eats your work like a drove of wild birds.
There is debris.
A tatter of sea grass and blood from where you scratched your own arm trying to
hands that gesture to the future
fight the current.
It might not happen for a long time.
But one day you run your fingers through the sand again.
A sense of liberation from the past, departing from it, like a dream. When the dream is ephemeral after you wake up, and it is forgotten if left untouched. Here the dream reappears in ruptures, pieces put together to reconstruct a re-remembered dream. Can two people's dreams intersect and become one?
Scoop a fistful out and pat it into a new floor.
You can believe in anything.
So why not believe this will last?
The seashell rafter like eyes in the gloaming.
I am here to tell you the tide will never stop coming in.
I am here to tell you whatever you build will be ruined.
Just got to know you did not know gaurav before. The way it has been shot, edited, and the quality of the voice really generates an intimate space,allows the viewer to enter, without feeling they are transgressing a personal space.
Reterrit
So make it beautiful.
hands that gesture to the past
hands that gesture to the future
feet that hold the ground
Mayank Work makes me think , how memory has the possibility, memory is not just an act of remembrance but embodies transference i. where Mayank Photograph ; his friend open the sandook filled with their clothes of collective memory, personal of chilhood: restitched their own clothe in presence together.To explore the tags of queerness trauma imposed with the needles of society.
Pad.ma requires JavaScript.