CHRONICLES OF COLLECTION

2 décembre 2009 // Filed under Uncategorized

INITIAL IDEAS:
The idea for this project came up during our “Thinking Archives” course where we were exploring various ways of documentation and archiving, and it struck us how we all tend to focus on human stories to understand the socio-cultural milieu. As a challenge we decided to focus on objects instead and see if by tracing the story of an object – its origins, journey and multiple values – we can stumble upon some insights on the relationship between people and their things. Having chosen a decidedly material culture perspective, we did a bit of reading (The System of Objects by Jean Baudrillard; The Social Life of Things by Arjun Appadurai) to help us decide on the questions we were going to investigate, and thereby the methodologies that we could adopt.
We decided to take a top down approach and look at collectors and their objects, as the starting point for tracing the story of the object. It was an interesting place to begin, because when an object starts getting collected its value goes beyond the functional, and the monetary and begins to assume significance and symbolic value. By archiving the perspective of collectors and the very act of collection we hope to uncover the various layers of meaning an object can hold.
NACHI’S KNIFE COLLECTION:
Having selected this ambitious line of enquiry, we figured that it would be possible for us to explore the story of only one collection in the given time frame. This could then become the model or prototype for investigating other collections, which could also be adopted by others.
We decided to begin within the Srishti community and scout for collectors amongst the students and faculty. We zeroed in on Nachi (4th year, product design) who is a compulsive collector of a variety of objects. For him these objects at times are merely utilitarian, at times artistic inspiration and sometimes repositories of various stories and memories. In his room one may find an impressive array of matchboxes, different coconut shells, and a rather gruesome selection of bones and skulls. He collects musical instruments ranging from the guitar to flutes to various rare folk instruments. But what fascinated us was his extensive knife collection and it was this that we chose to archive.
To emphasize the various layers of meaning within the object we decided to document the collection using a four pronged approach.
1. At one level we were documenting just the pieces in the collection – with photographs of each piece and a short description of their origin, material construction and possible usage. This deals with the functional value of the pieces.
2. Using another link we explore the personal story of the Nachi, the collector, with a short video documentation of his personal objects and point of view, through an interview.
3. Another link leads to metamap, which localizes the object (knives) spatially in Bangalore city. Using annotated photographs we are to map knife shops, repair shops antique stores etc, and map the different values and roles the knife adopts in different parts of the city.
4. A fourth link leads into a more collective history of knives – their material history, cultural significance, mechanisms – and focus on some knives which have attained legendary status.
This format, we believe, would enable a comprehensive understanding of the particular object in its social context and could be applied to other collections subsequently i.e. Matt’s matchbox collection, Lloyd’s ashtray collection, or Pratyush’s collection of turtle souvenirs.

2009-12-02  ::  rashmi