Ethno Mapping

4 décembre 2009 // Filed under Uncategorized

Project By:  Meghma and Sayantani

The project started mainly due to this course called Thinking Archives. We had to explore the possibilities and intricacies and various meanings of what archives could be. Also a part of the course was participation in an ongoing project already underway at Srishti, of building the Srishti Historical Archives. It had a lot to do with archiving work done in Srishti as well as work done by faculty and students. A lot of the work was based in and around and about Bangalore, archiving the art documenting the city and its aspects. Another part of the course was a workshop on Cartography, working with metamaps and ultimately producing individual works mapping the various aspects of the city of Bangalore. Our project is one of the final works produced as the final product of the course. We call it Ethno Mapping.

The city is ever changing. And we wanted to look at the change through a specific perspective. We singled out a specific area: Avenue Road, one of the oldest parts of the city, and decided to map it using photographs that define the place through more than pictures of tarmac and road signs, but human elements, that characterises the place in particular as well as the city. We also look at this area through the perspective of an artist, Ms. Prabha, who comes from a traditional family of goldsmiths, a community who still inhabit a part of that stretch of the city and still work there, through her works, which is attempting to combine old goldsmith techniques with modern installation art practices.

2009-12-04  ::  meghma