Brief

The Design Brief

The project deals with giving visual form to public memory (experiences of others) and the role of the artist and historian in developing this archival memory.

The focus of these memories is one’s experiences within the educational system – the current situation of transition between secondary and higher education and one’s experience with the system i.e. the bureaucracy.

The project translating the verbal into non-verbal, aims to represent public opinion, create an overview of this school to college system for the uninformed and be a trigger for those involved.

Research Questions

- How can one give visual form to certain experiences and emotions – part of another’s memory? How do you interpret subjective expression?

- Experience of the subject versus my perception.

- Visualizing already known problems in the system through the experiences of my subjects.

- Factors affecting memory of the subject.

- Power of installation and publication as a form to generate response and initiate awareness.

Project Description + Process

The project involves interactions with a number of subjects. Each interaction consists of a conversation about the subjects’ positive and negative experiences with the bureaucracy of the education system (will be recorded) and my and the subject’s visual representation of this experience. The illustration can be synoptic, sequential, or continuous as the stories of the subjects’ experiences unfold.

Subjects: Students – Urban, English speaking, between Std 9 to 2nd year college level, products of the Indian system (e.g. ICSE, SSC, HSC not IB, IGCSE); Products of a pre-dominantly visual culture.

Illustration: - Memory itself is multi sensory and because of today’s predominantly visual culture (over oral culture), the visual sense tends to be the strongest. Apart from being a visual form, illustration also has the power to trigger one's other senses. - An illustration can highlight specific aspects of the memory my subjects talk and lay emphasis on (over other media). - A medium that is portable and free, I am able to illustrate while I am talking to my subjects.

“The essential difference, it might be held, between visual and literary representations lies in chronicity; that is visual texts(icons/images) tend to be synchronic, presenting all their material at once, while verbal texts are diachronic, presenting their material in a narrative or quasi-narrative sequence. Insofar as a picture is read over time (for the viewer cannot take in the whole story at once), it may be said to construe a diachronic narrative: yet I would maintain that the rhetorical self-presentation of a work of visual art is one of simultaneity, albeit potentially disrupted and deconstructed, while that of verbal art is one of sequence, albeit subject to the same disturbances.” - Alison Sharrock (Representing Metamorphosis)

Process Timeline

July: Structure and nature of the interactions: Flow of questions. Defining logistics: Find Subjects. How many interactions? Initial Interactions: Introduce the project. Interview and discussion of the subject’s experience. My illustrated representation and subject’s own representation of the memory. Possibly gathering other objects that can act as memorials of the experience and support the visual representation. (e.g. school uniforms, application forms etc.) Step-by-step documentation of illustrations.

August: Complete interactions. Conceptualizing form of the installation: How can the content be displayed, made interactive? Integrating illustrations, audio documentation and memorials. Selecting an apt public space. Execution. Exhibiting the installation and gathering public feedback.

September: Translating into publication. Collation of content – from interaction and installation. Analysis, summarizing and extracting insights. Form and style. Print and Production.

Project Outcomes

- A public installation combining the dialogue between my subjects and I (audio documentary) and the illustrations that have been created. It is open to the viewers to add their experiences and/or respond to the collective memory about the theme as text or visuals. The installation is another method of representing the subject’s experiences.

- A book – as an archive to organise the conversations, illustrations and the result of the installation (using these as memorials of the subject). The installation and book is a means to voice the feedback received through this process, create a landscape of the Indian school to college system for an outsider and be a comparison and review for those involved.

I as an artist using tools of the visual arts and communication:

- Initiating dialogue.

- Visualizing and illustrating.

- Sharing opinion, gathering feedback through public art.

- Creating an archival publication.

Learning Outcomes

- To be able to successfully give another’s testimony visual form.

- To better communication skills and engage in constructive dialogue.

- Effective use of an event-analysis and archiving method.

- Setting up an installation that shares and encourages feedback.

- To explore and improve visualization and illustration skills.

Resources/ Materials

Students form my subjects for the interactions. Audio: Recorder, Player – during the interactions and to be used in the installation. Documentation: Camera Illustration and related tools: Mediums, Paper. Other basic materials to support the illustration in the installation space. Public Space: Possible installation locations. Publishing tools for the development of the book.

References

Art:21 Art in the twenty-first century: Memory

WNYC -Radio Lab: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Rat

Dmitri Nikulin: Memory and History.
Maurice Halbwachs: On Collective Memory (excerpts)

NLP Submodalities (reference during questioning; known to be useful for recollection of memories)

Charlotte Saloman: Life? or Theatre.