Making a Relation: Notes on the Archive, 2021

From January - June 2021, I simultaneously set in motion two strands of action. I approach a master weaver and loom-maker in Karachi’s Banaras Colony to commission a 24-shaft dobby loom, and I trail three women in my family: recording and measuring their movements and actions. 

Both strands represent a bodily engagement with history and knowledge - that which is personal and shared, public and private. Both strands are not separate from each other either, as the line between domestic and the industrial is less a boundary, and more a connecting thread.

Both strands are a still ongoing, mutually transformative experience.

Slowly helping to build the loom has initiated a new kind of proximity between me and Karachi, its movements, materials and creatures. It also hints unsubtly at subsequent, literal actions - now I sand, now I thread, now I punch the card, now I weave. Meanwhile, the technical process of editing the films is a gratifying way of looking closely, the medium enabling the immersion and reflection I seek. I listen closely to stories a dozen times, and delight in elements that escaped me previously. 

At the end of my time in Karachi, I find myself holding gifts and remains - detritus of the engagement. I combine them in an archive, regarding this as an important stopping-over point to receive what has taken place. This array is as important as anything I ever hope to make on the loom, or do with the footage. I display this for my final degree show, transport it carefully with me back to London, and make it a part of a travelling exhibit.