TAKE on Art organised a panel discussion on “Looking Back to Look Forward: Many Meanings of Memory-in-Making” as part of the launch of 28th issue ‘Memory’ at Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022. Bhavna Kakar introduced TAKE on Art and its 28th issue ‘Memory’. Manuela Ciotti moderated the panel that included talks by Zuleikha Chaudhari (Re: Staging the Trial of Bahadur Shah Zafar, 1858), Tapati Guha-Thakurta (The Work of Memory-Making: A Conversation With Family Photographs), and Anita Khemka + Imran B Kokiloo (Kashmir). Girish Shahane joined as discussant.

Moderator: Manuela Ciotti

Panelists:

Tapati Guha-Thakurta
The Work of Memory-Making: A Conversation With Family Photographs

Zuleikha Chaudhri
Re: Staging the Trial of Bahadur Shah Zafar (1858)

Anita Khemka + Imran B Kokiloo
Kashmir

Discussant: Girish Shahane

Concept Note

When the events of the twentieth century unfolded—the cartography of national borders, political revolutions and neo-liberalism—they prompted the desire to remember and understand the roots of diversity.  The route to chart the map of difference navigates the terrain of the historical past in the shape of archives, memoirs, museums and monuments. The ensuing experience closely tied to ‘fluid’ memory against the historical ‘data’; ‘broken’ time versus chronological ‘order’; central ‘reality’ distinct from peripheral ‘reminiscence’ contributes to amplify the voice of resistance against the grand metanarrative of a nation-building exercise. In the same spirit, the world of representation, when navigating the spatial-temporal axis to trace the becoming of the self, cannot escape the pressing concerns around political issues of identity and institutions. The panel discussion aims to identify the ground of inclusive perspective on the lived experiences by extending critical inquiry on the constellation of photo-archives, monuments, memorials, visual culture and digital technology.

Objective

Even when the 1947 Partition is largely touted as the entry point into the concept of memory, especially in the Indian subcontinent, the panel discussion envisions the founding event as the fecund site to both draw on and depart from it, to dwell a step deeper into the discipline of memory: the subject that has been largely probed through the lens of the Global North. The overarching tendency to anchor a unified and official history in the times of the 75th year of the 1947 Partition serves as a timely backdrop to offer an access point to the assemblage of diverse ideas and distinct exploration of the presence of a flourishing field of cultural and personal memories in South Asia.

Photos