Poster Women, images courtesy zubaanbooks.com
I have been commissioned to work on a rather interesting project that will eventually take shape as a living archive for the Poster Women project by Zubaan Books. I shall explain what I mean by ‘living’, but first, here are a few details about Poster Women. As explained on this website, this project began with the idea of locating and archiving as many posters of the feminist movement in India as possible. The archive now includes over 1500 posters on diverse themes such as violence, the environment, religion and communalism and so on. You can get a sense of the scale of the project here.
My connection with this project goes back a few years, I was first approached by Jaya Bhattacharji (who was with Zubaan at the time) in early 2006 to create a website to accompany the exhibition that was touring the globe. I have now been asked to develop a platform where all the material can be made available online to the general public. There is additional dimension to this project, the Zubaan team have also been collecting artwork by women from rural India that focuses on socialist and feminist messages. The objective is to show that women from rural communities are aware of and have opinions on contemporary issues. Therefore, the archive will have a separate curated space which will showcase the art that comes in many forms – paintings, murals, objects and so on.
Living archive
Although there has been a thorough attempt to document details/legacy of every poster, there are still some items for which very little information is available. This is where the ‘living’ element comes into play. You see, Zubaan is hoping to source information about these posters from visitors to the archive. This opens the possibility of sourcing individual recollections, personal stories and narratives about people’s involvement with the feminist movement in India. I feel these individual voices sitting alongside the posters will continually shape the archive. So at the end of the day, we are not looking at a static entity where visitors are passive recipients, nor are we looking at a censored space. No doubt, there will be some level of moderation, but the archive will (hopefully) be host to different voices and opinions of all colours.
It also goes without saying that the archive will make use of a social media platform. In fact, this is the other bit of my job specification, to create a strategy for staff to promote the project and interact with audiences via social media. I find this particularly interesting/challenging. Using social media successfully is all about identifying the context and taking ownership of a virtual space in order to shape/mould it in any way possible to initially attract and subsequently engage with people from relevant networks/interests/beliefs. I have done a few wee social media projects with organizations and individuals from the creative sector in the past, this the first time I will be working to develop a living archive for a project of this scale.
We have set the start date in a couple of weeks time. I expect to come across a fair few surprises and insights (through the material, and working alongside some terrific people). I shall continue to post updates via this blog. In the meanwhile, if you have anything to say about this project, perhaps some advice and suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment.
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I attended an event recently at Tate Britain about the future of art galleries and interpretation. High flown theories were espoused, but never it seemed to me with the willingness to genuinely connect with the gallery, with objects, with people. I left with mild depression. This project seems much more refreshing. I like your phrase about not looking at a static entity nor censored space. You will evidently encounter dilemmas, but I think you will garner real ‘encounters’ – a word that was used to frame the event I attended, yet seemed lost on those speaking, as if all was being forced into bell jars, you can look, but don’t touch! I’m keen to hear how your projects develops and I’d be delighted to be involved in any small way… It would be good to see how order such projects manage to live a life as you describe… Might be worth getting back in touch with Leeds City Gallery, which is installing social media as part of the vistors experience. Perhaps we could arrange an event there?
Hi Sunil, thank you for your thoughtful comment. I’ve got my fingers crossed for this project and I hope it works out the way we think it will. As you say, at some point of time there we will encounter dilemmas, I am almost looking forward to them. The Leeds City Gallery link is quite interesting, definitely worth having a chat with them. Thank you for the reference, lets see what comes out of it.