For Old Times’ Sake

“The resurgent interest in archiving is related to the escalating anxiety about who the custodians of the collective memory are,” says Hong Kong based Claire Hsu,executive director of AAA. Closer home,at the Jawaharlal Nehru University,historians and archivists will grapple with questions like “How is history being recorded?”and “Is their an authentic voice?”,at a symposium to be held on February 26.

Coinciding with the event is a decision taken by the power couple of Indian art — artist and activist Vivan Sundaram and critic,curator and historian Geeta Kapur — who have decided to go online and share their vast archive of writing and imagery from the 1950s onwards. Comprising rare catalogues,slides and newspaper cuttings,the duo have digitised their archives with the help of Ahmad Sabih,India researcher for the AAA. “While there are vast amounts of data available at the National Archive in Delhi,Faculty of Fine Arts,Department of Art History and Aesthetics in Baroda,Lalit Kala Akademi in Delhi,and Osian’s Auction House in Mumbai,the right to access this information often relies on personal connections,” says Sabih. He adds,“With a dearth of public art archives,it is time to delve into personal archives.” Sundaram talks about his ongoing fascination with archives. Much of the photo-montage work on his aunt,late Amrita Sher-Gil,comes from family archives. “I have a history of public work with Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust,so putting the personal archive online overlaps with that ideology,” says Sundaram,quoting an instance when MF Husain wanted an old catalogue from the 1960s for a show at the Birla Academy in Mumbai. “We luckily had the only surviving copy,” recalls Sundaram.

For the intensely private Kapur,it was a more difficult decision. “My library and archive is my sanctum. To suddenly come into public domain has taken me a step out of my comfortable position,” says Kapur,pointing out that consent was taken from the artists concerned. For instance,Gulammohammed Sheikh,who had shot a stunning black-and-white photograph of the couple in 1969,has allowed for it to go online.

Also underway is a project initiated by Delhi-based Akansha Rastogi,a researcher on Indian Modern and Contemporary Art. She has spent the last one year archiving and documenting artists studios. “I want to treat archiving as a form of writing and propose a curatorial project where visits to artists’ studios is documented. I plan to share these visits and their archival possibility or impossibility through a blog,” says Rastogi.

Those interested in text-annotated video material,primarily footage and unfinished films,meanwhile,can log on to PAD.MA. The catchy acronym is short for Public Access Digital Media Archive. “The collection can be searched and viewed online and is free to download for non- commercial use,” says a joint statement of the core team that comprises Oil21.org from Berlin,Alternative Law Forum from Bangalore,and three organisations from Mumbai: Majlis,Point of View and Chitrakarkhana/CAMP.

Not all are ready to share their archives though. This includes veteran artist Jehangir Sabavala. He says,“I’ve never put any of my archive online,even though I have 12 scrapbooks on materials from the early 1940s to the 2000s.” The

Mumbai-based octogenarian adds,“I will give my material to a research scholar or writer but I don’t want my archive to be accessed frivolously or casually.”