“Things outlast us, they know more about us than we know about them: they carry the experience they have had with us inside them and are—in fact—the book of our history opened before us.” – W.G Sebal
Phenomenology of ‘Animism’, is known as the emotional need to find meanings in inanimate objects. When we encounter the past through objects, it urges us to rediscover our ancestors & their habitat. We felt a strong urge to get back our agency, our power of knowing what might have been and why it seemed important for us to make these connections.
An amalgamation of objects can be witnessed in museums, which are mostly in enclosed spaces. However, unlike a typically guarded museum, this participatory intervention offers an exploration into an open space for people to feel and experience each object. My experience in large museums like Pitt rivers and Ashmolean is that the visitor is overwhelmed by all the research details of hundreds of objects, staring at them from enclosed glass boxes. Although they aesthetically present historical and scientific facts, an explorer cannot feel and draw experiences.
The work is an open concept of museum, a carefully curated space on the finely mowed lawn with ten objects. Each object carries a question so as to kindle the audience’s perception and their explorative approach thus offering them a phenomenological experience of meaningful discovery and dialogue.
This participative intervention is an attempt to offer deep insights about the field of cultural interaction between various archetypes, how they are all related and their significance in this world.
Collaborating Artists: Nivedita Saha and Lulwa Alfarie