Decolonising Home through Objects: Repair, Archive and Visual Art to History Writing
Mehwish Abid
(McGill University)
Decolonising Home through Objects (DHTO) investigates the stories of migration at the time of partition across the borders of Pakistan & India and later within Pakistan through objects and material culture. This mother project envisions creating an archive built with the help of the community through people's historical narrative employing a participatory approach. The project has been an event of repair, an act of archive-making, an effort to democratise the archive through archival photography and it has not entered its theorising phase. This talk will speak about the journey of the project and maker.
In search of traces of a housing project – reflections of a researcher
Johann Peiris (Collective for Historical Dialogue and Memory, Colombo)
In this reflective presentation I will talk about the experiences of doing research for the documentary ‘Is this an architectural documentary?’ (film by Tennakoon, Kelegama and Athokorale, 2023) The topics covered will include research during lockdown, methodologies explored in understanding how housing schemes could be documented and unearthing anecdotal and archival evidence of architect Minnette De Silva (1918-1998) and the housing scheme in focus, the Watapuluwa Housing Scheme in Kandy, Sri Lanka. It will necessary also refer to the architect’s social milieu, her contemporaries and the social context both global and local in which we situate her design and manifesto for a participatory architectural model. Looking back 65 years since its inception what approaches to participatory design, documenting and social research could be worth revisiting?
PATIO Conversations are open to all; we aim to meet once a month, and scholars get an opportunity
to share their work in progress. These presentations may be on a topic of their choice, which may
relate to one or more of PATIO’s thematic umbrellas, or even critically reconsider and reconfigure our
definition of particular themes. Participants may include independent scholars, Master's students, or
aspiring PhD students as well as postdoctoral researchers who can contribute as speakers or choose
to be an active part of the audience. Each such conversation foregrounds two scholars presenting
their work for 20 minutes, followed by feedback from relevant respondents invited by the PATIO team
in relation to the topic, and finally opening the discussion out to the larger audience. As such, PATIO
Conversations offers a platform for critical dialogue while both disseminating recently completed work
and providing mentorship to aspirant researchers, including potential PhD candidates. These sessions
provide researchers with the resources to further their work related to the state of the field by involving
active experts and engaging with current bodies of relevant work, published or otherwise.
PATIO
Conversations is directed by Saptarshi Sanyal and Sarah Melsens with the help of Thematic directors
and Coordinators.