The Bartlett
Fifteen Show 2023
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Threads of Revolution

Project details

Programme
Tutor Jhono Bennett
Award
  • The Situated Practice 2023 Prize

Threads of Revolution is a tactile and critical reflection of the author’s journey from 'taught history' to finding 'factual history’. The project utilises 'stitching' as ‘re-writing’ to subvert the historiography of India’s freedom struggle; and 'khadi' as a ‘counter-material,’ to archive and bring into Indian consciousness the suppressed history of armed resistance against British colonial rule.

Through an innovative blend of archival research, textile cartography, counter-mapping, and site-specific performance, Threads of Revolution identifies and re-situates the sites across London beyond the existing blue plaque honouring Vinayak Savarkar at India House, a meeting point of Indian revolutionaries between 1905 to 1910.

A tapestry mapping spaces, activities, movements, connections, and networks of Indian revolutionaries that emanated from India House. Various elements of the anti-colonial narratives are diagrammed, including people, objects, and places.

Beyond the Blue Plaque

A tapestry mapping spaces, activities, movements, connections, and networks of Indian revolutionaries that emanated from India House. Various elements of the anti-colonial narratives are diagrammed, including people, objects, and places.

Act of Stitching

Act of Stitching

Situated video still capturing the author’s ‘act of stitching'— critiquing selectivism and writing suppressed histories using symbolic 'khadi' fabrics as storytellers, and infusing Indian classical ‘raag’ as associated emotions.

Un-stitching

Un-stitching

The performance accompanied by evocative verses written by Vinayak Savarkar during his time in London seeks to elevate the sites of India’s freedom struggle, transforming them into enduring symbols of collective memory and resistance.

Still of unravelled fragment during performance of ‘un-stitching’ narratives, recontextualizing site of ‘India House’, infusing architecture, and material traces with renewed significance and cognitive resonance.

India House

Still of unravelled fragment during performance of ‘un-stitching’ narratives, recontextualizing site of ‘India House’, infusing architecture, and material traces with renewed significance and cognitive resonance.

Live intervention with Indian students in London as ‘spect-actors,’ engaging in on-site performative dialogue while collaboratively ‘re-stitching’ pieces back into the tapestry, symbolising the resurrection of revolutionary narratives.

Spect-Actors

Live intervention with Indian students in London as ‘spect-actors,’ engaging in on-site performative dialogue while collaboratively ‘re-stitching’ pieces back into the tapestry, symbolising the resurrection of revolutionary narratives.

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The Bartlett
Fifteen Show 2023
8 – 22 December 2023
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