Memory

Readjusting the Focus: Exerting Agency Through Clothing

In this photograph taken by American photographer Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870-1942), are eight Negrito young men at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis with a statue of King Louis XIV in the background. As they are in an open field, this photograph could have been taken during the “Anthropology Day” games held by the fair committee to show off the indigenous Filipinos’ skills in various sports games to the public. In this case, the boys would have shown off their skills with a bow and arrow, whose straps can be seen over their shoulders.

An “Insular” Introspective On Memory & Cross-Cultural Exchanges

The photograph seen here is of the Insular Ice and Cold Storage Plant during its final stages of completion located in Ermita, Manila, Philippines. Inspired by one of Mesha Murali and Surajit Sarkar's accession cards for the Centre for Community Knowledge (CCK)'s Delhi Memory Archive (see related links for the original accession card), I felt inspired to look towards some old photgraphs of Manila from the American colonial period to find some of, what they refered to as "the relational and intangible aspects of the everyday urban experience". This is one such photograph. 

Readjusting the focus: Exercising agency through the Ballangbang cultural dance

In this photograph from the Missouri Historical Society archive, titled by author Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870-1942) as “As God made them… Pierre Chouteau”, it depicts 4 Bontoc Igorot (an ethnolinguistic group of indigenous Filipinos from the Cordillera region of the Philippines) boys as they dance what is most likely the Ballangbang, a cultural dance performed during mass celebrations and social gatherings.

Renga between Past and Present Selves

Clad in polka dots,

Eyes glitter despite wet toes,

Exchanging this love.

 

After days of rain, the sunlight

shimmers – dappled shadows dance.

 

Living tradition,

Colors bleed transformation,

An elsewhere awaits.

 

What do our bodies know that

text cannot articulate?

 

Shuttling asleep,

Lines collapse past and future.

Who holds the power?

 

Resisting capture, its wings

flutter, fighting off the pin.

Champurrado to Champorado: Understanding cross-border connections through my childhood

Pictured in the first photograph is pictured the champorado, a Filipino dessert dish made of sticky rice and tablea (tablets of ground roasted cocoa beans) and topped with milk and sugar. The champorado is often served for breakfast or merienda (afternoon tea), and is served alongside dried fish as a salty balance to the dessert’s sweetness.

Charmadozi

This beautiful embroidery from Afghanistan is commonly done on velvet, in this case a soft royal blue fabric, that highlights the embroidery very well.

The day we met

First day of our course.

travels, stories, memories, belongings, research.

so many parts of the world in the room, meanings and cultural belonging, in textiles and their histories, textures and colors, paterns and representations.

We'll work together for one week, discovering each other and thinking together. Cloth, fabric, textile. Weaving our work with attachments, intentions and future endeavours.

 

Readjusting the focus: savagery or communal ritual?

In 1904, the United States introduced Filipino culture to the American public with their Philippine Exposition at the St. Louis World’s Fair, a faux recreation of indigenous Filipino villages located at the outskirts of the exhibition fairgrounds and populated with various indigenous Filipino tribes from across its various islands, the most well-known being of the Ifugao people of northern Luzon, referred to at the time as Igorots (Taft, 1904, 29-30).

Fading memory of Neela Thotti

Neela thotti/ thotti is the tamil colloquial term that refers to the avuri (indigo) wet leaf production tank. The existence of a number of thottis in a region implies the range and scale of cultivation and production of indigo. Before the 90s in the northern part of Tamilnadu, India, indigo was cultivated on a large scale for indigo cake production with numerous thottis. The development of synthetic dyes affected the market value of natural dyes.

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