Through his ongoing exhibition, The Archivists' Impatience at The Loft, curator Shaheen Merali talks about the notion of archiving and how its function has changed in the age of information overload

The age of impatience

Through his ongoing exhibition, The Archivists' Impatience at The Loft, curator Shaheen Merali talks about the notion of archiving and how its function has changed in the age of information overload:

Title talk
I believe the title of an art exhibition is as important as that of a book or film. It allows you to see an image of what the exhibition is like. Our exhibition title 'The Archivists' Impatience' is partly about the idea of archiving and partly the notion of impatience. Today, we are constantly gathering, processing and disseminating information. And yet that information is discarded just as it comes.

Earlier, people used to store decades old issues of Reader's Digest or Time; today we don't archive stuff because it is available on the Internet. But if you have ever tried it, you will know how long it takes to locate even a three-day old article.

Artist
We all knew that Internet would change the concept of archiving, but it hasn't changed the way we imagined it would. Information on the web is vast, but also ephemeral. We have information coming to us in a greater velocity than we can even handle.

The works I am presenting are ones which somehow seek to stop or slow down this process. For instance, through his photographs Pablo Bartholomew projects the rise of the Indian middle class in the 70s and 80s, the introduction of concepts of the western culture in Indian society.

Daniel G Andujar's selection of art from the Internet about Africa and the rampant poverty and exploitation there and the connections he makes with it. Leila Pazooki's work documents the upheavals of the World War II and its effects that continue till date.

WWII led to immense turmoil, but it also catalysed the movements of women's rights, workers' rights, freedom movements; it was a time to question all sorts of domination. The works we are presenting archive a set of events and their relationship to something else other than their own context.u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0
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Culture stock
India is not so good at archiving. The greatest assets of this country's heritage are not in the public realm. India should have museums and libraries where the public can walk in and gain access to any of its history. For instance, where would I find a history of short films or early Hindi films in India? We have no public art galleries, only commercial galleries; where do non-commercial artists show their work?

Where would I find the history of Mumbai? It's an important city, not just to India, but to the world. What do people do when they visit a country as tourists? They visit their museums, see the art and sculptures there, eat the local food. We have beautiful examples of architecture and pieces of history right in front of our eyes, but we don't even have a plaque that states how important it is, what its history is. Mumbai needs to be archived so that its culture can be preserved.

Who: Curator Shaheen Merali alongside a photograph by artist Pablo Bartholomewu00a0
What: Talking about the importance of archiving
Where: The Loft