Transforming the Everyday - Final Piece

For my final project, I decided to use objects that were personal to me and I had a stronger connection to- my own magical objects. I chose to look at the story of my great grandmother, for whom I had great admiration as she, at a young age, crossed the borders of India to Pakistan during the 1947 partition. I was inspired not only by her bravery while going on this journey, the partition being the biggest migration of the 20th century during which thousands lost their lives, but also the strength it must have taken to leave behind her home and all she held dear to start a new life in a different place. Keeping in mind the stories that my great grandmother had told me countless times as a child, I decided to make a suitcase of my own, much like the ones from Willard Mental Asylum, documenting her journey from one country to the other, using the objects she brought with her to tell her story. Some of the objects I used were actually hers whilst others were those that I collected and imagined she would have brought with her. 

However, that didn't quite feel like enough. I wanted the objects to tell their story but I couldn't help but wonder if people who didn't know my great grandmother as I did would understand the story those objects were trying to tell. I wanted to physically bring those objects to life: If they could talk, what would they say? If we could follow their lives, where would they take us? To answer these questions, I decided to use my newly found interest in stop motion animation to create a short video following the life of one of the objects my great grandmother brought with her. The video, together with my suitcase, formed my final piece..

The animation follows the story of one of my great grandmother's possessions,
a steel glass, as it makes it way across borders with her. 

  

When presented, the suitcase was placed as seen above

Although unintentional, I like how the pages aren't quite covering the glass fully, the edges are lifted as if they are fraying. It gives the sense that the stories that it holds can't be contained as it is bursting with life. 

The glass, an actual possession of my great grandmother, has been covered in pages from the same
book as the one seen in the video to provide a stronger visual link between the suitcase and the video.

The spoons and plate are from my great grandmother's dowry, the pattern on which was said to be hand carved. I decided to put in the 'tasbih' (string of brown beads, the Islamic equivalent of rosary beads one might say) as religion was always a very important part of her life. 

These are some of the photographs I managed to collect from my relatives. My great grandparents can be seen in the first one, with my great grandmother in the middle in the second photograph. Adding the photos to the suitcase just makes the story more real and believable.

When presenting this piece, I played the video separately, with the suitcase placed on a table against the wall onto which the video was projected. I think the presentation could be more effective if the video was projected onto the opened suitcase, so that the story is in essence captured within the objects, physically and metaphorically. 

In Steven Connor's 'Parapharnalia', he says 'such things inhabit space, but are a kind of temporizing with it, a refracting of the white noon of now into a chronic rainbow of times, with their twilight tints and hues. Such things hum with hint and import because they are there without being fully present; to hand, but not exactly here-and-now.' This is the feeling I get when surrounded by these objects. They are haunting in a sense, but beautifully so. But it is I who feels like a ghost; as time passes, it is these objects that are still alive, long after the people to whom they belonged are not- they are unstopped clocks.