Talking archives in Colombo next weekend
View(s):The culmination of Open Edit will be Open Talk, a series of conversations (and a song) exploring and celebrating our instinct to archive. “It’s not a moment of great fanfare, it’s a moment of pause,” says Sunila. “It’s a kind of a quiet programme.”
P.K. Nair: Celluloid Man director
Sessions on the first day include those by Sabih Ahmed (10-11a.m.) and Sanjana Hattotuwa (11:30 – 12:30 p.m.) – the former talking about, among other things, what happens when a personal archive makes the shift to an institutional one. The latter discussing how the digital archive in Sri Lanka is being generated and by whom and how it can force us to reassess our past and re-examine our present.
For the last panel of the day (5-6 p.m.), Sharmini will sit down with Deborah Philip, granddaughter of artist and architect Geoffrey Beling and Jomo Uduman, son of artist and cartoonist Fareed Uduman to talk about the choices they made in what of their family archives they chose to share – and what to keep private.
Winding up the evening will be the Sri Lankan premiere of Celluloid Man: A Film on P.K Nair directed by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur. Released this year to commemorate 100 years of Indian cinema, Celluloid Man is a documentary about the life and work of the legendary archivist P. K. Nair. Fuelled by a personal passion, P. K. Nair travelled all over India collecting cans of film that would otherwise have been lost. He founded the National Film Archive of India and is regarded as the guardian of Indian cinema.
Day 2 kicks off with Sivananthamoorthy Seran discussing the work of the Noolaham Foundation (11 a.m. – 12 p.m). The open source, un-edited, digital archive collects material relating to the Tamil speaking peoples of Sri Lanka. (www.noolahamfoundation.org) Dominic Sansoni follows from 12 -1 p.m with a session titled Spittel’s Travels and Other Stories.
For his turn on stage P. Ahilan will examine the personal archives of key archivists from Jaffna (3-4 p.m.). Anomaa Rajakaruna turns the conversation back to film with a talk on the search for Lester James Peries’ Nidhanaya (4-5 p.m.) while satirical song writer and one time archive researcher Ajit Kumarasiri closes Open Talk with a song about the archive.
Open Talk is on from July 6-7 at the Park Street Mews. It is the closing event of Open Edit: Mobile Library, a collaboration between Asia Art Archive and Raking Leaves in partnership with the Goethe Institut, Groundviews, and the University of Jaffna’s Fine Arts (Art History) and Art and Design Departments. The project is funded by Burger Collection and the Foundation for Arts Initiatives.
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