Critical Conversations: Reframing the Past

Delving into obfuscated histories from the region, Dr John Solomon and artist Debbie Ding think about what it means to reframe the past through their respective approaches to the archive. Focusing on methodology, both speakers will articulate their approaches to historicising through the processes of cataloguing, collecting, mapping, and focusing on social histories. Here, their inquiries find both points of departure and semblance: where Dr Solomon’s research primarily uncovers un-archived histories with respect to the “untouchables” and citizenship, Ding’s work traces the distortions in time and space caused by archiving, delving instead into speculations of the future through archaeological ambiguities. Altogether, their conversation posits alterity in reading regional histories, pointing towards ways to frame alternative constructions of knowledge about the past and therefore, how we can understand its residues in our contemporary circumstances.

CRITICAL CONVERSATIONS
Conventional Western-centric conceptions of narration and time tend towards the linear: personal lifestyles conform to social schedules, the notion of history relegated to key players, stories unfolding across a traditional arc of climax and conclusion. Across philosophy, art, films and historicity, Critical Conversations 2021 is an inquiry that lingers on the questions: who and what frames time? And how do we understand alternate conceptions of time? Here, the politics, contexts and anxieties that arise from grasping at time find space in discourse, and is where lesser-known narratives and ordinary people are given agency to make sense of time.

Audience Reviews
“It left me feeling simultaneously smaller and larger as I considered the history associated with the simple act of being”

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