SqW:Lab had been in our conversations and thoughts for over a decade and in the making for 6 months. It is therefore rather difficult for me to summarize the excitement in words. I would like to firstly, thank the core team for jumping on board this crazy idea and making it their own. It is this sense of ownership that they have so generously presented that is most encouraging and assuring that this endeavour will continue for years to come.
The week itself, as exciting as it was, was incredibly hectic. The process of our home slowly transforming into a Lab was a stimulating experience with comfort levels increasing by the hour. Informal introductions over lunchtime cocktails kick-started conversations that would sustain the fellowship and I was amazed at how quickly these discussions began to appear. A city-walk with Alisha Sadikot, showed us Byculla in a way that I have never seen before. Oscillating between my own curiosity and making sure that everyone crossed the road, I wished for more access to places we were visiting and would like to ensure that the next time we are able to get just that. Such thoughts, of minor changes to the organisation kept appearing throughout the week and continues to do so.
Between ordering lunches and taxis, materials and meetings, I found time to engage in some amazing conversations with fellows, which led to to explore methodologies of mapping, something I had never thought of as a basis to investigate domesticity. Working largely with material aspects, this personal discovery and the newly acquired typewriter has me thinking about movements and permissions within the domestic environment: how these change over time and familiarity or over-relational acknowledgements. Furthermore, I explored the typed hyphen’s potential to act as a line and its iconographic possibilities in the mapping process to create a language that is not entirely truthful, leaving space of fictional narrative.
These moments of interaction and discoveries is what has been most exciting, affirming the need for SqW:Lab to my practice. While we now spend time playing with projects and ironing out ‘technical’ glitches, I know I can do this for a long time to come.
sqwlab.wordpress.com 