Idea of guest

Vastavikta Bhagat

We at SEA believe that the pandemic has a granularity of meta, non-linear narratives that become useful in making sense of the relational complexities of the pandemic and society. Thus, we set out to collect stories of fears, joys, agilities, fragilities, friendships, networks, collectives, home, work, infrastructures, entrepreneurship, privileges, marginalizations, migrations, desperation, gender, equity, etc. The glossary as a method became useful to reflect on this granularity of experiences and account for slippages during these times. These spatio-temporal stories, when read together or as individual instances produce a new sense of the emergent contemporary. This framework also allows us to speculate on the kind of world we will inhabit once the storm has passed. We draw on multiple readings to bring out the nuances and patterns of social life produced in a pandemic. This we hope would allow us to collectively reflect on the restructured ideas of the self, the collective, society, space, and time. The idea of guests shaped the home, where the house became a visual object, an image, of the family. This was put to test and collapsed during the pandemic.

The idea of guest shaped the home, where the house became a visual object, an image, of the family. This image was a projection of the family’s collectively negotiated idea of ‘presentable’ to the society, which therefore reflected their ideas of society.

One of my friend’s sister was interested in fashion photography, and therefore she covered an entire wall with newspapers to create a backdrop. I started sticking sheets of paper on the blinding LED panels that are installed on the ceiling, in order to diffuse the light so as to not cause discomfort to the eyes, as well as to direct it in a certain way and contain it in a particular space.

This idea of an invisible but omnipresent guest, which governed the .neatness’ of the house, has started to diffuse/ disappear in the domestic space. People have started to appropriate and transgress home as something that is their own, for them to see and live in.

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