A refreshingly different way to engage with the IFP repository

"Sleepwalker Archives" at IFP offers a unique exploration of botanical and photographic archives in a fictional researcher's setting.

“Sleepwalker Archives”, an ongoing event at the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) offers a refreshingly new way of engaging with the rich and diverse repository of the institution, primarily relating to botanical forays and photographic archives spanning several decades.

The exhibits, from excel sheet scrolls to neatly classified specimens tucked into the boxes of a wooden cabinet, have been arranged in a fictionalised setting of an imaginary researcher at a desktop probing the realms of the unknown.

Visitors walk into an ambience of mystique to join a journey to make sense of the mysteries of life, and where every representative specimen, from a granite slab to a leaf, can be a storehouse of information.

The collaborative exhibition is conceptualised and co-curated by the research team comprising Karthik Subramanian, Devarati Chakrabarti, and Sujeet George as part of a collaborative project between the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) under the Archives and Museums programme, and the IFP with the support of Tata Trusts.

According to the team, “Sleepwalker Archives” attempts to engage with the plenitude of archival material they have encountered at IFP in the form of archival photographs, herbarium specimens, card catalogues, maps, instruments, and a range of other miscellany. In the process, the exhibition explores the possibility of animating connections between these objects and the worlds contained in them in a spirit of play.

Among the exhibits is a translated work of the ‘Kurincipattu’ ,by Sangam-era poet Kapilar, whose 261-line poem includes descriptions of the flora of a mountain scape (kurinji)---the hill tracts, along with forests (mullai), agricultural lands (marudam), coastal terrain (neidal) and desert regions (palai).

“In a broad sense, the show puts the spotlight on two aspects of the IFP repository---its herbarium and photo archive that document life in the region across several decades”, said Karthik Subramanian, whose documentary on a similar theme is being screened at the adjacent hall.