Directed Interdisciplinary Studio - Reflection on Assignment 1 - In Relation

Kevin Ilango

This process of learning from each other was very immersive because our group opted for a
level of informality. Our conversations encompassed decolonisation, indigenous ways of
knowing, and in a self-conscious way, we also addressed our own relation to these subjects by
being mindful of our contemporary social positions, and how in striving towards a decolonised
path of making, how do we unify our varying perspectives and see the parallels and inter-
connectedness of our experiences.

With all of us being rooted in our physical environments and locations, our method of finding a
common subject for observance tilted towards the season. Seasonal changes occur
everywhere, however, an autumn in one place may look like the late winter somewhere else, yet
while not being the same, there is fluidity, there is experiential acknowledgment of flow, and
because there is flow, there can also be overlap. Overlap is everywhere, and when one is
sensitive to the omnipresence of overlap, there is conversation.

We four also found ourselves speaking of Kakfa, with Youssef planting the first seed through
his usage of the word “metamorphosis”. We pulled at this seed and nurtured it, further
discussing Kafka’s “Letter to an Academy”, perhaps one of the earliest contemporary critiques
of colonialism through its commentary on the colonisation of the mind from Central-Eastern
Europe.

I think it important to point out, despite none of us really being filmmakers or with a specified
focus on video as a medium, our discussions very organically moved into a space where we
began sharing videos to communicate our symbolic interpretations of surroundings, and the
changes in them being reflective of the changes in us as our conversations became deeper. I
find this particularly interesting because Kafka too entered a phase of his writing life which he
described as “thinking in images”.

As our conversations progressed, we began sharing our work, our ways of making, projects we
had been proud of and held dear. In particular, Angela had shown us a quilt she had made
which honoured the lives taken systemically by a very recently uncovered horror of colonialism.
As her way of making is more tactile compared to the rest of us, I realised I too could benefit
from attempting to make with material that is not confined to the surface of a screen or the
dimensions of a sheet of paper. I felt in this moment, Angela had handed me thread, and as
Leighton had put it so eloquently, we are all now in a process of interweaving ourselves with
each other.

I began knitting with my mother in my last days in India, discussing with her how the group was
so dynamic simply because of the way we are as people. It reminded me of an essay in The
New Yorker I had read many years ago, Tim Kreider’s “I Know What You Think of Me”, its
conclusion was essentially that if we want to be loved, we must allow ourselves to be known.

In parallel, I also began thinking of a quote by the designer and painter Josef Albers: “Color, in
my opinion, behaves like man in two distinct ways: first in self-realization and then in realization
of relationships with others.”

I feel the lesson of this assignment has been two fold in that way, we all know ourselves better
now, because we allowed ourselves to be interpreted by others. We may all make differently,
and distinctly, but because of how we are different, we have become one.