Allied Design 2022-23
Bricolage as a Method
The Uncanny Library
Bricolage is the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available. We looked at the aesthetics, mechanics, politics and spatiality of bricoleur’s practices along with the biography of the bricoleurs through examples in Art and architecture. Building one’s own practice of bricolage we developed the idea of an exquisite corpse coming together in the form of a garden through 5 tropes.
The homely and unhomely with the house without walls, the ghost mattress and the clothes hanging above from the experiences of dhobi ghat, the library of strange books with a bricolage of benches, the ghostly feast table, woven chairs, the endless chair, grandfather’s portrait by Neha, a panoply of food from 10 sites making an alternate map of the city, the leather cutlery, the associational games from sites in Mulund, the silent wind chime and the body as inhabitation with a quilted dress, a garden that one can wear.
The process of forming a bricoleur's practice started by going on derives in the city where the concept of temporary libraries getting set up at street edges was observed and various forms of the same were noted. Another key thing that was observed was the way discarded furniture was transformed and utilized on the street. Combing these two tropes the idea of an uncanny library was formed. The image on the side depicts the imagination of this library being set up in a garden. The trope of a library explores the setting up of a library through the uncanny. The books hanging from the clothesline with the help of the clothespin bring out associations of Dhobi Ghat.
The hanging library
The love seat
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The stool with a back-rest
The two-way chair
Each piece of furniture that you see lying on the street has its social life and evolution of being used and re-paired by multiple users. In shops, people have their ways of making and re-making chairs, stools with whatever is available at hand. We repaired old, discarded chairs and a stool by adding on prosthetic pieces that completely transformed the furniture thus giving them a new life.