Knots in Time
Installation- thread, video, photographs
Dimensions: variable
2017- in-progress
Display at What About Art? Residency, Mumbai, India
As an attempt at holding time through knots, this work consists of four months of fragmented moments. Each knot denotes a moment and the thread becomes a physical embodiment of time. Time is slowed down to stretch the extensions of the thread as they knot (see video), holding and releasing the fragmented moments/time with every movement of the hand, from coherence to incoherence, from an unhindered clew of thread to the discoloured tangles that gather a touched or experienced time.
This accumulation of time by knotting the thread has a ritualistic and performative duration; similar to the process of ritualistic counting or circumambulating. It also simulates an obsessive behaviour of touching something a number of times or walking in a compulsive manner to dodge the edges of the tiles. These repetitions are seen in different aspects of life and at varying intensities, at some places they get assimilated in culture and religious frameworks to get normalised, while elsewhere they become peculiar and construed as abnormal.
The knots suspend time as they keep accumulating it with addition of more thread– a never ending process that pregnates time with every knot.