Conversation Pieces from the Museum of Unrest
Featuring: Naiza Khan, Lilophilia, Naho Matsuda, David Palacios, John Phillips
Secrets from the Nautical Almanac 1966
In the ruin of the Weather Observatory building on Monora Island, Karachi, I found old manuscripts, and detailed weather reports. There were tide tables that charted the movements of the Indian Ocean and nautical almanacs from British India and post-Partition.
The nautical almanacs contained advertisements of communication equipment. The images were remarkable examples of mid- 1960s design aesthetic. They seemed to veil the anxiety of cold war surveillance and speak of a time before globalisation.
The almanac pages were bookworm eaten, creating images of inverse island in a solid sea.
The bookworm felt like an active agent- creating its own metanarrative through the pages. It was as though the periods’ transactional visions and utopian promises were being eaten away relentlessly.
Khan’s multi-disciplinary practice is built on a process of critical research, documentation and mapping-based exploration. Through a range of media, including drawing, archival material and film, she brings together ideas of embodiment and ecology. Her work looks at geography as a heterogeneous assemblage of power, colonial history and collective memory.
This series of prints was produced by londonprintstudio using a combination letterpress, chine-collé and laser cutting.