Weaving Lights

What do cheque books, film prints, audio tapes, postal stamps, IBM cards, packaging sheets and textile designs have in common? The system of perforation as their main organising principle. Weaving Light is a project of illuminating the perforation holes of Jacquard punching cards into contemporary lived-in forms. These cards that systemised the handloom operation were first evolved by the French craftsman Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804. Jacquard card is perforated paper where each hole is used to thread one fiber into the loom. The cards or simply put, the system of weaving through pre-designed network of perforations, survived the technological evolution when the labour-intensive handloom got converted into machine-based power loom. Jacquard cards, as the blue prints, were fed into the machines and that determined the design. But in the conversion to the digital the perforated holes are now being replaced by the system of pixels. The essential ideas of modern computers are to be found in Babbage’s Analytical Engine, programmed using a principle openly borrowed from the Jacquard loom. Ada Lovelace described as the first computer programmer describes the engine’s programming by punch cards, she wrote: “We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.” The Jacquard weaving of Bangalore, developed under the patronage of Royal family of Mysore, was a clan and location-based craft and the skill was passed on from one generation to the other. The evolution from hand crafted textile to power loom to digital mass production is paralleled by the change of status of the weavers from clan-based craftsmen to industrial labour to footloose urban migrants. Digital industry does not require the village infrastructure or inherited knowledge and skill. Hence the production sites are shifted to urban centres resulting in migration of the artisans. In the shift from craftsman to wage labour, one of the first losses is legacy – legacy of knowledge, legacy of memory, legacy of belonging. In the ecology of human cohabitation this loss of relevance and social status for the weavers are balanced by the increasing affordability and accessibility of mass produced textiles. In the handloom practice design-based textiles were high end luxury items. The earlier custom was to engage two weavers to one handloom. Whereas in the power loom factories one unit of 18-20 looms are handled by one person. Which obviously reduced the cost, even after extracting phenomenal profit by the factory owners. This dichotomy plays an important role in the case of India which is densely populated and live simultaneously in multiple economic phases – pre-industrialisation, industrialisation and post-industrialisation. Like the Jacquard textile the city of Bangalore has also transformed from a sleepy colonial and cantonment town to a dense digital industry hub in the 21st century. New digital labour, employed in the service industry, are now thronging into the city. The old order of small industries, low-res colonial architecture, community-based practices, expanded bazaars, and artisanal crafts – a curious mix of the 20th century urbanity and vernacular cultures – is disappearing. Jacquard cards used in this installation are collected directly from the textile artisans who have migrated to the city Bangalore. The cards are used as bricks to create an architectural cube or a pixel with perforation.

Installation Views

Jacquard perforated punching cards (plastic/cardboard) and timer lights
Variations | 2009 -2024

Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present, 2023

Research 

Jacquard perforated punching cards (plastic/cardboard) and timer lights
Variations | 2009 -2024

The industrialised production of textile in Bangalore began at the end of the 19th century with migrant workers. Around the first world war emerged a huge demand for textile products and the factories increased the working hours. In return the workers demanded rise in pay and other facilities. Some of the demands were accepted by the factory owners. But soon after the war the market went down and the facilities were cut. Thus began Bangalore’s tryst with labour politics. In 1926 there was large scale workers’ protest organised by the Binny Mills employees.