Kehkashan

The climax of the Untold Edition was probably December 2018. I saw that tour around Karachi as the culmination of all the events preceding it. I also saw it as one of the resolutions of my project proposal. Yet something still nagged me…

I had named the entire series The Untold Edition, based off the idea of a book, a narrative, and somewhere along the way I had imagined I would turn the video footage into a documentary or write a book about my experiences. But that felt unnatural. The Untold Edition wasn’t an anthology or a documentary, and forcing it into that mould would have been unfair. So I set this idea aside. Still, the idea of only presenting clips of the footage at the final show didn’t please me. It was an option that definitely arose out of being an online student and trying to find the most convenient way to present my work.

Ideally? Imagine a similar collaboration coming to London. But that was impossible, as I mentioned to my classmates during Symposium 2. To pull off such events requires months of planning, months of reaching out to people; and it requires an in depth knowhow of the place you are working in. I had none of these with regards to London.

But Steph suggested even then that she would have liked to see some form of that collaboration in the final show. I agreed with her. She insisted that perhaps the collaboration could be done abroad and brought to London instead? That got me thinking…

Here, a couple of ideas began to merge into one. I had been keeping visual journals of sorts throughout Unit 1 and Unit 2. Some were filled with ugly lines and doodles, others with inspirational quotes in coloured pencils. I wasn’t presenting this part of my process at the final show at all. The Untold Edition anthology didn’t come to life, but perhaps a visual scrapbook, pieced together by pictures, words and memories of myself and the artists involved, would present the collaboration and my practice of a visual journal both? The most complex thing about my practice was how it spanned several places at one time. So to cement this collaboration I reached out to an artist in Jeddah who works with leather and bookbinding. I asked her to create The Untold Edition journal, a unique and handmade book representing yet another collaboration. I then reached out to all the people who had worked with me in the past and asked them to send in images and thoughts to be compiled into this book.

I start work on this book today. Just heading to the art store to pick up some scrapbooking materials. The part I’m most excited about? The book will have several blank pages at the end and the exhibit will be accompanied by a pen. I want people who visit the exhibit in London to leave their own words in The Untold Edition.