The chronological narrative of JP’s journey through life is depicted in the various galleries in almost all mediums imaginable. In essence, these experiences are not communicated and created merely through a display of artefacts, but through a sequence of static, dynamic, sensorial and experiential moments that include his belongings, furniture, letters, and illustrations, poems and songs, oral archives, stories, infographics, and many other user interfaces.
Project Name: Museum of socialism, Lucknow
Studio Name: Archohm
These appeal to wider and universal audiences– ranging from the elderly to the children, from the common man to the learned scholar, from the newcomer to the seasoned traveller. Despite the chartered sequence of events, visitors are encouraged to interpret the museum by choosing their own routes. The intended experience is meant to be a holistic, meaningful, subjective and dynamic episode of a certain length of time. During this, there is an apparent integration; a weaving together of sights, sounds, thoughts, feelings, actions and emotions in such a way that the visit is stored in their memory to be remembered, relived and narrated to others.
The journey both literal and allegoric is all about movement. Physical navigation of space makes exhibits dynamic; the kinetics of a straight or meandering, leisurely or abrupt, fast or slow-movement means a constant shifting of the relationship to contexts created by the exhibits. The spatial distribution actively contributes to the deeply immersive museum experience, but is interspersed with pauses, intersections, ramps and staircases, entrances and exits; these twists and turns coupled with transient context make the journey come alive. They possibly even induce a measure of disorientation, giving visitors a feeling of déjà vu or of something about to happen that very moment.
This is essential to make the experience as natural and close to reality as possible and to support the strategy of simultaneously narrated multiple story-lines. The employment of various versions of events and circumstances through a diversity of mediums serves a dual purpose; it helps to retain the interest in a theme and keeps it open for interpretation. The narratives talk about the everyday reality of ordinary people whose time, space, and life-experience at some point merges with that of the JP. Stories emerging from illustrations, photographs, installations—both abstract as kinetic and sound sculptures, and literal ones as the objects used by him in his life, become emblematic to the celebration of socialism. They are also integrated into the concept of space-making; from the site responses, facades, form and volumes to the light, ventilation, and elements of articulation as materials, structure, scale and proportion, without seeming didactic.
