174. Seating Histories

BIC TALKS

Are you sitting down? Have you thought of what you are sitting on? What your favourite chair’s history is? Why do certain seats make us feels a certain way and make us gravitate towards them in a room?

A whole spectrum of history, design, culture, discipline, identities, object study and geographical context are often located in the various kinds of seating that we now may not necessarily be aware of. To remedy this, in this episode of BIC Talks designer independent researcher Nia Thandapani speaks with graphic artist and researcher Sarita Sundar on her newest research project and collection of essays edited by her, From the Frugal to the Ornate: Stories of the Seat in India, which by deconstructing the seat, reflects upon the marked shift in the way practitioners, users, and analysts conceptualise and engage with object culture, and a subsequent ‘turn to the material’.

Sarita Sundar has tested many seats in her career as designer, design historian, and studied observer of the visual world. Testing one such seat, which had a personal significance—her grandfather’s charukassela, or reclining chair—might well have triggered her keen interest in material culture and objects; to ferret out why they take the shape they take, who conceived them as this way or that, what gave these ‘things’ agency, and why. Collaborating with Sarita on the research and outcomes of this project is the Godrej Archives, the Godrej group’s business archive, as part of its various engagements with art and culture.