The handmade aesthetic of block print textiles is an enduring element in India’s marketplaces even as the craft’s production timelines conflict with fashion industry demands. Making the textiles is characterised as ‘slow’ by both heritage printers in the town of Bagru, Rajasthan and industry buyers from nearby Jaipur and beyond who purchase the cloth. Consequently, alternative printing methods that reproduce the block print style using less time, effort and cost are often deployed instead. In this presentation, I will consider the ethical stakes of slow craft time (Sennet 2008) by comparing understandings and experiences of timelines in Rajasthan’s textile industry across arenas of production, livelihood, and aesthetics. I propose that intersections and divergences in timelines and forms of temporal materiality are critical to the viability of textile crafts in India’s fashion industry.  

Meherose Borthwick is an anthropologist focusing on aesthetics, kinship, and gender and craft, textile, and fashion supply chains in South Asia. She is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Research in Health at the University of New South Wales, working across two projects: one investigating social aspects of homemade, amateur, and DIY creativity, and another exploring the role of public libraries in mediating digital inequality in Australia. Her research approach combines participant observation, interviews, and visual methods of film and photography. She is co-founder and convenor of Sydney South Asia Society, a network for Higher Degree Research students and Early Career Researchers focusing on South Asia and its diaspora.
 

In person: Room TBC 

Zoom link: https://anu.zoom.us/j/82431454032?pwd=owA39nWqTYm2TGOcC0sWa9bEDVangD.1

This seminar is supported by the ANU South Asian Research Institute (SARI)