Another Empty House

How Kerala's relationship to media, materiality & the Gulf shapes vacant houses.

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ANOTHER EMPTY HOUSE

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Another Empty House

Research Display – Jameel Library Commission Check out our online research, commissioned by Jameel Library, looking into why so many homes in Kerala are sitting empty. It dives into the economic, patriarchal, and capitalist dynamics behind this issue.

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ONE-DISH PARTIES “READING” GROUP SERIES

We held a series of “reading” groups connecting with other young Malayali creatives in the UAE. We discuss books, movies, and songs that are relevant to Kerala’s history or the Gulf Malayali experience. 

We have discussed the following:

MOVIE: Elippathayam (1982)

MOVIE: The Great Indian Kitchen (2021)

BOOK: Kerala: The Paradoxes of Public Action & Development by Joseph Tharamangalam (2006)

BOOK: The Ivory Throne  by Manu S. Pillai (2016)

MUSIC: Pravasi by Nomadic Voice (2020)

THEATER: Ottan Thullal traditional Arts (18th century)

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DREAM HOUSE WORKSHOP SERIES

Ongoing zine workshops where we share our research and a series of prompts that asked attendees to fill their zines with their ideas of the “dream house” not just as a safe space but a site based off of complexities around division, aspirations, traumas, pride, performance, and shame.

“The common representation of ‘home’ in popular discourse as a sacred, celebratory space of security and maximum individual autonomy is far too simplistic and underplays how much of a contested site and a locus of power relations homes can be.” - Akma Haseena Nazar

We have a growing collection of all of the zines that attendees have created over each workshop.

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ZINE: IDH POLE | LIKE THIS ONLY (2021)

This zine gives you a sneak peak into some of the conversations between the architect and homeowner and how they negotiate the design process. The references shared over whatsapp hints at the Gulf influence, houses in media, interior design trends, and aspirations. 

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ZINE: DETERIORATING DIMENSIONS (2022)

The “Empty House” isn't necessarily empty because it is void of people. Nature takes over, mold grows on walls, spiders makes nests, plants grow in the cracks, and dust marks its territory on every surface. 

This zine collages images of a depleted house, and rubbings of its surfaces that have been take over by organic life. This is layered with quotes from conversations we’ve had and books we have read over this project.

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PLAYLIST: NON STOP പായൽ (2022)

The house is a projection of Kerala's toxic masculinity, power and ownership. Paint adverts, be it Berger or Asian Paints, reinforces the dependance of the home owner's pride and self worth on the maintenance of the house. These adverts become obsessed with getting rid of enemy #1 algae, staking its claim on the home owners pride. 

Outside of the visuals, remixed contemporary Malayalam songs also plays an important role in talking about themes like the gaze, man Vs nature, patriotism, performativity, and aspiration.

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ARTWORK: WINDOW GRILLS

Window grills are beautiful handcrafted metal works loaded with meaning and are integral design elements in the Kerala house. The change in grills patterns can symbolise how our relationship to houses have changed over the years. They represent labour, craft, and class.

In this series, we specifically look at window grills from empty Gulf Malayali houses. The expensive permanent metal structure alludes to pride, invisible boundaries, and an unwillingness to change in an ever-changing unsustainable broken system.

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ARTWORK: WEIGHT OF EMPTINESS (2021)

Directed and edited by Zahra Mansoor, videography by Naseef Abdul Kader, rubbings by Shahnaz Hashim, sound by Juneida Abdul Jabber, and poem by Iqbal Shamz. This work was supported by Rumman collective. “According to the 2011 Census data, about 11% (1.19 million) houses in Kerala lie vacant. This is much higher than the national average of 7.45%.” - 2011 census study The Weight of Emptiness is a video collage from the perspective of the house. Still shots are overlaid with textured rubbings of deteriorating walls and rusting pipes, a poem by Iqbal Shamz and a hollow and chaotic soundtrack that reinforces the repetition of cyclical emptiness. This video explores how houses in Kerala experience time relatively through periodic annual cycles of when it is occupied during the summer and winter vacations by Gulf Malayalees, and when left abandoned for the remainder of the year. The 3 minute video represents a year, with every 15 seconds representing one month. During the holidays, the flow of time is fast and chaotic. Whereas in a month in which the house is not occupied, the house experiences time slower, where loneliness and emptiness festers and brews from it’s neglected spaces.

You can find:

- The poem by Iqbal Shamz here:

Poem in malayalam script.jpg

- A translation of the poem here:

English translation and Transliteration

English translation emptiness those who say the House is small don't know the migrant’s Emptiness Heaviness they say At the very lea

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ARTWORK: EMPTY BIOTIC CYCLES

Each second of this 12 second stop motion animation explores a month of the year. From the perspective of Kerala's vacant domestic houses, we experiment with the idea of how the house experiences time through the annual cycles of when it is occupied and when it is left abandoned. The pace of the video plays with the relative passage of time and the ephemerality of an empty house. Featuring edited rubbings of different surfaces, this video documents what an empty house must feel like. Capturing evidence of neglect and abandonment, these rubbings look at the deteriorating surfaces like moldy walls, broken tiles, and rusty pipes. Rather than humans leaving marks behind in their homes, living organisms like rodents and insects take ownership of the ‘empty’ house. Here emptiness is not silent and still, but loud and chaotic.

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ARTWORK: REVIVED

The film photographs document interior and exterior spaces of a tharavadu (ancestral house) just before it is cleaned and prepared for it’s quarantining guests. These Gulf Malayali houses were previously left empty until the onset of the pandemic, which saw a lot of migrants travelling back to their countries. 

The negative and positives spaces holds the void and emptiness that embody this house. Nature in the form of plants, dust, and algae occupies these corners of the house. Now that we are back, we try to clean and claim back the space.