Archana Hande in conversation with Katie Dyer

Bangalore and Bombay-based artist, curator and organiser Archana Hande joins Artspace Senior Curator Katie Dyer in conversation to discuss the intertwined histories of analogue computing and the vast, transnational textile industry and digitisation. 

The birth of modern computation is often imagined against a backdrop of tireless academic experimentation or covert military operations, yet there is another, equally compelling origin: weaving. In 1804, the French merchant Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a programmable loom that mechanically incorporated intricate patterns via coded punchcards. This system of perforated cards both led the way for the world’s first computers and radically changed the nature of labour in the textile industry, eventually leading to a series of workers’ uprisings in Europe and South Asia. 

Outlining the entangled relationships between industrialisation, automation, migration and resistance movements, Hande asks how the dynamics of proto-computing industries might reemerge in the production of today’s digital technologies.