Archives and Social Critique:The Kabir Project and the Website Ajab Shahar

【学術論文】
This paper focuses on the activities of the Kabir Project, which is building a web-based archive that includes poems by the 15th century poet Kabir, video recordings of musicians' performances, and a variety of interviews. The Kabir project started in 2003 as an art project of Shabnam Virmani, who has documented the performances of the musicians who sing Kabir's poems and produced documentary films and CD books on the subject. The project launched a website, Ajab Shahar, in 2020, where video, audio, and text data of recorded songs and interviews are available in a searchable format. This paper discusses how Ajab Shahar critiques contemporary society and the idea of the archive.