The colonial discovery of the stupas at Sanchi took place sometime in 1818 when General Taylor stumbled upon a ruin overrun with vegetation. Taylor’s wanderings brought into existence a site that appeared not to have existed for centuries. Curiosity regarding the hidden contents of the outwardly shapeless stupas prompted plunder that exceeded the structure’s tenacity. By 1851, when General Cunningham, who would go on to become the archaeological surveyor to the British government of India a decade later, dismantled parts of the stupa in search of what lay within, destruction had become the norm of engagement:
 
“The persons who tried to open the great Sanchi Tope in 1822 made a large breach on the south-west side, and carried the excavation to the foundation, but they failed in reaching the centre of the building. The Tope was thus partly ruined without any discovery having been made to repay its destruction.” [1]
 
While Cunningham seemed to be cognizant of the violence of the treasure-seekers, his search for buried valuables in turn violated the site’s structural logic. Of his own actions, Cunningham simply reported—“a shaft was sunk in the centre.” [2]
 
The excavation of history can be indistinguishable from the desire for possession.
 
After disappearances
 
The writing of art history in the not-West must contend with phantoms whose genealogies cannot be clearly traced. Some questions, among others: Do ideas exist if they have not been named? Can we inhabit a mode of thought in the absence of an existing structure? Can the destruction of the past continue as an invisible process into the present?
 
When Partha Chatterjee uses a possessive pronoun to claim a relationship with modernity, he multiplies and fractures the equation between aspiration and experience:
 
“There must be something in the very process of our becoming modern that continues to lead us, even in our acceptance of modernity, to a certain skepticism about its values and consequences.” [3]
 
While we are still looking for a sealed capsule of the past to unpack, the phantoms knock at our door. If we instead adopt destruction as a methodology, perhaps we can finally dance among the ruins?
 
No-context pedagogy [4]
 
Despite the absence of troves of evidence to construct a long history of performance art in the subcontinent, the desire to live in the contemporary moment cannot be supressed. While it may be possible to make claims about firsts, to find moments of origin, tracing networks that eviscerate anxieties of influence is also a current survival strategy. Nevertheless, a change in the method of excavation: As Mieke Bal asks while writing a preposterous history, “Who illuminates—helps us understand—whom?” [5]
 
Foraging in the forests of Kanha, for the “aesthetics of self-preservation,” Yasmin Jahan Nupur has been inhabiting transitory pedagogical frameworks that build upon the absence of formal structures. Some of her recent works have developed in workshops curated collectively by Nikhil Chopra, Jana Prepeluh, and Madhavi Gore. [6] Nupur’s actions address over and over again the complexities of moving within a non-existent pedagogical context, rearranging compatriots, friends, and mentors, and questioning the possibilities of teaching itself.
 
In a Santhal community centre, Nupur climbed up on a parapet close to the roof while members dance and made music below. Nupur created her own rhythm and gestures in the brackets of a folk performance. There is the desire to create perpendicular to tradition. The collaboration, Yanyeh (2016) acknowledges Nupur’s status as an uninvited guest, in white, trying to blend into the walls.
 
Then, reappearances

Yasmin Jahan Nupur, Relationship with Architecture, 2015. Performance at the Samdani Seminars 2015, Dhaka. Courtesy of the artist and Samdani Art Foundation. Photographer: Noor Photoface

Yasmin Jahan Nupur, Sat on a Chair, 2014. Performance at the Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka, 2014. Courtesy of the artist and Samdani Art Foundation.