laal aasmaan, hara gulaab, neeli dharti | 2024
16mm multi-projection performance
Fragments of unfinished verses swirl in an orbit, finding their way to each other, bewitched. Images from the past, present and future, all collide to construct wild imaginations. Colors form, hide and show; pass through images, like shadows of clouds. Fleeting.
With this expanded cinema performance, the intent is to break form, and to simply play or dance. To stay in the moment and to transcend with its passing. To arrive in transition. With three 16mm projectors and projectionists as live performers, we enter worlds of visual juxtapositions, photo chemical experiments and engage with the mediums of theatre, mechanics and chemistry.
The images in the performance are all created by hand â shot & developed, and some contact-printed, by the makers, along with physical interventions. Created with Namrata Sanghani and Karan Talwar, at the Harkat Lab. Sound by Baan G.
Laal aasmaan, hara gulaab, neeli dharti previewed at the India Art Fair YCP opening in January 2024, and has since been performed at Harkat Studios, and later at L'Etna - Paris, Festival Obskura - Rennes, Worm - Rotterdam, Labos Berlin and Crater Lab - Barcelona, as part of the Harkat Summer Tour'24.
ladies log | 2022
16mm multi-projection performance
Ladies Log emerged from long, languid afternoons spent together on a shared rooftop, talking about our experiences as women navigating and negotiating public spaces. In each otherâs presence, we found room to express and absorb discontentâeven rageâreflecting on how the heightened awareness of being âlooked atâ has become almost internalised by our minds and bodies. We ventured out with our cameras with an intent to observe and document the public landscapes in the city. The sights we encountered in the process were mostly dominated by the presence of menâ occupying space to idle, with an ease and entitlement so unfamiliar to usâ making us wonder where women go to be idle?
While performing this piece, we transform the stage into a rooftop, a space both private and exposed. Using clothes drying on a laundry line as our screens, three projectionists loop and overlap images, revealing what we witnessed in our process of documentation, while a performer idles on stage, at leisure. Ladies Log is both a documentation and an act of quiet defiance to take up space.
The visuals are all shot on 16mm film, hand-developed by the makers, along with the use of physical interventions and found footage â created with Namrata Sanghani, Tanya Dixit and Sheba Alexander, at the Harkat Lab.
Ladies Log previewed at Alpavirama Film Festival 2022, NID, and has since been performed at Harkat Studios' 16mm Film Festival 2022, Serendipity Arts Festival 2022, Goa, and Kathiwada City House in Mumbai.
sequence tree | 2021
16mm multi-projection performance
Created in collaboration with members of Labo K, France. What began as an exchange of filmic âlettersâ, culminated in creating a performance together during their visit to the Harkat Lab in Bombay â interpreting, exploring, and reimagining bodies, landscapes, fragments from half-forgotten dreams as hand-processed images, created using 16mm cameras, bnw film and contact printing methods.
It was first performed live at the 16mm Film Festival 2021, with live sound by Frank Law, and then at Festival Oodaaq - Rennes, in May 2022.