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. They meet each other in dark alleys, and kiss, and melt. Like a flirt with the mysticism of cinema. It’s a film made in the moment, an image at a time. Where bodies constructing the visuals are as much the performance as the images themselves. Cinema expands, perception transforms, colours dissolve.

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.

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.

The images in the performance are all created by hand — 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.