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.
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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.
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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.
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The images in the performance are all created by hand—shot & developed, and some contact-printed, along with bearing imprints of physical interventions.
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Created with Simran Ankolkar and Karan Talwar at the Harkat Lab. Sound by Baan G.
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 other’s presence, we found room to express and absorb discontent—even rage—reflecting on how the heightened awareness of being ‘looked at’ has become almost internalised by our minds and bodies, which remain always conscious, always alert, always scanning our surroundings.
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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 men– occupying space to idle, with an ease and entitlement so unfamiliar to us– making us wonder where women go to be idle?
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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, unbothered and at leisure.
Ladies Log is both a documentation and an act of quiet defiance to take up space.
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It makes use of three 16mm projectors to project visuals shot on 16mm, hand-developed and bearing an imprint of physical interventions, along with found footage.
Created with Simran Ankolkar, Tanya Dixit and Sheba Alexander at the Harkat Lab.
Sequence Tree
2021 | 16mm multi-projection performance
What began as an exchange of filmic “letters” with the members of Labo K, France, culminated in creating a performance together during their visit to Bombay–interpreting, exploring, and reimagining bodies, landscapes, fragments from half-forgotten dreams as hand-processed images created using 16mm cameras.
It was first performed live at 16mm Film Festival 2021, with live sound by Frank Law, and again at Festival Oodaaq - Rennes, in May 2022.
