Anday Chai Garam Ham Hai Besharam

2019

Concept Statement

Interactive Two Channel Video, Installation, Projection, Kinect Sensor

This two-channel interactive video comprises of found footage taken from the Bollywood film Jaagruti and the Pakistani film called Bedaar. Both the video songs reference national heroes, martyrs and landscapes of national importance to lay claims on territories that are otherwise overlapping abstractions. When played in a two-channel format, their audio-video exhibits an uncanny resemblance that humorously overlaps, cross-references, problematizes and puts to erasure their own narratives. Such absurd, humourous, and uncanny hyper-nationalist self-praise and self-proclamation is a common experience, especially in the politics of nation-states, here specifically of India and Pakistan. The viewer's body is transposed onto the video using an Xbox sensor, which further creates tension between the video and the viewer, especially when viewed collectively. The pixelated and rupturing presence of the viewers in the video evokes the questions of gaze, docile citizens, the viewer and the viewed in juxtaposition with the uncanny absurdity of the two-channel video and its hyper-nationalist narrative.

Images

Film