FILM PERFORMANCES

Laal Aasmaan, Hara Gulaab, Neeli Dharti

Fragments of unfinished verses swirl in an orbit, finding their way to each other, bewitched. They dance for a while, hand in hand, and then drop to the ground- to catch a breath, a smile, a moment in time; to sit together. Content. Then they get up to dance again before they say their goodbyes. 

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 – what all can a film be. 

With this expanded cinema performance, the intent is to break form, and to just 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.

Performed by Namrata Sanghani, Simran Ankolkar and Karan Talwar. 

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

Women projectionists open windows to their lived experiences in public spaces. The performance involves visuals from three live 16mm film projections unfolding over a clothesline, all interacting with each other and a physical performer to form a larger picture. Clothes become screens and screens become clothes as we reflect on how women see and what we experience. The performance is an attempt to take up space, to claim an act that is conventionally male dominated, and to manifest our dreams.

Performed by Namrata Sanghani, Tanya Dixit, Simran Ankolkar and Sheba Alexander.

Sequence Tree 

This performance was created in collaboration with Labo K during their visit to Mumbai for the 16mm Film Festival 2021. After an initial exchange of filmic “letters”, artists from both labs spent 10 days at the Harkat Lab creating a final film together, as a continuation of the letters. What emerged was an expanded cinema performance, exploring bodies, landscapes, dreams, all integrated with live sound by Frank Law (of Labo K).

Four 16mm projectors broadcast overlapping images on the same screen. The images meet, fade away and merge: a kaleidoscope of moving images. The multiple appearances and disappearances of the images give rise to a singular, unexpected, ephemeral creation.

Performed at the 16mm film festival and Festival Obskura, Rennes

What if I say ‘prayog’ instead of experimental? | Cultural lexicons shaping moving images

(A Lecture-Performance)

16mm film projectors, a slide projector, an analog bioscope and a live performer – performing a live projection experiment incorporating the audience as a facilitator and viewer – on how cultural lexicons might shift and change the process of making and the image itself.

Shown at Oberhausen Film Festival, 2022