imitation

Video-Projection, Broken-Bucket Speaker
Part of ContainerSpeak multiple-channel setup
2022


In the video—the child, positioned on top of sound-system-cart, covers their ears to protect themselves from the impact of loud-speakers; but soon, reluctantly imitates an adult dancing senseless to the same noise.

Oppressed-caste people often imitate their oppressors in the aspiration of becoming ‘Cultured’, but it this very imitation, which sustains their oppression.

The compliance is celebrated on streets in criminally loud volumes—in fact, the audio of the street-procession seen in the video was recorded from inside a house roughly 350 meters away from the scene.

The loudness dissociates the bodies from hearing their own thoughts, re-activating materially, the mundane-taboo that the oppressed must only comply without thinking for themselves.

The work is part of ContainerSpeak multiple-channel setup; the audio of the work is re-produced by a Broken-Bucket, expressing the oppressed-caste self as a broken container.
Audio-Video: Kashyap
Audio Technology: Banana Apparatus: Ishan and Saurav
Montage: Kashyap
Multiple-channel Program: Saloni
Installation developed at Serendipity Arts Residency 2022
Shown at Serendipity, Delhi and Goa, 2022