![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This photo-essay sutures and structures a massive pool of images emerging out of an art-project conducted by the author, CAMP Studio, Mumbai, and Kenneth Cyrus (cinematographer), in the context of Response, CIMA 25th Anniversary show, held during January-February 2018 in Kolkata. The project negotiated the multi-planar history of the city, and thus, by emphasizing on its heterogeneity, recreated a visual record of its chronotopia (Also see Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces’, 22–27). The process was possible by setting up a camera on top of a defunct theatre – Gem (Entally, AJC Bose Road); and, by shooting ceaselessly for over 10 days an immersive and 360-degree time-space movement was generated. The project was first streamed live and thereafter, the edited material was staged inside the theatre, with which the (local) people/participants interacted. A play between recorded events and liveliness, the video (1 hour) brought forth multiple memories of the place (Gem), the locality and adjacent spaces, as well as a range of narratives of regarding noted and trifling events. The project involved a cinematic journey through the cityscape, and an engaging and challenging artistic quest by exploring the ‘kino-eye’. The omniscient camera-eye provoked us to become intimate with our immediate and distant contexts, and produced a dense tapestry of the city.
Acknowledgments
Shaina Anand, Kenneth Cyrus, Rakhi Sarkar, Pratiti Sarkar, Manas Acharya, Ashok Sukumaran, CAMP Studio, Mumbai, CIMA, Kolkata.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Lefebvre, Writings on Cities, 227.
2. Vertov “We: Variant of a Manifesto,” 5–9.
3. See Mennel, Cities and Cinema.
4. Also see Turvey, “Can the Camera See?”
5. See Jenks, “The Centrality of Eye in Western Culture,” 1–25.
6. Gunning, “Exterior as Intérieur,” 112.
7. Ibid, 126.
8. Ibid, 127.
9. See https://studio.camp/events/Gem/.
10. See: https://pad.ma/JNM/info.
11. On Chowringhee area take a quick view here: https://puronokolkata.com/tag/chowringhee/.
12. See Nair, “Growth and Development of Old Calcutta,” 10–23, in Chaudhuri ed. Calcutta, The Living City (Vol. 1) for a study on the city’s spatial orientation.
13. The Metropolitan Building was formally known as Whiteway Laidlaw store – a popular place to visit, during the British period. At present it is fenced by quite a few newer shopping malls, arcades, and under-construction high-rises. The building was constructed in 1905; however, it was virtually destroyed by fire in 1991. Moreover, the rich and vast archive of Bourne and Shepherd, one of the oldest photographic studios of the world that was set up in 1863, was almost entirely lost in that devastating fire.
14. See Chattopadhyay, Representing Calcutta on the planning and architectural design on Kolkata.
15. Particularly debated is the growth of South of Kolkata following Partition and migration of the “refugees” from what became “East Pakistan” after 1947.
16. Especially see Chatterjee’s The Black Hole of Empire for a thorough study of the structures of power, and Banerjee’s The Parlours and the Streets for a complex reading of cultural tussles.
17. Besides the famed ‘Trilogies’ by the influential directors like Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen (who made four films on the city and its political turmoil), and the landmark novels, short stories and poems, I am specifically thinking of Bikash Bhattacharjee’s paintings, and Kabir Suman’s (then Chattopadhyay) groundbreaking musical ablum Tomake Chai (1992).
18. During February, 2017, I participated in ‘Kolkata Arts Festival’, and executed a large scale multi-media art installation titled House of Fire, which was divided into three segments. This site-specific installation, was held at Gem cinema. The first work titled ’Trail’, was a recreation of Sholay’s (1975) poster, in acrylic on metal that was reframed with lights, which refracted through mirror-finish acrylic place opposite the art work. It was placed at the grand stairway of Gem. Second, ’Ladies in a Box’ was set inside the Gem cinema ’Box’ seating space, and it presented a video and a (stereophonic) sound project, which were intercepted by bluish lights placed on the floor. It explored the intimate associtaions of the audience (women), and the memory of going to cinema. Finally, the main work titled ’Fire, Echo, Movement’ was installed at the Balcony space and involved video projection on the dilapidated wall (with a lifeless tree). It placed art objects (creeated out of woord, metal, glass, plastic) and lights amidst remnants of the theatre seats, which were thus, reimagined as ’tombstones’. It highlighted the many passages of the film Sholay (1975), and public cultures. The site specific installation included lights, sculptural objects, sound and video. See: https://www.telegraphindia.com/1170218/jsp/opinion/story_136278.jsp.
19. Also see Mukherjee, “Not so regal show-houses of Calcutta.”
20. On Sholay see Mukherjee, “The Singing Cowboys.”
21. Also see Srinivas, “Cinema Halls, Locality and Urban Life.”
22. See Dutta, Bhaumik and Shivkumar, edited Project Cinema City for an exhaustive study of cinema’s material and labour history.
23. Also see Bandyopadhyay, “Politics of Archiving.”
24. Also Manovich, “The poetics of urban media surfaces” (https://firstmonday.org/article/view/1545/1460), accessed on October 22 2018.
25. See https://studio.camp/events/Evening/.
26. Particularly see Caluya’s critical note, “The post-Panoptic Society?”
27. Ravetto-Biagioli, “Shadowed by Images,” 123.
28. Macdougall, The Corporeal Image, 4.
29. Lefebvre ‘The Specificity of the City’, 101.
30. See Lyon ed., Theorizing Surveillance.
31. For further reading see
32. Mohanan, “Ways of Being Seen,”, 560–561.
33. For an overview on the subject see Marx’s, “Surveillance Studies,” 733–741.
34. For the theoretical framework see, Chatterjee ed., The Small Voice of History.
35. See Mansfield’s unpublished dissertation “Calcutta, from Fort to City.”
36. See Chatterjee, The Black Hole of Empire.
37. See Banerjee, Memories of Roads.
38. Also see Chattopadhyay, Representing Calcutta.
39. On Kolkata food cultures see Choudhury, “A Palatable Journey through the Pages,”
40. See Banerjee, “The world of Ramjan Ostagar,” 76–84; and also see De Haan, “Migrant Workers and Industrial Capitalism in Calcutta.”
41. Banerjee Memories of Roads, 41.
42. Ibid., 48.
43. See https://digitalknowledgecentre.in/listings/chetana-adult-education-through-radio/ (accessed 23 March 2019).
44. See the engaging art project/video game based on Rokeya’s famous story “Sulatana’s Dream” (published in 1905) – https://www.entersultanasreality.com/.
45. Also see Chanda and Baghchi, edited Shaping the Discourse.
46. See Barnita Bagchi, “Towards Ladyland”; and Jasodhara Bagchi, “Socialising the girl child in colonial Bengal.”
47. See my presentation on the subject here: https://pad.ma/JQM/player/00:01:12.438 (accessed on 14 November 2018). Paper titled: “A Train Arrives at Sealdah Station: The Curious Case of Film Scholarship,” presented at the International Seminar, ‘Fwd: Re: Archive’, organized by Pad.ma and Indiancine.ma, Mumbai, during March, 2018 at Goethe Institut, Mumbai.
48. See Mukherjee, “House of Images, Sealdah.”
49. See Chatterji, Bengal Divided.
50. See Halder’s article “Following the Sacred Graves” https://cafedissensus.com/2016/07/19/following-the-sacred-graves-image-voice-fragrance-at-the-mazars-of-kolkata/ (accessed on 19 September 2018).
51. Banerjee, “The March of the Mega-City,” 94.
52. Also see Ghosh, “The Demography of Calcutta” in Sukanta Chaudhuri ed. Calcutta, The Living City (Vol. II), 50–61.
53. Banerjee, “The March of the Mega-City,” 95.
54. See Mukherjee, “Narratives of Development in South Asia” (http://tmp.kaurab.com/madhuja-narratives-2.html) accessed on 9 April 2018.
55. See a brief overview by Sircar on “The Chinese of Calcutta” in Chaudhuri ed. Calcutta, The Living City (Vol. II), 64–66.
56. Bandyopadhyay, “The Inheritors” in Chaudhuri ed. Calcutta, The Living City (Vol. II), 78–87.
57. Published as Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose, The Nervous Mechanism of Plants, 1926.
58. Accessed from http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/runaway-cyclone/ on 22 January 2018.
59. De Certeau, ‘Walking in the City’, 93.
60. Ibid., 93.