To be present is physical. To be present in mental. To be present is emotional, spiritual, is to be a whole in that moment of space and time which is frozen. For the space exists only in your presence, as do you only in its existence. Formed by the various possibilities of being present and absent, it is not about the linear but about what encompasses it all.
The idea of tangibility in this project became a paradox while using the film reel. The aspect of the material evidence, of being able to hold that frozen moment blurs out when viewed from the third eye. A film frame, which pauses that moment in time, gives us the idea of re - living that exact moment, differently in its multiplicity. A person part of the frame has an experience more parallel to that change of the image as the experience of the space and the being was paused together. But what happens to the one who did not according to that image exist. The complete “whole” is never understood. How can you cease to have a memory when it never existed. How can you make a memory, visually forced into your sight yours? The experience of viewing these images of the time of your absence creates the subconscious nostalgia. It allows you to see beyond what is being shown, to assume and hypothesize the story behind the image, to paraphrase it as another, not realising when it became yours. And in that moment of your interaction with the image you realise, you are everything that image was not.
The following exhibition, made possible through the collaboration between Srishti Institute of Art Design and Technology, Tate Modern and University of Arts London is a culmination of site-specific exploration of the over-exposed film as a medium of documentation. A commentary on the outsider (the photographer and audience) who attempt to understand the landscape of Kochin.
