Image-Making-India; Visual Culture, Technology, Politics 9781350029880, 9781003085669

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Image-Making-India

Image-Making-India explores the evolving meaning of images in a digital landscape from the vantage point of contemporary India. Building upon long-term ethnographic research among image-makers in Delhi, Mumbai and other Indian cities, the author interrogates the dialogue between visual culture, technology and changing notions of political partici­ pation. The book explores selected artistic experiences in documentary and fiction film, photography, contemporary art and digital curation that have in common a desire to engage with images as tools for social intervention. These experiences reveal images’ capacity not only to narrate and represent but also to perform, do and affect. Particular attention is devoted to the ‘digital’, a critical landscape that offers an opportunity to re-examine the significance of images and visual culture in a rapidly changing India. This volume will be of particular interest to scholars of visual and digital anthropology and cultures as well as South Asian studies. Paolo S.H. Favero is Associate Professor of Film Studies and Visual Culture at the Visual and Digital Cultures Research Center (ViDi), University of Antwerp, Belgium.

Image-Making-India Visual Culture, Technology, Politics

Paolo S.H. Favero

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Paolo S.H. Favero The right of Paolo S.H. Favero to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-350-02988-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-08566-9 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Taylor & Francis Books

To the ephemeral solidity of images … and love

Contents

List of figures Acknowledgements

viii

ix

1

In uncompleted circles, spirals and swirls: An introduction

2

The present world of images: A theoretical background

15

3

Sharpening ideas on the whetting stone: Independent

documentary practices, resistance and revolution

38

The ghost of an image: On photographs, truth and colonial

violence

77

4 5 6

1

The uncanny destiny of ‘raw’ footage: The politics of image-

making from analogic to digital, from filmmaking to archiving

110

Conclusions

147

References Index

150

160

Figures

1.1 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1 5.2

5.3

5.4

Global Desi. Delhi shopping mall. Delhi Coronation Durbar photographic collage. Draughtsman Drawing a Recumbent Woman. Child touching the photograph of the father. Screenshot from Red Ant Dream by Sanjay Kak. Composite of two screenshots from Instagram and one

photograph. Bhagat Singh mural in the parking lot of a Delhi shopping mall. Screenshot of promotional trailer Priya Shakti. Felice Beato. Secundra Bagh after the Indian Mutiny. Photograph from the performance ‘Seen at Secundarbagh’ by

Zuleikha Chaudhari and RAQS. Photograph from the performance ‘Seen at Secundarbagh’ by

Zuleikha Chaudhari and RAQS. Photograph from the performance ‘Seen at Secundarbagh’ by

Zuleikha Chaudhari and RAQS. Screenshot of announcement on onlinevolunteers.org. Screenshot of pad.ma, online archive initiated by CAMP

(Mumbai), 0x2620 (Berlin), the Alternative Law Forum

(Bangalore) and also Majlis and Point of View (Mumbai). Screenshot of pad.ma, online archive initiated by CAMP

(Mumbai), 0x2620 (Berlin), the Alternative Law Forum

(Bangalore) and also Majlis and Point of View (Mumbai). Screenshot from ‘Final Solution’ by Rakesh Sharma.

8

20

27

30

38

56

57

74

78

79

80

89

111

113

114

116

Acknowledgements

This book is the result of roughly 15 years of work. This has been a long journey that has been made possible only through the love, attention and collaboration of those who have been around me during all this time. In my acknowledgements I will only mention those individuals who have had a direct involvement with this book. I will do this (with few exceptions) in a dry alphabetic way. Many more are those who indirectly contributed to this work, some are invisible, some unnameable. I want to first thank those of you who shared your work, time and experi­ ences with me, hence providing me with the needed material for writing this book. Thank you (in chapter order) Sanjay Kak, Zuleikha Chaudhari, Neeray Sahay, Hassath Hassath. Thank you also Amar Kanwar, Ashim Ghosh, Ashok Sukumaran and Shaina Anand from CAMP (Critical Art and Media Practices), Gurpal Singh, Kalki Subramaniam, Madhushree Dutta, Sanjay Joshi, Srijan Nandan, Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas (from Black Ticket Films). Thank you precious colleagues at the Visual and Digital Cultures Research Center (ViDi) at the University of Antwerp. Thank you especially Luc Pauwels and Philippe Meers for always being there for me. And thank you Eva Theunissen and Liza Van der Stock for your contributions to the production of this book. I also want to thank all those colleagues who have backed up this project, some with continuous support, some with scattered but precious insights. Thank you Anjali Monteiro and K. P. Jayashankar, Ashim Ghosh, Giulia Battaglia, Gudrun Dahl, Helena Wulff, Katja Seidel, Jon Wagner, Marcus Banks, Miriam Cantwell, Rahaab Allana and Nandita Jaishankar, Roberto Anchisi, Scott McQuire, Shivaji Panikkar, Tito Marci, Thomas Fillitz, Ulf Hannerz, Valerio Monti. I am particularly grateful to Aliya Salahuddin who not only proofread the first draft of this book but also provided me with precious critical insights. She gave a strong contribution to this work on all fronts. Thank you to all my extended family. Suor Silvia (Zia Edda) constant light in my life. Shahram, Mimi, Kian and Nina Khosravi. Nila Madhab Panda, Atman and Barnali Rath. Ali Mehdi Zaidi and Maa. Rohit Nair, Pramila

x

Acknowledgements

and Pragun Poddar, Renuka Reychand, Arhaan and Reyansh. Jaideep Bha­ thia, Ashwati Parameshwar, Prithvi and Akshika. Simona Vittorini. Cordelia Jansson Mangia. Giuliana Ciancio, Isabel and Emil Cottino. Arturo Andreol. Cristina Favero, Roberto and Erik Giolitto. And with a step already into the future thank you Siddhartji Pachisia, a precious gift meeting you as I start my new journey in India. And finally thanks to all the ghosts of my life that keep protecting me during my journey.

1

In uncompleted circles, spirals

and swirls

An introduction

A book, like research and like life, is a collection of circles. These circles are not perfect though. They do not open up and close at the same point; draw­ ing stories of endless beginnings and endless returns they do not allow for control. A book is like this, a choreography of circular forms, anarchic spirals and swirls surrounding and connecting the subject with the object, the ‘self ’ with the world. They may speak of knowledge, affections, or just of banal mundane events. Each swirl may intersect with some other but it may also not. It may just keep swaying in the air on its own or land somewhere and intersect with other swirls and spirals. This is when new geometries can be seen, new shapes mirroring the world that surrounds them. Like a Qawwali (devotional Sufi music), these swirls can open up a space of endless reflections. Such is a book, such is life, a collection of swirls, spirals and uncompleted circles. This book was born long ago. The first reflections (and possibly also materials) were gathered in the years 2001 and 2002 when I decided to pursue my desire to combine my then ongoing research on middle-class youth and globalization in Delhi with active image-making. During fieldwork, I progres­ sively started taking photographs, recording sounds and filming. I worked on combining these materials in various exhibition formats. Then I moved on to making video installations and eventually, documentary films. All these experi­ ences held ethnography at their centre, my core tool for penetrating and being penetrated by (cf. Stoller 1984) the world. During the making of my 2004 documentary Flyoverdelhi (see below) I became increasingly involved with the networks of art in the city that hosted me during this time. Later, during a field trip in 2007 when I was still based out of London, I started actively interviewing artists and filmmakers in Delhi. I wanted to explore their ways of thinking about what images mean, do and ‘want’ (Mitchell 2006). I never stopped having these conversations. Con­ centric circles. Swirls. My simultaneous involvement in transnational networks of academia and arts progressively enlarged my group of interlocutors. I moved away from documentary practices into other circles; into the world of contemporary arts, of theatre, app-design and activism. Every now and then I lost my way.

2

In uncompleted circles, spirals and swirls

I entered new loops, new circles, new swirls, only to then find myself sub­ merged, unearthing new patterns to follow and dive into. At the end of this path, I had collected an almost unbearable quantity of fairly unstructured material that I then began organizing around the idea of image-making, intervention (social and political) and technology. The data I collected and the observations I made, stretched from the early days of digitization in India to its eventual boom. I followed the transformation of India from a humble Congress-led secular nation-state to an aspirational ‘Tiger India’ clamouring for its Hindu roots. I was (on and off) there throughout this time and I felt the calling to make sense of these experiences. And in the meantime, my own life unfolded in circles, spirals and swirls too. India stayed permanently in the frame. My mother faced the return of her cancer in 1999 during the last phase of my official PhD fieldwork. I decided to stay in the country until the end of my work and then returned to Europe to accompany her towards her death in May 2000. Later I went back to India and the years ahead brought more separations. From the living, the dead and the unborn. My father passed away in 2015 and took away with him the certainties of a point of return, my dominant circle, the small town in northern Italy where I grew up. This was another separation that, however, also brought along a new union with my sister, her family, and with the vil­ lage elders. Then followed other circles of life, a divorce, the selling of the ancestral home. The contemplation and acceptance of these events became also a bliss, opening up the doors to new discoveries and joys. And during this entire period, my work, the practice of writing, photography, filming, and music stayed on as my pillars, keeping me tightly anchored to life. These were places where I was able to ‘rest my thoughts’, as my father would have said. The ‘ghosts of my life’ (Fisher 2014) kept me company on this journey which is still ongoing today. And so did Delhi, the city of Djinns (a Hindi word for invisible spirits), the place that I inevitably learned to make my home and to which I, as this book is being completed, have already returned for a new chapter of life, work and love. New swirls, spirals and circles await me, drawing new shapes possibly connecting all the previously opened ones. Eventually, as I was writing this book, I saw the irony of my interest for the performativity of images (a pillar in my theoretical approach to visual cul­ ture). I am intrigued by how images mediate our experiences of life, how they accompany us through our mundane lives, as if they were the ghosts of our past. In recent years I had directed the attention of my work to the immersive and performative craving that images seem to have, exhibiting their desire to mediate our experiences of living, longing to close the gaps between ourselves and the world that surrounds us. I realized that I had (probably uncon­ sciously) directed my attention to all those visual practices that primarily present the image as a tool for overcoming the separation from the world, for acting upon it, and transforming it: images as beacons to the future and not only mirrors of the past. This is a key characteristic of all the works I discuss in this book. Images allow us to search for unity in a world of separation.

In uncompleted circles, spirals and swirls

3

A separation that is not only my personal struggle but also the destiny of this post-globalizing world that is solidly marching towards the erection of new borders, new distinctions; a ‘walled’ (Khosravi 2018) world that repromotes new/old beliefs in the intrinsic diversity of peoples and ‘races’. The experiences that I collect in this book are all united by this common intent: to overcome separations, to put images at the service of something bigger than just documentary filmmaking or photography, or even art. The image-works I discuss here are about life (and death), change and transfor­ mation. They are not about the past but represent concrete attempts to craft our present and future. From the struggles for freedom discussed through the work of Sanjay Kak in Chapter 3, to Zuleikha Chaudhari’s reflections on a photograph ‘performing the memory of the Mutiny’ of 1857 in Chapter 4, to the interventionist archive of images produced by the Shared Footage Group in the aftermath of the Gujarat carnage in 2002 in Chapter 5. The images central to this book focus on life and death, on circles of work, intersecting with circles of life. It needs pointing out that this book is not about India but in India. It has not been my ambition to hunt for a sense of ‘Indianness’ in the artistic and filmic experiences that I have followed and analyzed. Rather, all the works this book focuses on have been crafted at the point of encounter of various transnational flows (of technology, culture, media, politics) and culturally situated practices and debates. Again, this is a matter of intersecting circles and swirls that cross boundaries and dive into each other generating products that are at once local and trans-local. The projects and experiences that this book focuses upon are the result of an intense process of selection. Instead of offering an overview of the various phenomena taking place in the field of image-making, technology and politics in India, I decided to dive into three very specific experiences. Through each of these experiences I aim to address topics that have both a theoretical and an ethnographic bearing. My goal is to provide a rethinking of the assumptions and approaches to the world of image and image-making based on my experiences in India. Simultaneously, I also offer a contribution to the rethinking, on the basis of the work of image-makers, of the debates that surround some critical events in Indian society. Let me now begin this book by taking a leap back in time. In this introduction I offer some background to the work I have conducted in India and which has led to the making of this book. Addressing also the progressive consolidation of digital practices in the country, this chapter will close with a few reflections on my approach to images and on the structure of the book.

A visual anthropologist swirling in India I conducted my PhD fieldwork in Delhi between 1997 and roughly 2001 on the topic of young middle-class men, globalization and cultural identity1.

4

In uncompleted circles, spirals and swirls

My original idea was to explore the cultural changes that followed the open­ ing of India’s economy to the global market, an entry officially sanctioned in 1991 with the economic reforms designed by then finance minister Manmo­ han Singh2. I was keen on understanding how the generation that epitomized this entry experienced and constructed their identities vis-à-vis the growing number of messages and images, rapidly reaching the country from all over the world. I created a network of interlocutors among English-speaking, educated, Delhi-based men between 20 and 30 years of age who were enthu­ siastically exploiting the opening up of India for personal incentives in career and leisure. They belonged to the worlds of tourism, the internet, journalism, sports (mainly tennis), multinationals, etc. Progressively, I let myself be pulled into their circles of friends and colleagues and became involved in a web of relations characterized by a high degree of heterogeneity. My interlocutors were young men like Amitabh, at the time, a 24 year old manager of the Delhi arm of a Bombay-based family-run car dealership. There was also Amitabh’s best friend Rahul who worked as the India correspondent for the Japanese broadcast channel NHK. Rahul was 34 and worked as a tour guide for Italian travel agencies after having quit his career as university lecturer. In the field, I also met Abhishek, (born in 1973) on the very same day that he had returned from the USA (to which he had migrated at 19) with the dream of setting up India’s first tennis academy. I met Hrithik, the son of the owner of one of the most successful travel agencies in Delhi. I rapidly became part of a variety of networks where I met people with significant differences in backgrounds (despite them all being privileged in some sense). What they did share in common, however, was a faith in the new era, one filled with great hopes for change in India. My fieldwork was very dynamic. I had to move between different work environments and also commute between different parts of the city. I ended up spending endless hours hanging out with my interlocutors in public places in different neighbourhoods being exposed to the visual culture that surrounded them. All my interlocutors, who organically became my friends, shared a common desire in their search for a way of living that they often described as ‘stimulating’ and ‘rewarding’. They didn’t want their marriages to be arranged by family and hoped to choose their girlfriends and friends themselves without being confined to caste, class and ethnically defined boundaries. For all of them, the opening of India to the global market was a key event making it possible to fulfil their career, sexual and leisure dreams. Their involvement in wider networks of both career and leisure was a constitutive part of their identity and part of a ‘symbolic capital’ (Bourdieu 1990) that they carefully administered at work and in private life and through which they created and demarcated their status. Their stories were a window into a new India – a country which, with all its compromises and difficulties, was dreaming of a new historical phase, a Kalyug3, a return to the centre of world history. While observing the enthusiasm for a future ‘Tiger India’4, as it was described in the early days, my ethnography anticipated a lot of the events

In uncompleted circles, spirals and swirls

5

that would unfold in the coming decades. This was a moment of intense growth in instances of pride in the country and my interlocutors were among the most vivid signs of such a historical phase. In their ‘life-world’ (Habermas 1987), being ‘cool’, ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘modern’ (terms adopted by them) was not synonymous with copying the ‘West’ but rather with being proudly ‘Indian’. Playfully inverting the meaning of the so-called ‘colonial dichoto­ mies’, (i.e. India vs. West, tradition vs. modernity, spirituality vs. science cf. Gupta 1998) my interlocutors contributed to renew the discourse that had historically functioned as the foundation for debating change in India. Their creative use of ‘India’, ‘West’, ‘modern’, ‘traditional’ (which, given their changeable, fluctuating and emotional connotations, I chose to label as ‘phantasms’5) and their growing faith in India’s future intrigued me and became the main focus of my study. I addressed this faith in a variety of fields, from identity narratives, to masculinity and sexuality, love, and visual and material culture. During my fieldwork I collected many instances of re-appropriation of symbols belonging to Hindu culture. Advertisements, films and television programmes (addressing mainly young people) progressively began to pro­ mote ‘Indianness’, increasingly offering symbols highlighting the ‘coolness of all things Indian, and emphasizing the value of traditional symbols within a modern, cosmopolitan, globalizing context. Take, for example, a significant event held during the Youth Marketing Forum organized in Mumbai in 1999, with the sponsorship of MTV, Pepsi and several other multinational firms. In their messaging, the companies underlined the importance of acknowledging the growing popularity of ‘India’. MTV announced that their slogan was to ‘Indianise, Humanize and Humorise’. They emphasized that their service, which was launched in 1996, began with 70 percent Indian content and 30 percent international music and that now that figure had been inverted. They described their audience as young people who are ‘comfortable with their Indianness’ and for whom ‘foreign is no longer the best’. According to MTV, for instance, the top ten list of young people’s favourite artists was topped by singer Mohammed Rafi, an acclaimed singer for Hindi films in the 1950s and 60s. The only foreign artist in the list was Michael Jackson (who, however, came a decent second). An orientation towards ‘Indianness’ was also visible in the choices of the mass media in general. Star TV, Sony TV and Discovery Channel began dubbing more and more programmes into Hindi. Indian mythology and history proved to be marketable on TV and in cinema. The popularity of new television serials with historical-religious motifs which, according to many, were being used strategically to heighten the conscious­ ness about the Hindu ‘saffron past’ of India (cf. Chakravarty 1998a and 1998b) became a certainty. The world of media and marketing successfully merged to present a proper case of ‘India’ branding (cf. Mazzarella 2003). Parallel to these changes, the political scene was also drastically morphing into something new. Together with liberalization and the commercial opening up, India also witnessed the emergence of Hindu nationalism in the 1990s

6

In uncompleted circles, spirals and swirls

with the BJP led the government coalition led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee between 1999 and 2004 (covering hence the core period of my fieldwork).6 The BJP belongs to the Hindu nationalist networks and centres on the RSS (the Rashtrya Swamyasewak Sangh, i.e. the national organization of volun­ teers), a socio-political movement with strong nationalist undertones that was launched in the mid-1920s and was also involved in the assassination of Gandhi. Over the years, the BJP strengthened the implementation of its core mission to promote Hindutva7 (cf. Andersen and Damle 1987, and Basu et al. 1993). This agenda found a breeding ground in the growing debates on glo­ balization and Westernization and their consequences on youth. I extensively analyzed the debates regarding the apparent loss of values among Indian youth in my book India Dreams (Favero 2005) from the perspective of a number of criminal events that took place in Delhi around that time (in par­ ticular, the murder of a young model, Jessica Lal in a Delhi club). During fieldwork, I interviewed various representatives of the Hindu right on the same theme. While on the topic of Jessica Lal’s killing, one college professor, who was also a strong RSS supporter chose instead to speak about the deca­ dence of society. He said that young people wanted ‘the five star culture, nice discos, hotels, bars, etc.…young people want western things, American things. They no longer dress or behave like Indians’. None of my informants subscribed to the agenda promoted by the Hindu nationalist organizations. Yet, as I describe in my book, their discourse on India at times echoed some ideals of these organizations. In their stories they all stressed upon the importance of ‘Indianness’. They often spoke about the importance of not losing their connection with India despite their participa­ tion in a transnational and cosmopolitan culture. At the beginning of my fieldwork I found these expressions of cultural and national identity quite puzzling. From one moment to the next the same person could switch from defining himself as a ‘Westernised Indian’ or a ‘cosmopolite’ to thereafter reiterating his position as a ‘traditional’, ‘average’, ‘plain, middle-class Indian’. I understood later on that my informants were offering me a window into the predicament of Indian identity in a globalized world. They faced what Uberoi has defined as the ‘contradiction between transnational location and the retention of Indian identity’ (Uberoi 1998: 306). During fieldwork I, therefore, witnessed the emergence of ‘Indianness’ as a modern symbol. A ‘national fantasy’ (Berlant in Ivy 1995: 17) was being engendered where cultural identification, politics and enjoyment met and merged (cf. Zizek in Ivy 1995: 61) – a case of ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig 1995). The positions held by my interlocutors were in fact widely mirrored by the visual and material culture surrounding them. Delhi was an evident arena of display of this change. For instance, Hauz Khas, an urban village in Delhi built on the remains of a Mughal city, was, in the ’90s progressively turning into gallery of ‘real’, traditional Indian ‘stuff’. With its design stores, furni­ ture, jewellery and art shops this became an attractor of the local rich as well as affluent expats. From Hauz Khas the step was relatively short to Dilli

In uncompleted circles, spirals and swirls

7

Haat, a market for traditional Indian handicrafts born in the late 1990s in South Delhi (cf. Favero 2007). Constructed to resemble a traditional northern Indian rural market, with forms and materials resembling those of Indian villages, Dilli Haat was mostly popular among the local middle classes who flocked to the place in search of Indian handicrafts for their homes or gifts for family members in diaspora. Eateries also began promoting ‘Indianness’. One place I studied (mainly by means of photography) was Zila Kakabpur (roughly meaning ‘the city of kababs’). Designed like a cosmopolitan eatery from the outside, Zila was marketing itself through the popular brand of Lucknowy cuisine (Lucknow being considered the heart of Mughlai [Mughal] cuisine). The servers walked around in red and blue mechanic’s overalls and baseball caps, but the place was filled with small signs of India beautifully mingling with the other modernistic elements: glass containers filled with different types of legumes, or a big poster showing Indian varieties of spices and lentils. The restaurant promoted a menu consisting exclusively of lentil soups (dal), different types of north Indian bread (roti and naan), and kababs and the food was rigorously served without knives and forks (inviting clients to eat in the proper Indian way, with their hands). The film industry too responded to the call for ‘Indianization’ with its renewed interest in historical movies, a genre that during the last few decades had not sold particularly well in India. For instance, the ambitious attempt in 1982 with Razia Sultan turned into a major box-office disaster (cf. Kapoor 2001). It had discouraged others, until the genre was launched afresh by wellknown actor and film producer Shah Rukh Khan. His movie Asoka8 topped the blockbuster records for a large part of autumn 2001. The success of this film was accompanied by that of Lagaan (meaning tax) which was nominated in the category of best foreign language film for the American Academy Awards in 2002. Situated in colonial India, this movie deals with a dispute over taxes between British rulers and Indian farmers. The dispute is settled by means of a cricket game between the poor Indian farmers and their colonial ‘masters’. While the past of India made a re-entry during this period, it was a past ‘saffroned’ (Chakravarty 1998a and 1998b) i.e. tinted with the colour of Hinduism and filled with political undertones that ran in parallel with the growth of communalism, regionalism and the increased demands for a Hindu nation (Menon 1993, Van der Veer 1996). The ‘Global Desi’ style (as flaunted by a well known chain of designer clothes, see Figure 1.1), i.e. the idea of an Indian style becoming a global trend, became a powerful brand. I believe that during this phase what I witnessed was a kind of ‘Trojan horse’ for what was to come later. Symbols of Hindu culture had progressively penetrated (anew) the homes of the Indian middle classes. Protected under the secular banner of global consumerist cosmopolitanism this trendy ‘Indianness’ safely crept into both the private and the public sphere. And, once it was there it did not take much to re-activate its saffron, Hindu identity. The recent BJP-led govern­ ments did, in my view, capitalize upon this, turning all these symbols of banal nationalism into active, exclusivist political tools. This, I believe is today’s

8

In uncompleted circles, spirals and swirls

Figure 1.1 Global Desi. Delhi shopping mall. Photo credit: Paolo S.H. Favero.

scenario. And all the experiences I address in this book are born in the backwaters of these transformations. In the years following my main fieldwork I kept engaging with my inter­ locutors who, over time, became an intrinsic part of my family. We were all very different from each other and while this made for engaging conversations and robust debates, it brought to my work a great variety of different insights as I continued to interview, observe, photograph and film them. More than 20 years since I actively began researching in Delhi, this material now constitutes not only a rich ethnography of a changing India but also a rich biography of the lives of my friends and I. And as this material kept increasing, India also kept undergoing major transformations, among them the digital ‘revolution’9. During my 20 years of engagement with India I was exposed to the pro­ gressive growth in popularity and percolation of digital technologies. Having started my first fieldwork in 1997 and having been back to the country on average at least once a year, I have been able to personally witness the various phases that India has experienced in this area. I have noticed the extent to which, for many years, mobile platforms (3G and 4G) seemed to perform much better than landlines (this is one of the reasons for the early lack of interest for interactive documentaries that I will address in chapters 3 and 5 of this book). I have also seen the arrival of fast optic fibre driven landlines which are now installed in many modern homes. During the same period

In uncompleted circles, spirals and swirls

9

large sections of the society I met during everyday life (such as drivers, house helpers, shop keepers, etc.) remained excluded from this access to digital connectivity. Despite owning fairly updated mobile phones they would still tend to share data mainly via Bluetooth often using very creative techniques. Today this situation is progressively changing with the lowering of costs for data and the spread of connectivity to rural India. During my time in India I noticed how advertisements and articles on new image-making technologies started filling the pages of newspapers and magazines. I saw mainstream media increasingly opting to use footage or photographs taken by viewers with their mobile phones as journalistic evi­ dence (this is especially true during the initial days of New Delhi Television, NDTV). Modi too contributed to the popularity of digital/visual technologies and hit the global news when, in 2014, he rallied all over India delivering his electoral speeches by means of a hologram reaching 5 million voters in two weeks.10 Today, India has more than 500 million internet users emerging as the second largest online market in the world.11 With an annual growth of 18 percent (in 2019) it shows a penetration rate of 40 percent with a significantly increasing penetration rate in the rural areas (which is of importance for the discussion in Chapter 3). Approximately 200 million active internet users today reside in rural India according to a report by ICUBE 201812. Digital adoption has registered an impressive growth in previously economically backward areas such as Bihar which saw a growth of 35 percent in 2018. According to the same report, the booming sector is that of mobile platforms: 97 percent of users use their mobile phones as at least one of the devices to access internet. As of 2016, India had 320 million mobile phone internet users and forecasts estimate that by 2023, India will have 660 million users.13 A final interesting insight provided by the ICUBE 2018 report is that the internet usage is more gender balanced than ever before with women representing 42 percent of total internet users.14 Given the high number of internet users and the rapid growth in the num­ bers, the digital space in India is particularly significant. According to Modi’s ‘Digital India’ agenda that was launched in August 2014, this technological apparatus is central to the scaffolding of a future ‘Tiger India’. It is also one of its key symbols. Aiming to transform India into an electronically empow­ ered economy, the ‘Digital India’ agenda runs alongside the ‘Make in India’ campaign which aims to provide incentives to companies to manufacture in India and to attract foreign investors to the country. The blend of ‘Indianness’ and cosmopolitanism that I describe in my fieldwork is hence, very much alive, albeit with a new (and more powerful) facade. The digital has been identified as a key link between the future and the past of India, a country capable of moving towards the future while strengthening, as contemporary slogans would put it, its firm roots in its history, culture and traditions. The nationalist undertones of this combined agenda are evident. However, the terrain of digital technologies in India is a very contested and lively one. Many intellectuals, activists and artists today are looking critically at the

10

In uncompleted circles, spirals and swirls

government’s digital agenda, questioning the extent to which such technolo­ gies can become tools for enhanced control of citizens and the cause of new social divisions. At the same time, many of these actors are also actively exploiting the very same terrain in order to find new tools of cultural resis­ tance. Many filmmakers, photographers, artists and designers (some of whom are mentioned in this book) have reflected on the extent to which the digital can be seen as an ‘apparatus’ with the potential for helping citizens defeat injustice and bring visibility to marginalized social categories. They explore the extent to which digital technologies can allow them to intervene in everyday life and its politics; to function, that is, as tools for making and re-making India. In the coming chapters I will address several instances of convergence between the visual and the digital in the field of social and political interven­ tion. Yet, there is always the fear that this space is or will be controlled by state and multinationals. Even a decade ago, in the field of image-making, documentary filmmakers and artists were voicing scepticism about the possi­ bility of inserting emerging digital modes of producing and distributing images (beyond conventional digital cameras and internet) in their practice. Tools such as iDocs or interactive applications were indeed part of the voca­ bulary but also treated as entirely external to local realities. Most of the practitioners I met believed that this was still a far-fetched idea for India mainly due to infrastructural reasons. Now, just a few years later, the situa­ tion is quite different and the number of projects exploiting new imagemaking formats, notions and technologies has indeed boomed. Such a growth is undoubtedly part of a much wider scenario that today seems to be giving the digital/visual nexus an unprecedented centrality in India. Before closing this section let me also add that any discussion on the digital in India requires special attention to matters of infrastructure. These include questions regarding speed, information, availability of networks (Hudson and Zimmermann 2015, Kapur 2016) which reveal fundamental issues concerning the provision of and access to electricity, transport, etc., which are instrumental in the construction of communication networks. Infrastructure is a necessary platform on which networks, interfaces, soft­ ware and eventually form and aesthetics can develop. Many Indian imagemakers today respond to such limitations by generating solutions and practices that are adapted to the local context. The limitations imposed by infrastructure have, in the context of India, also generated creative adapta­ tions to local needs that many activists and artists look at as a unique pro­ cess of jugaad. Emerging as an established practice within innovation (Radjou et al. 2012) jugaad entails that technologies can be creatively morphed to fit specific needs. Underlying the widespread practice of jugaad is the idea that technological hiccups can be resolved, and expensive and inaccessible technology can be borrowed, replicated and transformed locally. This leads us to rethink the relationship between technology and practice, forcing us to also reassess our conventional understanding of the digital.

In uncompleted circles, spirals and swirls

11

This transcultural space of creative practices is perhaps the one we need to monitor in the future in order to discover leading trends in the field of digital visual practices. In the section below I offer insights into the theoretical and methodological assumptions that have informed the writing of this book. I will start by briefly addressing my take on the world of images (described in greater detail in Chapter 2).

Circles of images The prevalent idea that the arrival of digital technologies has caused a revo­ lution in the world of images (and in the field of visual culture) is challenged in the book. I maintain, especially in the case of India, that the image worlds that characterize the contemporary digital habitats of the planet must be seen as a continuum that flows from the analogue to the digital. Containing both the new and the old, I suggest that images in and of the ‘present’ (Favero 2018) must be addressed beyond the conventional dualisms that make up hegemonic analysis of visual culture. Chapter 2 addresses this point in greater depth, where I discuss the theoretical apparatus that underpins this book. Let us, however, consider that images in contemporary digital habitats seem to ask us to renew the debate that has characterized conventional accounts of the ways in which they encounter human life. They increasingly seem to want us to abandon the exclusivity of the terrain of representation and to enter that of performativity. As Mitchell (2006) has pointed out images do not only speak but also ‘want’. Their essence today increasingly highlights a relational (Bourriaud 1998), ephemeral (Murray 2008), multisensory and interactive dimension. This book echoes, therefore, Baker’s (2005) call for the need of a new notion of ‘the photographic’, one that is capable of moving, to para­ phrase Hoelzl and Marie (2015), ‘beyond the analogue and digital, print and projection, still and moving divide’ (p. 11). Digital technologies (which constitute an extensive part of the material in this book) bring back our attention to a series of questions regarding the nature of vision and its relation to the other senses and to the dialectic between the viewer and the viewed that have been the object of the pre­ occupations of scholars for quite a long time (and that today probably find their most fertile terrain in neurosciences). Many scholars (before and beyond the rule of digital technologies) have looked into the multimodal nature of imagination and its capacity to translate stimuli into a wide vari­ ety of sensory experiences. To mention a few, in The Future of the Image (2008), Jacques Rancière evokes the need for a new notion (‘imageness’) capable of highlighting the visual strength of non-visual sensory stimuli. Speaking, among other things, about the way images reach us through sounds even in the absence of visual stimuli during the screening of a movie, he claims that today the ‘end of images is behind us’ (p. 17). We need today to think of images in novel terms, as ‘a regime of relations between elements

12

In uncompleted circles, spirals and swirls

and functions … relations between the sayable and the visible, ways of playing with the before and the after, cause and effect’ (ibid.: 6). Long before him, Russian theologian and art historian Pavel Florensky too shared, in the 1920s, an interest for this kind of enlargement. In his work, he repeatedly spoke about the image as a portal allowing human beings to move across and connect the world of earthly matters with the celestial one (Florensky 1977 and 1993). Images, for him, were a matter of contemplation and transformation rather than of representation and narration. Kandinsky (1989) also pointed out something similar when he suggested that images do not merely ‘reflect’ and ‘echo’ but that they also function as a ‘prophecy’ (p. 20). I suggest that many of the experiences in this book are to be understood in this light, as attempts to transform and change rather than to simply narrate. They respond, albeit in different, and at times, indirect ways to Georges Didi-Huberman’s (2003) reminder that ‘we ask too little of images’ (ibid.: 33). This book is written at a time when many human beings in digitized habi­ tats (but not exclusively) have accepted that the image no longer functions unproblematically as a ‘transparent window on the world’ (Mitchell 1984: 504). Many of us have today abundantly overcome the naive fears regarding the death of photography (see Ritchin 1990) and the supplanting of reality by mechanically produced representations (see Baudrillard 1994, Der Derian 1994). Living up to Howard Becker’s (1986) invitation to stop looking for the ultimate truth, we have learned to accept that images indeed, always contain a degree of truth. Yet, paraphrasing Becker, they also do not have to contain the whole truth. And despite this loss of naivety, most human beings have not lost that sense of wonder that has accompanied the human engagement with images across space and time. Images, as materializations of the visible, still charm us, excite us, ‘enchant’ us (Gell 1998). They still do contain that ele­ ment of magic that makes up their past history. This dimension will be explicitly addressed in Chapter 4 through an analysis of Zuleikha Chaudhari’s creative treatment of a photograph taken in 1858 for her theatre installation The Transparent Performer. In this text I respond to the need to rethink our approach to the world of images and perhaps also to find a new language for it. The various transfor­ mations of visual technologies and practices and the responses they have given to a changing social world (in India as well as elsewhere) has, in the historical moment in which this book is being written, a number of important implications. The goal of this book is, on the basis of the material I have gathered across the years in India, to decentre conventional assumptions regarding images, visuality and digital visuality. I seek, by means of the exposure to the Indian terrain, to rethink and overcome some of the estab­ lished (and often simplistic) dualisms and polarizations that have character­ ized the study of images in a changing technological scenario. The dualistic thinking embedded in the very notion of ‘new images’ (where the ‘new’ indeed stands in opposition to an imputed ‘old’) has led me elsewhere (Favero

In uncompleted circles, spirals and swirls

13

2018) to opt for a different term, ‘present images’. Under the mantle of this term I have attempted at critically addressing the images that circulate in the contemporary digital habitats of the world as, at once, producers of actions (agents) and carriers of meaning (representations), as material and immater­ ial, as new and old, known and unknown. My position resonates probably with what Manovich said about digital photographs as ‘paradoxical … radi­ cally breaking with other modes of visual representation while at the same time reinforcing these modes’ (1995: 240). It also carries echoes of Latour’s (1993) argument that ‘We have never been modern’. Despite building upon a material largely relying on the analysis of exist­ ing materials (rather than the production of a visual ethnography) and upon a large amount of interactions, conversations and interviews, the present book is indebted to a performative approach to images. It is indebted to Mitchell’s and Belting’s reminder that images are not a mere matter of visi­ bility. They are a point of conjunction between ‘mental frames’ (Belting 2011) and the physical, material world out there. An image, Belting reminds us, is always both internal and external, both personal and collective (p. 9). Images need not solely be approached within the realm of representation and meaning. They are ‘co-actants’ (to borrow from Latour 2005) in and of the world in which we live. Objects that act, do and, to quote Mitchell (2006), ‘want’, images have (to cite Belting (2011)) a capacity to ‘colonize our bodies’ and take control upon us: ‘[i]mages both affect and reflect the changing course of human history’ (p. 10). They are living things that accompany us in our lives and that, as Kandinsky suggested (see above), help us cast light on our path. In terms of methodology, this book builds mainly on interviews, obser­ vations and a deep ‘hanging-out’ with the artists and environments that I discuss. The selection of the focal areas that form this book was not an easy process. After many years of fieldwork and long hours of listening and re-listening to interviews, watching films, giving talks and lectures around these topics, I opted for the approach that makes up the structure of this book. My active work as an image-maker was indeed instrumental in giving me access to layers of understanding that go beyond the pure act of inter­ viewing, watching and observing. As I mentioned earlier in the introduction, this book has been written in circles, in an endless act of going in and out of topics and contexts, eventually stitching them together by means of a theo­ retical apparatus that moves across visual anthropology, visual and digital culture, Indian studies, image theory and philosophy, history and political theory. With each chapter written also to function as a stand-alone, I hope that readers will find their way in and out of these various passages, drawing their own circles, swirls and spirals. After all, as John Berger (1972) wrote: ‘We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are’ (p. 8).

14

In uncompleted circles, spirals and swirls

Notes 1 Funding for fieldwork was granted by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Fund, and by smaller scholarships by SSAG (The Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography), HSFR (Swedish Board for the Humanistic and Social Sciences), the Lars Hierta’s Memorial Foundation and the Hierta-Retzius Foundation, and STINT (The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education). 2 I highlight here my usage of the word ‘sanctioned’ given that the Indian economy has been progressively opened up throughout history and in particular during the 80s under the prime ministership of Rajiv Gandhi. 3 According to Hindu mythology Kalyug or Kali Yuga is the fourth and final era in the spiritual evolution of man. 4 This moment has been recently depicted by many authors (cf. Kamdar 2007, Tharoor 2007, Gupta 2009). 5 The ‘phantasm’ was, in my usage, the ‘instrument’ through which my interlocutors approached, interpreted, felt and contextualized the images that surrounded them. Following Agamben (1993) who used the phantasm to describe what linked (and at the same time blurred the boundary between) the internal and the external, the real and the imaginary I approached the phantasm as what mediates not only between agents and their external space but also between the ‘here’ and ‘there’, the ‘now’ and ‘then’ of our daily experiences, between emotion and intellect, between collective and individual images, hence bringing together discourses and memories (in my case with different geographical and historical roots) that lie unspoken in our everyday lives (cf. also Ivy 1995). 6 They then lost power to Congress during the following mandate and took it back in 2004 with Modi. 7 Hindutva is the name given to the ‘Hinduization’ agenda of Indian culture enacted by the Hindu nationalist organizations. 8 Asoka is based on the story of the Mauryan emperor who, in the third century BC converted to Buddhism and became known as one of the most enlightened rulers in Indian history. 9 I put the word ‘revolution’ within quotation marks given my critical position towards this idea. I will discuss this is depth in chapters 2 and 3. 10 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10803961/Magic-Modi-uses­ hologram-to-address-dozens-of-rallies-at-once.html 11 https://www.statista.com/statistics/255146/number-of-internet-users-in-india/ 12 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/internet-users-in-india-to-reach-627­ million-in-2019-report/articleshow/68288868.cms 13 https://www.statista.com/statistics/255146/number-of-internet-users-in-india/ 14 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/internet-users-in-india-to-reach-627­ million-in-2019-report/articleshow/68288868.cms

2

The present world of images A theoretical background

Entering the complex digital habitats of today’s world entails a grounded rethinking of what images are, mean and do. The specific confluence of digital and visual technologies and practices that characterize the historical moment and the cultural contexts within which this book is being written, has indeed many important implications. Politically, scholars and practitioners in the field are today asked to provide a critical and nuanced understanding of the dialectic between the liberating and oppressive forces that characterize this confluence. Images seem, on the one hand, to travel freely along new channels of communication making possible a plethora of new connections and rela­ tions. More than ever they are carriers of information, weapons for arousing feelings, tools for creating communities. Yet, despite their apparent ubiquity and lightness they are also very concretely trapped in specific economic, infrastructural and political networks. This in itself, represents an ongoing struggle between freedom and oppression. As scholars of visual anthropology, visual culture or image philosophy, the present digital/visual confluence is asking us to devote careful attention to the world of present-day images. This is more important than ever given the evi­ dent bearing that such images have on the citizens of many parts of the world whose lives are so deeply touched upon by digital visuality. We are asked, when entering the present world of images, to reconsider the assumptions, concepts and theoretical apparatuses that we conventionally rely upon. We must dare to renew the terms of our debates, move away from simplistic dualisms and incorporate a culturally relativizing perspective in the terrain of both visual and digital culture (the latter an inevitable counterpart of con­ temporary visualities). We must reflect upon the extent to which images, vision, visuality and also the ‘digital’ take on different meaning across his­ torical, geographical and cultural contexts. This is why studies of visualities and digital visualities in postcolonial societies (such as the one on which this book builds) can be useful and instructive. A first important question to acknowledge in the confluence of con­ temporary visual and digital technologies is that this encounter has indeed significantly changed the way many human beings engage with and under­ stand the world of images. Most people inhabiting one of today’s

16

The present world of images

ever-growing digital habitats have become abundantly aware of the possible deceptions and mystifications that images can generate. More and more people (I am thinking here about the urban contexts of India also) know how to edit (and fake) images on smartphones. Such actors have abandoned sim­ plistic notions of the image as a ‘transparent window on the world’ (Mitchell 1984: 504). They have demystified banal dualisms of fake vs. real without, however, losing the fascination for this world. In fact, their interest has only increased. Images are more than ever magical objects that not only mean but also do. They actively intervene upon the lives of the people who come in contact with them. In my view, such a grounded questioning does not mean that we should scrap the past in the name of an uncertain future. It does not claim that the digital has transformed images into something new that cancels and undoes all we knew before. Undoubtedly, the way human beings engage with images in digital habitats contains elements of novelty but at the same time, there are also important continuities with the past, with notions and practices that are rooted in specific historically and culturally situated places and times. The digital surely puts images in motion in novel ways. But paradoxically, at times, in doing this, it also awakens modes of engagement with the world of visuals that are antique. I am thinking here, for instance, of the immersive desire of VR (Virtual Reality) with its echoes of Etruscan tombs and Byzan­ tium churches etc. (see Favero 2018). A journey towards the future of the visual entails hence also a journey towards the past and towards visual prac­ tices that mainstream modern visual culture has often looked upon as nonmodern. This often entails bringing in dialogue visual culture with digital and material culture. Following Mitchell (2006) and Gell (1998) this entails an attention not only to the role that images have in ‘narrating’ and ‘represent­ ing’ but also in ‘performing’, ‘acting’ and ‘doing’. This journey requires a move away from conventional debates on the supposed virtuality and super­ ficiality of digital images and their detachment and abstraction from everyday life into the very material, social and political dimensions that make up everyday life. More than ever today images intervene upon and change our lives. In this chapter I unpack the theoretical terrain that forms the foundation for the analytical reflections discussed in this book. I will start by discussing digital images, progressively unpacking their ontology and also the various ways in which they travel today across media and communities. As a common thread running across the chapters of this book, all the experiences described here represent this passage and are informed by a desire to put images at the service of action, of change. I will then move on to unpack the notion of digital visuality and to sketch a possibility for offering, on the basis of the insertion in this terrain of non-Western epistemologies, a possible decoloniz­ ing approach. After briefly addressing the relativity of the meaning of the digital I will finally insert my reflections in the terrain of India addressing the situated notions of images, visuality and digital visuality in this context.

The present world of images

17

The digital image The encounter between images (and more broadly visual culture) and the world of digital technologies has been the object of much scholarly debate for more than two decades. Early texts on the subject addressed the arrival of digital technologies in the terrain of visual culture as a revolution. Mitchell (1992) spoke about this as the introduction of a ‘new model of vision’. ‘New images’ were, for him, ‘a new kind of token, made to yield new forms of understanding […] to disturb and disorientate by blurring comfortable boundaries and encouraging transgression of rules on which we have come to rely’ (p. 223). Digital technologies contributed in his view, in ‘relentlessly destabilising the old photographic orthodoxy, denaturing the established rules of graphic communication, and disrupting the familiar practices of image production and exchange’ (ibid.: 223). Pushing this even further, Crary (1990) suggested that the birth of digital imagery constituted ‘a transformation in the nature of visuality probably more profound than the break that separates medieval imagery from Renaissance perspective’ (p.1). A matter of computerdriven decomposition and recomposition of discontinuous chunks of infor­ mation (the pixels), digital images appear indeed, at first, to be significantly different from analogue images with their dots populating a continuous and indefinite landscape of visible information. And most certainly, the principle behind the creation of a digital image differs significantly from that of ana­ logue images. Digital images function through a process called filtering which builds upon the attribution of a value (a number defining tone and colour) to a pixel at the level of the raster grid (the processor). Every unit (every pixel) always contains just a definite amount of information limited in spatial and tonal resolution. A complete image is then nothing else but the result of this numerical act of giving a value to each individual pixel. This processuality is the reason why digital images are conventionally addressed through notions of performance. They are a matter of constant making, un-making and re­ making. Applying Nelson Goodman’s classification of the ‘Languages of Art’ (1968) into one- or two-staged arts, and into autographic or allographic arts, Mitchell (1994) suggested that digital imaging appears to be a two-staged, allographic work. Let me make this more intelligible. A classic example of two-staged art for Goodman is music, which is first written and then per­ formed. Allographic arts are, on the other hand, characterized by the fact that they can (in theory at least) be copied exactly. Music score exemplifies this too, allowing itself to be replicated ad infinitum. Following this idea, digital images appear, paradoxically perhaps, to be more similar in nature to music than to other art forms and the procedure for producing them appears to be closer to the functioning of a piano or a violin than to the act of taking an analogue photograph. The procedure of the creation of a digital image, centred as it is on the presence of what McLuhan in the 1960s called ‘electric circuitry’ (McLuhan

18

The present world of images

and Fiore 1967), constitutes indeed a significant break with the chemical procedure that characterized analogue photography. It took away, for those who inhabited the world of photography, that feeling of certainty over the adherence of the image to the referent that the analogue provided. It also led to the pervasive associations between the digital and immateriality (I will discuss this further below). The positions of those who claim for an essential, radical difference between digital and analogue images are in my view char­ acterized, however, by a too narrow focus on the level of production, that is, on the opposition between processor and chemical reaction. And no doubt, at this level, the rupture is significant. A degree of continuity can, however, be found if we were to shift the focus to other aspects that lead to the creation of a (photographic) image, such as the lens/objective and the human actors involved (the photographers with their gestures). The optical device has, across the decades, largely remained the same. It keeps conveying light into the body of the camera, that is, to the processor (previously the film) that is the locus of image creation. Some of its core aspects have indeed been auto­ mated and improved (autofocus, etc.). Yet, at the core of its functioning, an objective is still based on the same principles. For the third element, instead, we have to acknowledge the role of what Barthes (1993) called the ‘operator’ (the photographer), the agent in control of another couple of core ingredients: time and space. The operator selects when to click and what to include in and leave outside the frame. Roughly, we could say that while the processor has changed significantly, and the lens has largely remained the same, the opera­ tor is a matter of both change and continuity. The ‘gesture’ i.e. borrowing from Flusser (2006) the photographer’s way of using the camera for playing with space and time, has adapted for instance to the invention of LCD screens first and of live image viewing later (in both regular cameras as well as smartphones). These technological devices have indeed liberated the eye of the photographer from that of the camera making it also possible to preview the result of a photograph not only once taken but also during the process. As a consequence of the introduction of LCD screens, photographing is today more than ever the result of a triangularization of gazes. The LCD screen is a mediator between the direct exchange between the ‘referent’ (what is photo­ graphed) and the ‘operator’. Newer, emerging camera technologies, such as lifelogging and action-cameras push this exchange further liberating the operator from the responsibility of choosing time and frame (I will get back to this below). I must also add that besides these three elements, matters of infrastructure also do intrude in these processes. As I suggest in a recent article written together with my colleague Eva Theunissen (Theunissen and Favero 2020), new image-making practices have caused a shift away from conventional references to photography and film into a debate that centres a greater role on archival and curatorial practices. Such metaphors (and the attached practices) dominate the debate on, for instance, YouTube (see Prelinger 2009, Gehl 2009, Fossati 2009). I will go more in depth with the implications of this shift

The present world of images

19

in Chapter 5 when I look into the work of the Shared Footage Group. For now let me only point out how the algorithm acts as an ‘elephant in the room’ (Theunissen and Favero 2020) in many debates on contemporary image-making practices. Omnipresent but seldom properly acknowledged, algorithmic infrastructures stimulate an ongoing dialectic between ‘automa­ tion and agency’ (ibid.), i.e. the exchange between human agency and the machine that is at the very core of such acts of curating and co-constructing representational formats. In this scenario, images do sometimes travel beyond the will and control of the image-makers, grabbed and distributed by third party sites. Zylinska (2016) addresses this dimension in her work on photo­ graphy and automation too. In her view, photography has always been char­ acterized by a degree of automation. Building upon a continuous integration of automated procedures at the level of chemistry (first) and electronics (later), as well as to a number of automatic or instinctive reactions to the world surrounding the photographer, photography has from its very inception been simultaneously human and nonhuman: ‘it is precisely through focusing on its nonhuman aspect that we can find life in photography’ (Zylinska 2016: 132). Her observations remind me of the need to always insert in our analysis of digital visuality, that broader constellation of reflections that make up the existence of (photographic) images and the fact that, as McQuire suggested, ‘[a]t one level, the end result – a picture – remains much the same for viewers’ (2013: 225).

The blurred boundaries of digital visuality Digital imaging has been held responsible for the erosion of a number of those distinctions on which established ways of understanding and debating the world of images have been built upon. It blurs, in the first place, the boundary between the mechanical and the handmade. Think of the digitiza­ tion of works of art with its Benjaminian (1936[2008]) echoes of ‘mechanical reproduction’. It also challenges the strict separation of media between still and moving images and between flat (2D) and immersive (3D, 360 degree) images etc. Just reflect on the GIFs with their constant coalescing of the still and the moving; or on time lapses and the various other formats such as panoramas, 360 degrees, virtual reality, augmented reality, etc. that are hosted in the latest generation smartphones. Digital supports also bring different types of information to bear upon each other, offering an unprecedented merger of image, text, sound and geo-social metadata (see below). And finally, in addition to all these changes they also blur the distinctions between the producer/image-maker/writer and the consumer/reader/viewer as well as that between the professional and the amateur. Let me offer some examples of these various blurred boundaries. Some popular digital image-creation procedures may confuse the boundary between the manual and the digitally produced. One obvious example of this is that of HDR (High Dynamic Range) which constantly blurs the difference

20

The present world of images

between photography and painting. A technology (nowadays incorporated into most last-generation camera phones) allowing the user to convey a greater range of luminosity into the image than what is conventionally obtained with regular photographic tools and procedures (hence showing simultaneously more than the eye can see), HDR gives birth to quite ‘uncanny’ (Freud 1919) images. Those readers who may have played with such images in editing programs may have noticed how zooming into an HDR image reveals an uncertain landscape. The chunks of pixels that make up the photograph assume the shape of strokes of a brush. Suddenly we have the feeling of facing a painting and not a photograph. This procedure brings back to my mind the experiments conducted during the days of early photo­ graphy. Produced mainly by former painters, photographic portraits were conventionally inserted in a creative dialogue with other drawing, painting and collage techniques. Photographs retouched by a pencil or coloured by means of brushstrokes can be found in most places of the world but India offers undoubtedly a particularly rich scenario. The mixing of techniques can be detected in the printed images of Hindu gods that have been circulating in the country since the 1870s (Pinney 2004). It can be found in the amount of painted, drawn, collaged and retouched photographs that were produced in India during the colonial period (Allana 2008, see Figure 2.1). In the overcoming of conventional dualisms, digital images also attack the causal relationship between reality and the copy that lies at the core of established understandings of photography. Promoting the possibility of the existence of an image of something that never really stood in front of the camera, digital images can do without an origin in a profilmic ‘here and now’

Figure 2.1 Delhi Coronation Durbar photographic collage. Photo credit: Alkazi Foundation, New Delhi, India.

The present world of images

21

(or ‘there and then’). They foreground truth along a continuum that goes from intentional alteration to invisible (algorithmic) automation hence sus­ pending the idea of the supremacy of the original over the copy. Computer or processor-generated images awaken the fears for the final supplantation of reality by mechanically produced representations that have been at the centre of the concerns of much postmodern theory (see Baudrillard 1994, 1996 and Der Derian 1994). In the terrain of digital performativity (where the copy of the copy will always be identical to the original) the certainties of the exis­ tence of an original and hence of reality are lost. Mitchell (1992) commented upon this change saying: ‘as we enter the post-photographic era, we must face once again the ineradicable fragility of our ontological distinctions between the imaginary and the real, and the tragic elusiveness of the Cartesian dream’ (p. 225). The latest expression of this threat to the dissolution of reality is today represented by the world of augmented, mixed, virtual and extended reality (AR/MR/VR/XR) where images really seem to have transcended the duty of ‘representing’ the world and moved into a role of producers of possi­ ble parallel worlds that meet and overlap with direct lived experience. Summing up digital images offer a precious opportunity to rethink some of the simplistic dualisms that have guided us in our attempts at understanding the world of mechanically produced images. They embrace a new role as multimodal, multi-sensory and multi-perspectival producers of relations, of material, spatial and temporal engagements with the world that surrounds them. Let me look a little further into this.

Time, space and materiality in the digital travel of images As anticipated in my reflections above, distribution is a key dimension for understanding the ways in which human relations to images have changed in the passage from the analogue to the digital. Van Dijk writes that: ‘[u]ntil the 1990s, sharing laminated pictures and stories was indeed a shared social experience conducted commonly within the social circles of family and friends. Very few pictures were actively exchanged beyond those private cir­ cles, but this changed as soon as digital cameras penetrated the markets of amateur photography’ (2011: 407). Cutting off costs of productions, allowing for new forms and sizes of cir­ culation, as well as an unprecedented ease to produce, upload and share, the digital is today allowing images to travel at a higher pace than ever before. It has put images in motion in new (unprecedented) ways. Let me unpack this phenomenon further by looking into different dimensions: time, space and materiality. The sharing and viewing practices that characterize Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram signal an important move away from photo­ graphy as a technology aimed at preserving time or, to use Bazin’s (1967) term, at ‘embalming’ it. They rather serve the purpose of creating a shared, simultaneous experience of time, mediated by the image. McQuire (2013) has addressed this aspect suggesting that today ‘[p]hotography is becoming less

22

The present world of images

about capturing “memories” (as Kodak famously phrased it in the 20th cen­ tury) than about commenting on present events as they are taking place’ (p. 226). And in a first essay on MMS (Multimedia Messaging Services), Ito (2005) carefully analyzed that sense of shared belonging capable of trans­ cending spatial boundaries (see also Koskinen 2004) that images, in connec­ tion to that particular digital affordance, were able to create. She opted to call this a case of ‘visual co-presence’ (Ito 2005). In digital habitats, a new temporality is hence attributed to the act of viewing images which must be understood in terms of an ongoing dialectic of loss and transience. In an early analysis of Flickr and of the introduction on this site of the ‘photostream’, Murray addressed the critical role of this par­ ticular way (at the time still a relative novelty) for viewing and sharing images. She wrote: ‘[t]he photostream moves old pictures out of the way to make room for the new, which creates a sense of temporariness for the photos – as if each one had limited time in the spotlight before it would be replaced by something newer’ (2008: 155). Quoting from Jake she added ‘[t]he nature of photography now is it’s in motion. It doesn’t stop time anymore, and maybe that’s a loss. But there’s a kind of beauty to it’ (ibid.: 155). Contemporary digital image-making and image-sharing tools and technol­ ogies also interpellate (and integrate) space in novel forms. The integration of image technologies with GPS positioning (cf. Lapenta 2011, Pink and Hjort 2012, Favero 2014) has made possible new ways of incorporating metadata in images making them at once synonymous to time, place and also, through the various encapsulations of ‘#’s and ‘@’s, with community. ‘#’s and ‘@’s make, in fact, visible the circle of connections that surround the various images that are posted on social media hence drawing a specific social geography around the people who post. In the confluence of different types of metadata digital images seem to realize the intuitive instances of ‘bifocality’ that Peters (1997) described when looking at the role of visual media in the context of ongoing dialogues between the local and the global. According to Peters, our experi­ ences of the world are increasingly being mediated by technologies of repre­ sentation (he used the example of satellite maps used in weather forecasts) that make us constantly aware of who we are in relation to the context in which we live. They ‘position’ us. I now need to get back to the supposed ephemerality of digital images that I addressed above through my reflections on the insights of Murray inserting it in the terrain of materiality. Popular as well as scholarly debates have con­ ventionally addressed digital images though notions of virtuality and imma­ teriality. They have looked at them as negations of a truer, more direct, ‘realer’ experience of the world surrounding us; as a proper detachment from everyday life. Gere (2005) has suggested that the move toward the digital has generated a fear for ‘the annihilation of physical distance and the dissolution of material reality’ (p. 15), whereas Wellman (2001) has maintained that the digital has produced instances of ‘networked individualism’ (cf. Wellman 2001). Nichols too (2001) has famously argued that, for what regards the

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world of film, ‘the chip is pure surface, pure simulation of thought. Its mate­ rial surface is its meaning, without history, without depth, without aura, affect, or feeling’ (p. 104). In a number of recent publications (Favero 2018, 2016 and 2013) I have deconstructed the role of such notions in the field of emerging digital visual practices. A careful look into the world of digital visualities reveals how images today offer actually an ever-increasing anchorage in the materiality (and politics) of everyday life. Rather than pulling users and viewers out of their everyday life, they reinsert them in it in manifold new ways. I will unpack this shortly, but let me first just open up a parenthesis on the possible misunderstanding that lies at the core of such views. The notions of detach­ ment from everyday life and its materiality builds upon a simplified reading of the work of the first computer designers. One of these original sources is Vannevar Bush, an American engineer who in 1945, published an article in which he prophesied the birth of a tool capable of functioning like a prosthe­ tic memory (Bush 1945). The Memex (this is the name of the machine he had envisioned) would be the ultimate solution to the need to manage the growing flow of information that characterized his epoch and that was making the work of teachers, journalists, etc. harder and harder. Bush’s ideas consolidated the notions of digitization that have survived until today (in varying degrees in scholarly work but quite importantly also in popular culture). Anticipating the future transposition of books and other paper documents into PDFs, records into MP3s, films into MP4s, photographs into JPEGs etc., he addressed electronic technologies as tools that could help to reduce the size of the concrete physical items that carry information. In his view, the Encyclo­ paedia Britannica for instance, could ‘be reduced to the volume of a match­ box’ (Bush 1945: pp. 113–114). His vision of electronics as a tool for miniaturization became, in popular and scientific discourse, mixed up with the notion of the ‘virtual’ and the ‘immaterial’. It gave fuel to the future slo­ ganistic anti-digital calls for a need to return to the ‘reality’ that I have hinted at above. As a matter of fact we know that ‘the digital’ is far from a volatile thing. To mention one example, the ‘cloud’ is a very heavy infrastructure made up of a number of data centres, each one the size of a village. And for those of the readers who, like me, are often on the move, it may be useful to just pay attention to the amount of heavy material that we collect in our homes and that materializes every time we have to pack our bags. Cables, chargers, hard drives, connectors as well as old floppy disks, mini-disk players and tapes, mini-DV cassettes, memory cards, and the like are the material supports needed for allowing us access to such supposedly ‘virtual’ technolo­ gies. This stratified media archaeology will surely be the object of much future research. Zylinska (2016) has already devoted attention to these modern ‘fossils’. An anecdote from my ‘parallel’ life as an image-maker can be instructive of this. When, in 2002, I started making documentary films, my business partner (and true mentor) Angelo Fontana used to tell me that in his days things were much harder. ‘In my generation we had to carry heavy

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cameras, all the film rolls, mics, cables, etc. Now you can just take off with your camera and a few tapes and go filming,’ he once told me. This was indeed true in the early 2000s. Professional cameras had become quite small then and the arrival of mini-DVs and DV cams etc. had made things much lighter indeed. Yet, as time passed by and as new high resolution and 4K formats started becoming the broadcasting norm, the business of filmmaking got heavier again. Today extra hard drives (and hence a laptop), extra bat­ teries and memory cards are required for making a film. So filmmakers are again forced to carry loads of equipment on their ventures. At the peak of the present digital age, filmmaking has become a ‘heavily’ material business again. A quick look at the contemporary market of digital/visual consumer tech­ nologies makes this changing (material) scenario evident also from another angle. This market is in fact dominated by a trend toward technologies that bring images in closer touch with body and materiality. A first (and possibly the most evident) expression of this material trend is the 3D printer. Largely embraced by designers, medical sciences, artists, etc. this technology makes possible the translation, through a computerized image, of visions and abstract ideas into physical and sensory items. Another example, more centred on actual vision than the previous one, is perhaps that of smart glas­ ses, a first concrete instance of wearable vision-based augmented reality (AR) technology. Allowing users to receive ‘virtual’ data on the lens (hence over­ lapping with the direct perception of the world ‘out there’) these glasses bring geolocative (spatial) and geosocial (relational) information right into the field of vision. They constitute an example of how images today, as I have sug­ gested elsewhere, force us to move ‘beyond the frame’ (Favero 2014). Google Glass failed in the long run in attracting buyers but today a number of other companies are also experimenting with the design of ‘smart’ contact lenses. Another key arena where to detect the growing materialization and embodi­ ment of digital visual technologies and tools is the market of wearable cam­ eras. I have elsewhere (Favero 2019) discussed the methodological implications of the use of such tools in ethnographic research. Here I just would like to address the extent to which such technologies materialize McLuhan’s (McLuhan and Fiore 1967) intuition about the extent to which electronic media would in a future world, become prosthesis of human bodies and minds. Lifelogging and action-cameras are key examples of this trend and they have taken, in recent years, late capitalist societies by storm. The former category is made up of small, lightweight, wearable and generally fully weatherproof cameras that can be pinned on clothes. Guided by an algo­ rithm, they take one or two shots every minute. Such shots are then recom­ posed into a time-lapse clip that users can view through a dedicated smartphone application (or by downloading them manually and editing them on a computer). Lacking a viewfinder, these cameras pose a number of inter­ esting challenges to image-making. In the first place, they dissociate the act of image-making from the intentionality of the maker, that is, from the processes

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of selection of the right angle, framing, moment and interpretation that are key to the act of making pictures. Using the movements of the user’s body as a kind of viewfinder, they also constitute the final form of disentanglement of the photographer’s gaze from the camera’s eye that had started with the introduction of LCD screens on digital cameras (I discussed this above). Action cameras add another dimension to this. Launched in the world of extreme sports they were originally designed to respond to the need of immersing (metaphorically and indeed very physically too) the camera in places and moments that could not be filmed or photographed otherwise (at least surely not in the absence of costly technological and infrastructural investments). Foregrounding sensory, playful entanglements between the camera and the material environment surrounding it, action cameras make accessible to amateurs, viewers and image-makers alike, a world previously out of sight. Adopted also by professional filmmakers (mainly by doc­ umentarians) such cameras bring back to image-making those magical and transcendental connotations that according to Benjamin ([1931] 2015) were at the core of the mission of photography. According to Benjamin, photo­ graphers were, in fact, the descendants of the augurs and haruspices and the camera was their tool for entering the ‘optical unconscious’, for opening up a new perception of the environment surrounding them. These quick insights into the world of visual consumer technologies can reveal the extent to which contemporary image-making tools and technolo­ gies are characterized by a growing desire to close the gap between technol­ ogy, the body and the materiality of the surrounding world. These experiences echo also those of iDocs, which, as I stated in an earlier publication, ‘con­ sistently tend to push viewers to engage with the physicality and socialness of everyday life, to immerse themselves in the “offline” in other words, to get their hands dirty (again)’ (Favero 2013: 273). In Chapter 5 while addressing the work of the Shared Footage Group, I will discuss in greater detail the connection with iDocs and contemporary digital visualities in the context of the research that lies at the core of this book. For now let me conclude this section by suggesting that as opposed to ruling discourses on dematerializa­ tion and virtuality, image-making and image-sharing technologies speak today of an increasing anchorage of images in the materiality, physicality, spatiality, and sociality of everyday life and its politics. The works that are at the centre of this book all speak of this, albeit from a variety of different angles.

Questioning Western ‘perspectives’ on the world of images The changes addressed above show the extent to which images today, when inserted in digital habitats, emerge as much more than matters of representa­ tion and narration. From social media to 3D printing, from VR, MR, AR, XR, to iDocs and wearable cameras, images evidently do much more than ‘illustrating’, ‘reflecting’, or ‘capturing’ the world out there. They rather

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concur at its very crafting. They are performative, transformative and ask us to look more, as Mitchell (2006) anticipated long ago, at what they ‘want’ and ‘do’ rather than at what they stand in for. Increasingly multi-sensory and participatory, they stitch together users with each other and with the world that surrounds them. Images today are, hence, invested by a duty of doing many (and at times contradictory) things at once: of representing and pre­ senting, of presencing, crafting and connecting. An approach to con­ temporary visualities needs to take these shifts into consideration. Rather than taking us into an unknown territory, digital images seem, however, as I anticipated above, to recentralize ways of engaging with visual objects that belong to other spaces and times. They evoke those visualities (that I define as parallel and counter-hegemonic) that have always existed in the periphery of, to use Jay’s (1988) expression, the ‘scopic regime’ imposed by geometrical perspective. Let me briefly stay with this argument given its centrality and attempt at fully grasping the cultural relativity of the world of images. The core assumptions that guide Western hegemonic understandings of the world of images are centred on the principles of Renaissance geometric perspective. Cinema and photography, the two dominating visual languages of modernity, are children of this tradition. Inspired by Arab mathematician and philosopher Alhazen’s eleventh-century Book of Optics, where the act of looking is for the first time visualized as a pyramid with the eye on one end and the visible field on the other, European painters, architects, and mathe­ maticians started in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to develop a mathe­ matical, geometrical formula capable of converting three-dimensional depth into a flat surface. Notably it was Leon Battista Alberti who, inspired by Brunelleschi, theorized the set of converging lines upon which much of postRenaissance art was built. Leonardo too became inspired by perspective and described it as ‘a rational demonstration whereby experience confirms that all objects transmit their similitude to the eye by a pyramid of lines’ (quoted in Mirzoeff 1999: 39). Despite imposing itself – to adopt a Marxist term (Gramsci 1971) – as a ‘hegemonic’ system of knowledge, Renaissance perspective never fully suc­ ceeded in eliminating those practices that did not follow its principles. Vrai­ semblance, anamorphism, reverse perspective as well as a number of other playful adaptations of perspective survived in parallel to it. From the six­ teenth century onward, however, geometrical perspective became nevertheless recognized as a ‘natural’ model of vision. It became, as I anticipated above, a ‘scopic regime’ (Jay 1988), i.e. a dominant theory of vision mirroring the West’s growing obsession with rationality, lines and mathematics (as against colours, senses, touch, etc.). Geometrical perspective came with a particular politics attached to it. On the one hand it translated visually Descartes’ hier­ archisation of the relationship between the body and the mind, hence strengthening the primacy of the intellect (the soul)1 over the body and the senses. In this division, perspective also marked the separation between the world and the self.

The present world of images

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Conventionally explained by means of a window allowing painters to measure a particular view (see Durer’s drawing Figure 2.2), perspective was hence a tool for separation (separating the observer from the observed, the self from the world). No reciprocity was contemplated here. And in this conceptual space, the act of looking becomes synonymous with control. Lifted up to the level of God, the viewers could, in a perspectival space, fully exercise control on the image (and hence upon the world). They no longer needed to situate them­ selves in relation to it (as was the case with other visualities, see below).2 This, at the core, is the key politics of Renaissance perspective. It mirrors not only the Western fascination and obsession with lines, linearity, and mathematics but also its desire to control, to split and centralize (power). It is a world of lines and rationality controlling a world of circles and sensory engagements. Geometrical perspective marked the entry into the modern age, an epoch characterized, as McQuire (1998) suggested while quoting Hei­ degger, by the ‘conquest of the world as perspective’ (p. 22). Geometrical perspective created, therefore, a space that was simultaneously aesthetic, analytical, and political. This ‘scopic regime’ constituted the perfect meta­ phorical platform for modern society and especially for the future society of control that Foucault metaphorized by means of the panopticon (Foucault 1978). Foregrounding mathematics as ‘the universal measure of knowledge’ (Mir­ zoeff 1999: 19) perspective managed to tame, domesticize, and control the image, inserting itself in the long struggle between the text and the icon that had characterized medieval Europe, when religion (the church) armed with a text (the Bible) engaged a fight against the image-loving heathens (see Flusser 2006). Rationalized through their insertion in a terrain of representation they became distanced from their magical powers. Yet, as Russian theologian and monk Pavel Florensky suggested a century ago, geometrical perspective was built upon an empirical lie. It reduced vision to a form of ‘monocularism’ making humans ‘as monocular as the Cyclops’ (Florensky 1977: 262)3.

Figure 2.2 Draughtsman Drawing a Recumbent Woman. Albrecht Dürer. 1525.

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The present world of images

Disregarding the extent to which the second eye, in neurotypical subjects, functions as the critical judge helping them give depth and value to what they see4, perspective flattened down sensory reality to a flat formula. Perspective hence marked also another passage. With its establishment as a hegemonic vision, images ceased to be objects of contemplation. They became instead tools for narration and representation. In antiquity (as well also in many ancient and contemporary contexts), images were however used and envisioned in a significantly different manner. They functioned as portals, two-way gates allowing an exchange between human beings and the world surrounding them. With relation to Byzantine-inspired imagery, for instance, Florensky (1977) wrote in the early nineteenth century, that an image is ‘not only a window through which the visages depicted in them appear, but also a gate from which these enter the sensible world’ (ibid.: 69). Such a way of understanding and using images has never really disappeared. In both Wes­ tern and non-Western contexts there are many ways of engaging with images that foreground such contemplative, non-representational principles. Presence (cf. Pinney 2001) and contemplation (Argan 2008), rather than realist repre­ sentation and narration, do still dominate many contemporary counter-hege­ monic visual practices. They can, for instance, be found in the popular visual culture of Catholic devotion. Lenticular prints with religious motifs (popu­ larly known as 3D images) are a key souvenir in churches, temples and sanctuaries all over the world (both in the West as well as in India). Permit­ ting viewers to see different motifs by tilting the images (such as for instance a painting of Jesus and the reproduction of his face as it appears on the Shroud of Turin, or Shiva merging with Parvati), such images constitute powerful propagators of faith. Similar playful immersive image practices can also be found in other contexts. Stereoscopic images have, from the very dawn of photographic history, been used to awaken physical reactions towards a landscape or for purposes of sexual arousal (see the popularity of stereoscopic images with erotic or even pornographic imagery, Gilardi 2002). Early pho­ tographers immediately saw the possibility of using the splitting of the eyes as a tool for generating sensory, corporeal reactions to photographs. Along with panoramic formats such images expressed a concrete attempt of moving as far as possible away from the limitations imposed by the square, narrow frame provided by the first photographic cameras. Cinema too responded to the same craving for immersiveness and loss of control with 3D movies. Sup­ posedly born in response to the possibilities offered by sound for surrounding the viewers (see Elsaesser 2013), 3D cinema too speaks of a desire to over­ come the limitations to perception imposed by screens and square, flat frames (see Lippit 1999). VR/MR/XR can (along with their precursor IMAX) be looked upon as a natural prolongation of the same ambition. And painting too has expressed the same longing. Cubism, Dadaism and Futurism are all characterized by an attempt at converging on the same canvas multiple angles or moments of observation. Think of the work of Balla, Picasso or even Turner. And we could stretch this longing into the world of video installations

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with the works of Ken Jacobs and Bill Viola or of the 3D laser-mapping installations of Danny Rose and Miguel Chevalier. All these works, I suggest, are united, despite the diversity of techniques deployed, by the desire to overcome the separation between the observer and the observed, the ‘I’ and the world which is typical of flat images. And they entail also a loss of control on the image for both the viewers and the image-makers.

Decolonizing the visual A further journey in time and space can be even more instructive for detect­ ing the relativity of the principles imposed by geometrical perspective. I believe that we are today, more than ever, in need of theoretical approaches capable of ‘decolonizing’ the assumptions on which Western understanding of the world of images build upon. The debate on the decolonization of film canons and visual culture is today a leading topic in social sciences and humanities. I often feel, however, that the leading approach often fails to move beyond a first superficial layer. Films from postcolonial societies are often inserted into this context as a self-evident way to show openness to ‘other’, ‘non-Western’ ways of working with images. Yet, I believe that often such approaches are blind to the ways in which image-makers from post­ colonial societies may actually be reproducing ways of addressing imagemaking that are imported from Western ‘canons’. On top of that, if not sup­ ported by a grounded rethinking of the epistemological assumptions that surround our approach to images such attempts may simply be shallow. They do not help in making visible the extent to which silent assumptions that are incorporated from geometrical perspective, rationalism, etc. can filter the approach to images and image-making. Also, they fail in addressing the extent to which a number of late capitalist practices (especially those gener­ ated at the cusp of the encounter of visual and digital technologies) can help us rethink such assumptions. In the following pages I address this dimension, starting from the meaning of images and vision in an Indian context only to then move to explore the extent to which contemporary digital visual practices can be better under­ stood by referring to non-Western and non-rationalistic epistemologies. The study of the meaning and role of images in India has been the object of attention of a plethora of scholars. In his analysis of popular religious chro­ molithographs in rural India, Pinney (2001) has shown how visual practices are in the context of Indian popular culture, a matter of ‘corpothetics’ rather than aesthetics (2001: 157). In his words this is an ‘embodied, corporeal aes­ thetics’ which stands in opposition ‘to “disinterested” representation, which over-cerebralizes and textualizes the image.’ (Pinney 2004: 8). They prioritize questions of efficacy and effect rather than representation (an evident materi­ alization of this can be found in Van der Stock’s photograph see Figure 2.3). The divine is, in the context of popular Hindu imagery literally present in the image, and the act of seeing, as Babb (1981) and Eck (1998) have shown, is a

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The present world of images

Figure 2.3 Child touching the photograph of the father. Photo credit: Liza Van der Stock.

matter of reciprocity. Literally replacing the divinity, images have historically been considered as living things in Hindu contexts: ‘For many centuries, most Hindus have taken it for granted that the religious images they place in

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temples and home shrines for purposes of worship are alive’ (Davis 1997: 6). In this context the image transcends itself, foregrounding instead the act of seeing as the core of the spiritual activity. Images are here ‘things that matter’ (Edwards 2006: 28). They are to be touched, stroked and worshipped with milk, water, colours etc.; one should play with them, mirror oneself in them (see Figure 2.3). It is in adherence to this logic that Hindu icons are decorated by metals and a plethora of other playful elements. As implied in the notion of darshan, the act of looking is, in this context, also an act of being looked at, an ongoing interpenetration leading to a full immersion in the image. As Eck (1998) expresses it: ‘because the image is a form of the supreme lord, it is precisely the image that facilitates and enhances the close relationship of the worshipper and God and makes possible the deepest outpouring of emotions in worship’ (p. 46). One becomes ‘what one sees’ (Babb 1981: 297) in an act that could prob­ ably be inserted within the logic of contagion of qualities and hence of magic. A ‘liquid logic’ (Dundes 1980) seems to characterize this particular way of gazing, which reminds me of the insights that Elisabeth Edwards gained by looking at the role of photographs among Australian Aboriginal people. In her pathbreaking essay Photographs and the Sound of History (2006), Edwards suggests that, in this context, photos are ‘relational objects’. Central in articulating histories that have been suppressed, photographs are not only part of the visual realm but constitute an element in a much broader perfor­ mance. They are held, caressed, stroked, sung to: they become sound, the sounds of voices, of songs, of memories verbalized as stories; an oral history materializing the relationships between specific individuals who engage each other through such images. The centrality (and reciprocality) of the act of looking can be found in a number of South Asian practices, such as that of marking the eyes of small children with kajal (protecting them from ‘evil’ eyes) or the South Indian Keralite festival of Vishu (cf. also Eck 1998). Literally meaning ‘the first thing seen on the day after waking up’, Vishu marks the beginning of the new year. On the morning of the festival, a family elder will wake children up and take them to a shrine adorned with fruits, nuts, lamps, and images of divinities. Telling the children not to open their eyes, the elder will make sure that they kneel in front of the shrine. The children will then be told to open their eyes and contemplate God. To my great surprise, the first time I took part in this ritual, I saw, upon opening my eyes, my own face reflected in a mirror placed in-between the icons of the deities. Celebrating the fusion of viewer and viewed, of the human and the godly, of the divine and the mundane, this particular aspect of Vishu materializes a culturally situated way of under­ standing and viewing as a spiritual act. A questioning of the tacit assumptions on which Western visual cultures build can, however, also be enacted from within the West itself, for example, by exploring the visuality of Byzantium icons (in the past but also in the present). Emerging in the ninth century as ‘the privileged image’ (Pencheva 2013) icons

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are constituted by a combination of techniques of composition as well as of material production, that contribute in offering the viewers multiple (and sensedriven) points of entry. Supported by a specific spiritual vision, such pictures are dynamic and allow the viewers to observe them literally as well as metaphorically from a variety of perspectives. Without indulging in the technical details for understanding the specificities of these images, I will address a couple of aspects that characterize them. In the first place, these images are neither fully bi- nor tri­ dimensional (Lindsay Opie 2014) but a combination of both. They are also conventionally characterized by what is commonly referred to as ‘reverse per­ spective’ (Pencheva 2013, Argan 2008, Florensky 1967, Marci 2014). This entails that the ‘picture space […] opens up in front of the image rather than behind it’ (Pencheva 2013: 6) hence wrapping the viewer into the image itself. Icons also seldom contain an attempt at creating a realistic environment around the central figure. A thin golden foil instead surrounds the central figure in the image offer­ ing the viewers a possibility (similar to what happens with many Hindu icons) to mirror themselves in it. Symbolizing ‘pure divine light’ (Sendler 1985), the golden foil that makes up the background of an icon brings the viewer in direct touch with the divine figure portrayed. Icons are, therefore, non-representational, reflexive and performative images. Neither illustration nor decoration, they are a tool for communicating directly with the realm of the divine (of the invisible) and for entering it. The parallel with Hindu icons is striking. In fact, in the case of Byzantine icons too, the image contains the essence of the divinity and it gen­ erates, by use of reflecting materials, manifold dialogues with the viewers. All these images and pictures seem to require a shift away from linguistic and semiotic models of analysis into performative ones. As Pinney suggests, linguistic models have long dominated Western approaches to images. Quoting from the work of Stafford (1996), he states that the ‘totemization of language as a godlike agency’ (ibid.: 5) that characterizes Western culture has reduced images to ‘encrypted messages requiring decipherment’ (ibid.: 6). Saussure’s schema has ‘emptied the mind of its body’ (Stafford 1996: 5). This linguistic bias char­ acterizes also many contemporary analyses of the world of digital/visual prac­ tices. Research on the role of digital images in the creation of new possibilities for identity and community-making (cf. Wesch 2009, Quiggin 2006, Sun 2012, Miller 2011) tend to offer a text-biased approach that ignores the visual (and the sensorial) in favour of a textual analytical model. I have recently started exploring the extent to which a decolonizing agenda can be set forth within the context of contemporary digital visualities. The terrain of VR/AR/MR/XR opens up an interesting opportunity for doing this. These visual practices seem, in fact, to speak of a desire (simultaneously new and ancient) for unity, for trespassing the divide between ‘self ’ and ‘other’, ‘self ’ and the world that are also strongly foregrounded in the parallel visua­ lities that I have addressed so far. MR (mixed reality) is particularly interest­ ing in these regards. Employed in a variety of commercial, artistic and therapeutic settings it offers an exploration of the space between the ‘actual’ and the ‘virtual’ (Milgram et al. 1994). In my explorations of MR in the

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context of performance and film, I have noticed the multiple short-circuits that such visual space actually generates between the virtual and the actual. One such instance can, in the context of India, be found in the work of Priya Shakti5, an MR/AR experience that allows viewers to get extra content while exploring images in physical space. In such contexts, viewers have often the experience of both being in the VR/MR space but also outside of it; they are both themselves but also someone else, both here and there. I believe that, similar to the world of VR at large, such experiences direct our attention to the space in-between self and other, or in-between self and not-self. In order to fully grasp this we must, however, take a step sideways from the assump­ tions that govern Western epistemologies. A large number of (technical) terms that we automatically import from conventional Western visual culture pre­ vent us, in fact, from making sense of such emerging forms. To begin with, the notion of the frame, the square frame that characterizes cinema and photography, constitutes a first evident limitation. Foregrounding, as we saw, a sharp distinction between observer and the observed, it signals also a radi­ cal separation between the self and the world. Immersive images speak of an entry into a different kind of ‘frame’. This is a curved and dynamic environ­ ment that morphs according to the different modalities of engagement of the viewers. Borrowing from Hansen, it requires a different kind of ‘bodily spa­ cing’ (2004: 163). Unlike in geometrical perspective, viewers are positioned internally to the image itself and they can barely control its content. Things happen, unbeknownst to the viewers (as well as the image-maker), that are beyond the (narrative) control of both. When image-makers construct a sequence of events in immersive images, they can never be sure what their viewers will actually see. They must instead envision different ways for the viewers to be in the image, and abandon the desire to guide them. This curved frame/space also blurs conventional distinctions of the before and after, front and back. Also it forces us to realize how images are constructed and defined by movement and bodily reactions rather than by thought. This is, similar to Byzantium and Hindu icons, a space of presence and contemplation rather than of narration and representation. Another key term that also requires rethinking and that is connected to the above-mentioned dimension, is that of projection. A key ‘apparatus’ (Foucault 1980) that shapes the ‘frame’ by bringing the image to the viewers, the pro­ jector (or beamer) is a tool whose cultural and political implications have lar­ gely been neglected by scholars6. This politically dense apparatus reproduces, in practice, the principles of Renaissance perspectival visuality. The result of a long evolution that started with the camera obscura, the magic lantern, the silhouette, and the cathode ray tube, projection is based on the simple and linear principle of expelling rays toward a space that is visible by the viewer. It foregrounds a linear relationship between source and outcome of the light which is significantly different from that of circular immersive spaces. The projector signals also the presence of a specific spatial politics. Reproducing the ‘institu­ tionalized production of perspectival space’ (Heath and de Lauretis 1980

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paraphrased by Culler [2014: 208]), it controls not only the space of the image but also the act of viewing itself. Those of us born before the late 1960s may remember the politics of space that characterized the screening of holiday pic­ tures in family contexts. Family members were expected to sit still in a welldefined place so that they do not cause disruption in the act of viewing. In the space of immersive images, however, this linear relationship is challenged. The user/viewer/‘senser’ coincides here with the point of emanation of the image. A strongly individuating and personalizing apparatus, VR/MR/AR goggles offer us an image that is not the result of a linear projection but of a scattered movement in all directions, similar more to the functioning of a scanner, or fireworks, or a firehouse, than to a conventional projector. I could continue to discuss in depth other conceptual ways for decentring ‘flatties’ yet my point is probably already quite clear. The entrance into the space of digital visualities requires a move away from consolidated Western dualistic epistemologies and it awakens comparisons with parallel visualities. In such image-environments truth emerges as ‘experience’. In a recent meeting with a cinema director interested in implementing VR and MR in their pro­ gramming I found myself suggesting that cinema is no longer the right con­ ceptual (and physical) ‘frame’ in which to insert such practices. These visualities are more a matter of performance and theatre and hence require also a shift away from conventional institutionalized ways of showing images. Located in the observers, with their multiple relations to the world surround­ ing them, MR/VR dissolve the separation between the ‘I’ and the world that was sustained by rationalism and perspectival viewing. They move instead in the direction of that sense of oneness between the human and the world that makes up the fundament of many non-Western knowledge systems, such as Buddhism, and Hinduism (see von Glasenapp 1967, Knott 1999, Tucci 1992). I have recently started exploring the extent to which we may get a better understanding of emerging visual practices by adopting the insights on per­ ception and knowledge that characterize Buddhist philosophy. It is not the scope of this discussion (nor of this book) to fully enter this debate but let me only point out that the principle of non-duality or of double negation, one of the pillars of Buddhist thought (Shaw 1978), can help us address the inbetween spaces that are foregrounded by visual practices such as MR and also those of parallel by Byzantium and Hindu icons. Often referred to as a method rather than a coherent system of knowledge (von Glanesapp 1967, Tucci 1992), Buddhism is grounded in contingency and ambiguity. Building on the recognition of transcendence and the impossibility to fully know, Buddhist philosophy ‘offers no answers, only the possibility of new begin­ nings’ (Batchelor 1998: 103). Looking upon the world as a flow of imperma­ nent, fleeting objects in constant becoming, its epistemology engages with the world though a constant act of ‘confrontation’ (Batchelor 1997: 18) rather than through a search for solid, stable narratives. Avoiding reductions to binary oppositions, ‘nondualism’ is, as anticipated, one of the fundaments of Buddhist philosophy. Leading to the transcendence of the dichotomy of

The present world of images

35

‘I’ and ‘other’ this principle builds on the assumption that human percep­ tions of the world can neither be fully true nor false. Promoting a ‘four­ cornered’ set of possibilities it entails that any subject can be simultaneously ‘self ’ and ‘not-self ’ and also ‘neither self ’ nor ‘non-self ’. Human life is hence not only a matter of ‘being’ or ‘non-being’ but also of both ‘being and non-being’ and of ‘neither being and non-being’. This logic can help us grasp a better understanding of the imagery that I just addressed. In the contexts of VR/MR and the religious imagery I discussed above, viewers are allowed to simultaneously be ‘here’ and ‘not-here’. In the immersive image environments that I discussed above, the dissolution of such distinctions adds to the collapse of other dualisms such as ‘presence’ vs. ‘absence’, and ‘body’ vs. ‘mind’. Images, in these contexts, lead to a processual and performative ‘confrontation’ that eventually allows the viewers to discover the fragmented nature of the self, the multi-sensory nature of human percep­ tions and the continuum that makes up the body-mind complex. This approach resonates well with that of Florensky who, in his analysis of reli­ gious icons, suggested that religious icons lift up the soul from earthly matters bringing it, amidst its mundane everydayness, in touch with another dimension (the ‘celestial’ one). For him, this world (with its spiritual essence) is always there but it manifests itself only through the interaction with the viewer (the comparison with interactive VR/MR/XR environ­ ments is here self-evident). An attempt at decolonizing knowledge about images (new and old), enacted through the insertion of elements borrowed from other epistemologies can, therefore, provide new insights into this possibly ‘uncanny’ territory, where we discover experiences, to use Sig­ mund Freud’s (1919) definition of this term, that are ‘strangely familiar’ and that, hence, build simultaneously upon both, the ‘known’ and ‘non­ known’. I believe that all the experiences that I will analyze in this book contribute in showing the capacity of images to go beyond mere matters of representation.

Decentring the digital Just like images, vision and visuality, the ‘digital’ too (as a term, concept and a phenomenon) is in need of critical rethinking. Digital technologies are, in the first place, evidently not a monolith. They shape up in concrete social, cultural, political and economic contexts and engender varying reactions depending on what they encounter on their path. The introduction of digital technologies has, however, not only triggered these different reactions but also generated intense debates among observers and scholars. Simultaneously with the spread of digi­ tal technologies, digitized societies were witness to the spread of a discourse celebrating the arrival of digital technologies as the beginning of a more equal, democratic and participatory era. Right after the launch of the first iPhone (and its competitors), books such as We Think (Leadbeater 2009) and Here Comes Everybody (Shirky 2008) popularized the idea of a society moving

36

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toward a greater, bottom-up democracy made possible by digital media. ‘Technophilias’ (Kember 1998) and ‘techno-utopians’ (Mandiberg 2012) have celebrated the arrival of the digital as a proper democratic revolution, the instalment of a ‘digital utopia’ (Rosen 2001: 318). On the other hand, dysto­ pians and sceptics have looked at this as the inevitable entry into an epoch firmly dominated by multinationals and by centralized forms of power (see Marciano 2014). Henry Jenkins is a good example of the first category. In his Convergence Culture (2006) he suggests that the global spread of media would lead to the rise of new subjects armed with a collective intelligence capable of constituting an alternative source of power. Highlighting media’s capacity to create a new planetary ‘collaborative’ culture, Jenkins contributed in giving momentum to celebratory accounts of digital and to instances of ‘media acti­ vism’ (Kellner and Kim 2010). Jenkins’s observations were part of a larger panorama of enquiries into the rise of what Castells successfully labelled, ‘the network society’ (1996). Bringing to the fore the debates on the relation between technological autonomy and human agency that have characterized much of the developments of Western thought (think of the works of Benjamin, Adorno, McLuhan, Kittler, etc.) Jenkins’s ideas, however, received criticism. Hay and Couldry (2011) accused him of overstating the power of the user and of understating the role of corporates and of contemporary capitalism. Driscoll and Gregg (2011) questioned his lack of attention for how gender influences social actors’ experiences of media and technology. Like them, many other scholars looked critically at digital technologies as possible tools for incorpor­ ating human beings into ‘soft capitalism’ (Thrift 1997) and ‘soft power’ (Nye 2004). Using Foucault’s terms, we could say that these scholars have looked at digital technologies as tools giving access to the ultimate stage in the develop­ ment of ‘biopower’ (see Foucault 1978). The geopolitics of digital access (see Barbatsis, Camacho and Jackson 2004, Ginsburg 2008) have also received a degree of attention in ruling debates on the different transnational approaches to digital technologies and cultures. Criss­ crossing conventional boundaries of nation, neighbourhood and community, access to the digital is progressively giving birth to a new and rapidly evolving world map where sometimes the centre of a city like Delhi looks closer to the centre of London or Brussels than to its own suburbs. It is not my aim to go into further depth with this aspect here. Nevertheless, I want to stress the extent to which this dimension reveals the problematic nature of terms such as the ‘Digital Era’. As a matter of fact there is no such thing as ‘a’ Digital Era. Miller et al. (2011) have for instance shown with regards to Facebook the variety of uses and interpretations that characterizes its travel across the globe. Like images, the digital gets moulded on the basis of the specificities if encounters in situated contexts. We can hence expect hidden cultural assump­ tions to influence also computerized systems and models of explanation. In my work I systematically try insofar as possible, to avoid such banal general­ izations. This is a reaction against a common practice (to be found in many texts regarding the digital) to speak in a sweeping ‘we’ form that hides from

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view the intrinsic diversity in meaning and access that characterize the terrain. I have tried to my best to avoid such slippages. Questioning the deterministic and Eurocentric assumptions that underline the idea of ‘the digital’ as a monolith capable of engendering similar reactions across the globe, the present book aims, on the basis of the Indian experience, to offer an ethnographically driven, in-depth analysis of the role of images in digitized settings. India con­ stitutes a territory where digital technologies are simultaneously a scarce resource and also a governmental slogan identifying in it the key to a future ‘Tiger India’. I anticipate this already in the introduction to this book and, in the following sections, I will unpack this argument further.

Notes 1 For Descartes the soul was the ultimate ‘interpreting judge of sensory perception’ (cf. Mirzoeff 1999: 43). This was the superior aspect of humans, that which ulti­ mately connected them to the divine. 2 This was a vision that brought to the surface also two intrinsically different ways of seeing the relation between humans and the world. It brought Kant’s vision of the earth to a space on which to stand on rather than for being immersed in, into a clash with Saint Augustine’s idea of human beings as being caught in-between the solid and the aerial elements that according to him composed the earth: ‘people are of the earth, they do not just live on it’ (Saint Augustine in Ingold 2010: 112). 3 The slippage into normative thinking (that all human beings have two suctioning eyes) can indeed be attributed to the period during which Florensky was active. 4 Florensky anticipated the insight that human eyes are in constant movement, focusing and refocusing several hundred times per second hence giving depth and contextualizing what they see. 5 https://docubase.mit.edu/project/priyas-shakti/

6 Exceptions are Cubitt (2014) and Hoelzl and Marie (2015).

3

Sharpening ideas on the whetting stone Independent documentary practices, resistance and revolution

‘I am not willing to accept that there is a new camera but for us in India there is certainly a new audience.’ Sanjay Kak (personal interview) ‘Generally a wrong meaning is attributed to the word revolution … Bombs and pistols do not make a revolution. The sword of revolution is sharpened on the whetting-stone of ideas. By revolution we mean the end of the miseries of capitalist wars.’ Bhagat Singh (quoted in Singh 2018: 50) Sanjay Kak’s 2013 film Red Ant Dream explores the ‘the life of revolutionary possibility in India’ (as it is stated in the official presentation of the movie) from a variety of different sites of contestation. From the armed insurrection

Figure 3.1 Screenshot from Red Ant Dream by Sanjay Kak.

Sharpening ideas on the whetting stone 1

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in central India, to that of adivasis in Odisha, and the peasants of Punjab. Red Ant Dream (from here onwards RAD) is, however, not only a film ‘about’ the revolution. Rather, like many other Indian independent documentaries, it is a kind of revolutionary act of resistance in its own true right. It can be seen as an act, to quote Bhagat Singh (see above), of sharpening ideas on the whetting-stone. Addressing the ‘coagulatory’ (in Kak’s words) function of the iconic figure of Bhagat Singh, a revolutionary martyr of the anti-colonial struggle, the film attacks ruling narratives of national cohesion putting back on the agenda the rights of marginalized populations and movements in contemporary India. Beginning with RAD and its exploration of the meaning of revolution in India, this chapter will address the connection between image-making and political resistance and intervention in India through the study of several important works. Grounding the analysis in the world of documentary images and especially in that of ‘independent documentary film’ (I will discuss this label below) I will enter (and hopefully enlarge) the debate that con­ ventionally characterizes the analysis of documentary in India. I will move from screen-based, linear documentary films to documentaries that are inser­ ted into new scenarios such as art galleries and internet (a topic that I will discuss further in Chapter 5). I will also touch upon the possible dialogues between documentary practices and the emerging terrain of smartphone applications. In each of these contexts I will explore the various ways in which images can be used as tools for social intervention and as instigators of change. The chapter opens with a background on the history of Indian cinema. Without any ambition of summing up the history of this industry, the goal of this section is to focus primarily on cinema’s political function in colonial and postcolonial India and provide the reader with the context needed to appreciate the struggles that make up the world of Indian documentarians. I mention the developments of documentary film in India within this frame­ work, focusing in particular on the most recent trends in what is con­ ventionally labelled as ‘independent documentary’. Following this discussion I will briefly lay out the theoretical terms on which my analysis of doc­ umentary film builds. I shall then proceed to address in depth Red Ant Dream and the work of Sanjay Kak, one of India’s leading figures in the field of independent documentaries as well as the author of many texts on both doc­ umentary film and activism. In line with the format of other chapters of this book, I will devote some space to contextualize Kak’s biography within the developments that I describe. The section on RAD will devote space also to an exploration of the figure of Bhagat Singh, the freedom fighter executed by the British in 1931, who functions as the thread in Kak’s film but also as a metaphor for cultural resistance in contemporary India at large. I will then proceed, on the basis of my analysis of Kak’s work, to address the role of contemporary independent documentary as a marginal practice, looking at the specific forms of intervention that this position is allowing image-makers

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Sharpening ideas on the whetting stone

to produce. I will make comparisons with other actors in the Indian doc­ umentary scene and then look in the last section into recent experiences by emerging documentary filmmakers and digital artists. In this chapter I suggest that documentary film has developed into a viewer-oriented, dialogic form that has responded to the economic, political and technological transforma­ tions that have characterized the recent history of the subcontinent. My claim is that a large amount of contemporary (independent) Indian documentaries must be understood within a framework of resistance. An act of ‘sharpening ideas on a whetting stone’ they keep the heritage of Bhagat Singh alive.

Cinema in India – the political roots of a modern practice The role of cinema in post-independence India is a highly ambiguous one and it is wrapped in a set of important paradoxes. As is well known, film, both as a technology and a practice, arrived in India in the very early days of the history of cinema. In 1896, just a few months after their first screening in Paris, and at the peak of British rule in India, the Lumière brothers visited Bombay during the tour that took them also to London, Montreal, New York and Buenos Aires. Here they showed their film clips of workers leaving the factory, of the train arriving at a station, of boule players etc. to a mixed audience made up of colonial administrators and members of the local intel­ ligentsia (Ganti 2004, Dwyer and Patel 2002, Mishra 2002). The luxurious Watson’s Esplanade Hotel in central Bombay (the city which would even­ tually become the capital of Indian cinema), was the venue of the first screening. Now threatened with demolition, this hotel became a landmark for the history of Indian cinema. In the coming decades, films percolated through the various layers of Indian society merging with the rich and varied visual culture that characterized it. It entered a powerful dialectic with painting and especially with popular theatre, the latter a tradition that had been funda­ mental in narrating local histories and that at the time was particularly vibrant in the city of Bombay (see Mishra 2002). In the early 1910s Dadasaheb Phalke decided, after having seen an Amer­ ican silent film on the life of Christ, to make an attempt at producing a fulllength feature film in India. In response to the film he watched, he envisioned a story centred on Indian mythology. An eclectic figure who had conducted studies in painting, architecture, modelling and photography, Phalke took off to London where he learned the rudiments of filmmaking and also purchased his first camera. Upon return to India he founded his first company (the Phalke Films Company) and set in motion a plan for India’s first feature film. In 1913, Raja Harishchandra, India’s first silent feature film was released. Based on a legend contained in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, India’s classical ancient Sanskrit epics, the film tells the story of an honest king who sacrifices his kingdom, wife and children, in order to honour a promise made to a sage. Thanks to his ‘righteousness’ and his morals he will win back the blessings of God and be able to restore the former glory of his reign. A film

Sharpening ideas on the whetting stone

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characterized by a number of stylistic choices that would become central traits in Indian cinema (among them ‘frontal staging’, see Lutgendorf 2006), Raja Harishchandra contained an interesting albeit subtle anti-colonial nar­ rative. The film speaks in fact about the return to a pristine past made safe by the Hindu gods, somewhat suggesting that the happiness of India lay in its capacity to connect itself to its own roots. Centring the narrative around popular religious legends, Phalke launched an approach to cinema that would be seminal for many Indian film produc­ tions of the first generation. During the colonial epoch, Indian cinema was in fact almost entirely possessed by the depiction of deities, epics and legends. This had indeed to do mainly with the fact that cinema in India was under­ stood as a natural prolongation of popular theatre (which conventionally focused on such topics and stories). Yet, this fascination also had a deep political function. Historian Prem Chowdhry (2001) has suggested that the gods and mythologies contained a subversive power that in the long term proved to be fundamental to the unification of the country against the British and the eventual creation of an independent nation-state. As Chowdhry sug­ gests, the British never managed to understand this. Caught in their cultural assumptions, they assumed that the Indians were divided by their many dif­ ferent and varied cults. They could not understand the unifying power that epic narratives such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and the repre­ sentation of the gods had for them. During colonial rule the cinema industry was already becoming a flourish­ ing market. Despite being mainly a consumer of foreign movies (during the silent film epoch 85 percent of the films shown were foreign) India slowly emerged as the third largest producer of films in the world (1300 silent films were made in total in India). The film industry was to boom even further in the following decades with the arrival of sound technologies. By 1931, as the talkies were introduced, so were the elements of song and dance that, cele­ brating the dialogue with street theatre, would become the key characteristic of the industry that is conventionally referred to as ‘Bollywood’2. With this, Indian films started competing more strongly with foreign titles and even­ tually the talkies led to the consolidation of the Indian film industry (includ­ ing not only Hindi- and Bombay-based, ‘Bollywood’ cinema but also other production centra such as Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, etc.) as the lar­ gest producer of film in the world as well as the film industry with the largest number of admissions per year3. On average every Indian goes to the cinema more than twice a year. Given the figures of poverty etc. this is quite a thought-provoking fact and it provides a good sense of the cultural sig­ nificance of film (and visual culture) in the Indian subcontinent. The political significance of cinema in India is indeed almost self-evident. Scholars speak of this industry as one of the true fundaments of a sense of pan-Indian unity. Cinema is ‘the sole model of national unity’ states Chakra­ varty (in Mishra 2002: 3). The ‘influence of the film world is omnipresent’ say Pendukar and Subramanyam (in Mishra 2002: 2). Films are key tools in the

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construction and maintenance of Indian culture within the country as well as across the highly diversified diasporic communities (cf. Appadurai 1996, Mishra 2002, Dwyer 2001, Desai 2004, Uberoi 1998). Sources of pleasure and desire (cf. Pinney 2001, Nandy 1998), films underline successfully ‘the myths on which the Indian social order survives in spite of changes’ (Raina quoted in Mishra 2002: 4). Characterized by ever-present nationalist and culturally proud accents (cf. Chakravarty 1993) they are also central to ‘Indianization’, i.e. to ‘the practice of constituting difference between India and the West’ (Ganti 2002: 283) that I addressed also in the introduction to this book. Therefore, cinema can, to use a Foucauldian expression, be looked upon as a ‘founder of discursivity’ (Mishra 2002). It is an all-pervading practice that lives on also in the plethora of side-products produced and/or inspired by it. Films launch aesthetic, ideological and moral ideals that reach cable TV (in the shape of soap operas and video-clips that become part of local clubbing cultures) and magazines (cf. Kasbekar 2001). Despite this centrality, the cinema industry retained, paradoxically, a fairly marginal role in the official agenda for the construction of an independent India. For significantly different (and potentially opposing) reasons, Jawa­ harlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi, the leaders of the Congress-led Indian independence movement, never recognized cinema a centrality in the making of an independent state. For Nehru, who was inspired by Marxist ideals, cinema was not a necessity. It was a ‘superstructure’, not worthy of govern­ mental support. Gandhi instead saw cinema as an emanation of Western culture. In his search for indigenous symbols and practices he rejected this language altogether considering it a tool of colonization. This may be one of the reasons why cinema in India in the late colonial and early postcolonial period, ended up linking its destiny to that of organized crime. Given the state’s lack of interest, filmmakers and producers found their support mainly in Bombay’s organized underworld (Dwyer 2001). Traces of these connections are still to be found today in all the scandals that regularly appear in the news regarding producers and actors. Despite the apparent frivolousness of the Hindi masala style (the style filled with the formulaic ingredients of high emotional drama, song, dance, action etc. that characterizes mainstream Indian films), cinema is an important political arena in India. This is a site where narratives about national identity and belonging are often addressed and debated. The official entry of India in the global market in 1991 has added new elements to the complexities of this history. It has led to the diversified and vibrant media scenario that we are witnessing today. As is well known, the process of liberalization of the Indian economy started much earlier than the 1990s and then received a boost espe­ cially under Rajiv Gandhi (1984–1989). Yet, it is 1991 that symbolically marks the beginning of a new (hoped-for) era for India, one in which the country would definitively join the open market in the hope of reaching the power of other industrialized countries (what was later recognized as the myth of ‘Tiger India’). Liberalization and privatization became the mottos of this

Sharpening ideas on the whetting stone

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new epoch, which witnessed an ever-growing entrance into India of foreign companies, products, people and indeed images. The media scenario changed abruptly during those years and one of the most significant changes was the introduction of multiplexes. With them, the cinematic landscape became a much more diversified one (albeit economically and politically more con­ trolled). Large cinema halls gave way to the birth of smaller screening facil­ ities hosting 50 to 100 spectators (a crowd that would before only gather for informal screenings). This encouraged of course, the production of films dedicated to smaller and more niche audiences. Combined with the spread of cheaper cameras and editing possibilities this ‘material transformation’ (cf. Battaglia 2014) led to the emergence of films capable of deviating from the hegemony of ‘Bollywood’s’ nationalistic, celebratory and spectacular narra­ tives and from its high budgets and ‘superstars’. Nagesh Kukonoor’s Hyder­ abad Blues (1998) is an icon of this transformation and the first film that directed my attention to this new stream of filmmaking. An engineer schooled in the US, Kukonoor decided in the late 1990s to invest his earnings to return to India and produce a movie (a reverse story to that of Phalke perhaps). Narrating the life of an NRI (Non-Resident Indian) returning to India, this film is characterized by what we could label as an ‘amateur’ aesthetics. The wobbly camerawork, low resolution, and imperfect sound editing did not, however, detract from the value of the film. Rather they added another (revolutionary perhaps) significance to the film, signalling how anyone, in that epoch, could actually make a film. This was the pitch that Kukonoor repeated several times when I attended the Q&A following the screening of his film in 1999 at the India Habitat Centre. Calling for a democratizing revolution in filmmaking, Hyderabad Blues marked the beginning of a new epoch for what is conventionally referred to as ‘parallel cinema’4. According to Basu and Banerjee (2018) ‘parallel cinema ebbed definitely with the opening of market and embrace of neoliberalism as State policy in the early 1990s’ (p. 7). I claim, however, that rather than an ebb, this resulted in the encounter of different flows. It morphed into a new kind of product. The history of documentary film in India is situated in the backwaters of the developments that I have mentioned above with regards to fiction film. Again, I must remind the reader that the goal of these sections is not to offer a historical reading of the developments of Indian documentary film per se. Such work have been brilliantly done by several scholars (see Battaglia 2017, Chatterji 2015, Monteiro and Jayasankar 2015). My goal here is simply to look into the recent developments of Indian documentaries as a way to reflect upon their performative character, that is, of their capacity and desire to function as tools for intervention. In line with what I pre-announced in the introduction to this chapter I am keen to focus on the way in which con­ temporary image-makers use the various possibilities offered by images to challenge ruling narratives and practices. Hegemonic accounts on the history of Indian documentary film suggest that this cinematic form was already in vogue in British-ruled India in the

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1930s, when a limited number of companies controlled by the colonial gov­ ernment were active in producing visual accounts of key historical events. Documentaries put in motion (quite literally) the same (colonial) accounts that were previously created by means of drawings and by photography and by all those other hybrid forms based upon the mixing of these media that make up the early history of photography in India (see Pinney 1997, Rosie Llewellyn-Jones 2017). Such film clips were a way to document important events and they were conventionally shown in the same settings where fiction films were screened for the entertainment of colonial administrators. In 1940, the colonial government decided to organize documentary activities and funded the Film Advisory Board (FAB), which was part of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. This organ focused on the production of documentary films and started producing material that progressively began to appear as propaganda films (cf. Vohra n.d.). Films Division (FD) became the main authority for documentary film in post-independence India. Born in 1948 right after India gained independence from British rule a year earlier, FD started off as a natural prolongation of the FAB. Keeping the same mandate, it declared its ambition to transmit the ‘idea of India’ to the people of the subcontinent and to make them aware of the agenda of the government. Its films were about nation building, national integration and development. As Monteiro and Jayasankar argue, FD ‘has often been regarded as a discourse of the “real”, with an agenda, indeed a responsibility, to educate “the masses” and to initiate awareness and change’ (2015: 1). Sanjay Kak (I here cite from one of his texts) states that: ‘FD soon turned into an upscale, more nationalistic version of this “war effort”, a cul­ tural intervention in step with the Nehruvian emphasis on the State occupy­ ing the commanding heights of the economy’ (Kak in Basu and Banerjee 2018: 20). Until the 1980s, FD was the largest producer of documentaries in the world (cf. Battaglia 2014) and received very large audiences thanks to the strategy of screening their films in main cinema halls preceding the screenings of fiction films (just like the FAB did before). According to Kak this imposition asso­ ciated documentary films with a moment of inevitable boredom in expecta­ tion of the ‘real show’. This was, to paraphrase Kak a form of ‘parasistim’ (sic!) and an ‘extortion’ applied to the viewers (Kak in Basu and Banerjee 2018: 20). The FD began with, quoting Kak, ‘an impressive mandate: to produce 52 newsreel films and at least 36 films in a year, each one reel usually ten minutes long’ (ibid.: 20). As Monteiro and Jayasankar suggest ‘the con­ tinuities between the colonial and post-colonial periods in the vision and mission of state-sponsored documentary films in India’ are ‘striking’ (2015: 7). With these developments documentary film remained largely a site for affirming the centrality of nationhood, of social cohesion and integration. Films were ‘yoked to an official and normative imagining of nationhood’ (Vasudevan in Monteiro and Jayasankar 2015). So, despite also producing the works of important contributors to critical Indian documentary film (among

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them Jehangir Bhownagary, Sukhdev, S.N.S. Sastry, Pramod Pati and K.S. Chari) FD produced a critical set of associations for documentary film which eventually became a synonym for ‘tedious and boring’ (Vohra n.d). ‘Emergency’, the 21 months suspension of democratic rights declared in 1975 by Indira Gandhi, was a real turning point for the world of doc­ umentary film triggering in filmmakers a desire to subvert the ruling order of things. With censorship imposing powerful limits to experimentation (see below), filmmakers began to search for new venues to express their dissent and critique of the State. This is the moment, in which, what is today acknowledged as ‘independent documentary’ crafted its fundaments, setting the roots for its future work. According to Sanjay Kak, a personal turning point for him was the screening of Anand Patwardhan’s Prisoners of Con­ science at the Delhi School of Economics in 1978, one year after the end of ‘Emergency’. In his words: ‘Some of us in that sparsely people lecture theatre immediately joined in to help darken the windows with old newspaper, since that seemed the thing that most needed to be done. Setting up a 16 mm projector in the middle of the room, was Anand Patwardhan, quite young then not the silver-haired icon of India documentary that he is now. The film we saw was of course Prisoners of Conscience.’ (Kak in Basu and Banerjee 2018: 16) According to Kak these screenings marked a new era for independent film in India, an era that was, however, to receive a proper boost only in the coming decades. The 1980s was the decade in which this change would truly manifest itself amidst a set of major technological (and political) transformations. It happened simultaneously with the 1982 ASIAD (Asian Games) games and with the decision of Doordarshan (India’s state-run broadcaster), to switch to colour broadcast. Parallel to this, video technology was also slowly emerging, allowing filmmakers to start thinking about the possibility of producing and distributing films in a different and cheaper way. Battaglia suggests that: ‘video technology opened up possibilities for independent individuals to create different media practices, and provided spaces for alternative produc­ tion and distribution’ (2014: 74). Video, she claims, affected hence the world of film both in terms of materiality and aesthetics. Video also helped to decentre the influence of one key actor in the world of Indian cinema (be it fiction or documentary), censorship. Created during colonial rule to, quoting from Garga (in Monteiro and Jayasankar 2015: 6), block any attempts to ‘incite dissatisfaction against the govern­ ment’, the Board of Censors kept a stranglehold on the Indian cinema industry. Even today, no film can be screened in India unless introduced by the official certificate (which appears visually at the beginning of each screening). The government also managed to maintain control on the film market by regulating, until the late 1980s, the purchase of film stock.

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Filmmakers were until then forced to seek permission not only to screen but before that even to produce films. It is important to point out that the board of censors constitutes, along with the practice of inserting doc­ umentary films in the context of popular film screenings, another element of continuity between colonial and postcolonial governments. A critical event in the recent history of Indian documentary film, was the 2004 edition of the Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF), an event sponsored by the FD. On this occasion, all participants were asked to present censorship certificates of their films to the organizers. It was in response to this festival and its requirements, that ‘Vikalp – Films for freedom’ was born. With open screenings of documentary films organized across the road from the MIFF, this eventually became a key arena for sharing information on documentary films in India. Vikalp is still active functioning as a key online arena for spreading and screening independent cinema. Madhushree Dutta, one of the initiators of Vikalp told me during an interview that their strategy was really to ‘collect what was left behind by the main festival MIFF’ and attract films with artistic acclaim. Let me briefly go back to the 1980s again. During this period the film market became quickly flushed with VCR and VHS, the latter supporting extensively the broad culture of piracy that would be fundamental also to many politically oriented distribution and screening activities (Sundaram 2009). Video technology made it ‘impossible to impose old gate-keeping mechanisms’ (Kak in Basu and Banerjee 2018: 24) to the world of doc­ umentary making. It became pivotal in the launch of a wide variety of prac­ tices: from family videos to political campaigning. The Hindu right, in particular, quickly adopted this medium as a new way to do politics (Brosius and Butcher 1999). The world of NGOs also flocked in this direction. Many organizations saw in the new technology, the possibility of new forms of advocacy and participatory work. A central actor in the latter category was the 1972-born Delhi-based Centre for Development and Instructional Tech­ nology, CENDIT (see Battaglia 2014). CENDIT produced its own films but also started training people in making videos. This organization gave birth to Magic Lantern, an organization that emerged in 1989 and became a key referent for independent film in India for quite a long time. Commissioning editors from European television channels also joined in by sponsoring doc­ umentaries made in India during this historical phase. According to Kak, from this decade onwards ‘more and more people were drawn into thinking of making documentary films’ (in Basu and Banerjee 2018: 26). In combination with the technology-enabled easier ways to produce and distribute films, documentary film reached a ‘critical mass’ (ibid.). Video basically allowed for the birth of a wide variety of collectives that would become key actors in the coming years. Among them mention can be made of Drishti Media Collective (1991, Ahmedhabad), Akra (1995, Ranchi), and the well-known RAQS Media Collective (1992, Delhi) and Mediastorm (1992, Mumbai).

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A following revolutionizing moment was the introduction of digital tech­ nologies in India. With this, the movement that had started with video gained further momentum. Mini-DV tapes combined with the internet allowed for an even greater spread of documentary films allowing not only for the birth of filmmaking endeavours in difficult situations (see for instance Rakesh Shar­ ma’s Final Solution, or Sanjay Kak’s Words on Water) but also for innovative ways of creating visual archives. Among them are CAMP (a Mumbai-based studio for transdisciplinary media practices founded in 2007 by Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran) and the precursor of such projects, the Shared Foo­ tage Group (a group of image-makers and activists that was born in the aftermath of the Gujarat Carnage of 2002 and that I will discuss in greater detail in Chapter 5). The introduction of digital technologies also allowed documentary films to travel beyond the metropolitan, reaching out to smaller remote locations. Suddenly small places could become part of a wider (national) scenario for both screening and making documentaries. The latest challenges in the world of documentary film were, however, enacted on top of the ‘flattening of diversity’ (Kak in Basu and Banerjee 2018: 33) imposed by the intervention on the local scene of European commissioning editors, NGOs and corporates. I will discuss this later on in this chapter. Since 2011, FD too ‘reinvented itself, after a long hiatus’ (Monteiro and Jayasankar 2015: 11) becoming another key actor, along with PSBT (the Public Service Broadcasting Trust) of the Indian documentary scene. Indian documentary seems to have grown in response to a number of external transformations. On the one hand it has responded to technological change and hence to the passage from film to video and eventually to pixels. Simultaneously, it has also responded to major ‘critical events’ (Das 1995) taking place in the country (and globally too). ‘Emergency’ was indeed, as I anticipated above, one such fundamental moment of change instigating filmmakers to use film as a kind of weapon. Later on, the opening of the Indian market sanctioned by the 1991 reforms, also constituted another key moment of political transformation providing not only for the entry of new technological tools into the country but also of new globalized notions of cultural identity, personhood, gender, community, etc. (see Favero 2005, Mazzarella 2003). On a different plane, the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid gave further momentum to filmmakers’ urge to intervene. Led by Hindu far-right activists and causing the death of approximately 2000 indivi­ duals (in a series of subsequent riots and organized attacks) this event was accompanied by a growing uprising of stances of Hindutva (the ideology that seeks to establish the supremacy of Hindu culture). I want to claim that, in more recent years, the 2002 Gujarat Carnage constitutes yet another critical moment and so are, especially for the filmmakers living in Delhi, the 2010 Commonwealth Games that were held in the capital. Each of these moments corresponds with a shift in sensibilities as well as a set of developments of new visual forms. As Kak suggested during one of our conversations, this is typi­ cal for moments of crisis: a new production ‘comes out of crisis’.

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In the following pages I look further at these passages albeit not by fol­ lowing rigidly the stages that I just mentioned. I want instead to identify the core characteristics of Indian independent documentary following the assumption that Indian documentary is mainly characterized by a desire to intervene upon everyday life. Rather than a detached commentary, Indian independent documentaries are often foremost acts of intervention, putting images in motion in order to promote change and transformation rather than to simply comment upon reality. Through the decades, amidst the transfor­ mations delineated above, independent documentary film has emerged as a proper ‘site of contestation’ (Monteiro and Jayasankar 2015: 2). Challenging dominant discourse on caste, class and gender it has constituted a space of resistance. This is the space within which the work of filmmakers such as Sanjay Kak, Anand Patwardhan, Rakesh Sharma, Deepa Dhanraj and also some younger filmmakers whose work I look at below, can be situated. Pat­ wardhan’s views are quintessential to this idea: ‘Filmmaking was born out of activism’ he said during an interview I conducted with him in 2007. Films, he stated, were to be seen as a ‘means of intervention’. And moving into a digital terrain, if we have to take for granted the point that I make elsewhere (cf. Favero 2013 and 2018) that digital practices have led to a further closing of the gap between the image and the world it portrays (hence functioning more like beacons than mirrors), then the Indian documentary scene has been on the avant-garde of such changes for very long. Before I proceed any further let me also state that I am aware that by put­ ting the accent on the political dimension I am exposing myself to the recur­ rent critique of not approaching Indian documentary within the space of cinema and visual culture (Vohra n.d.) but exclusively of politics. As the reader will discover I have however attempted at striking a balance between these two analytical dimensions recognizing the intrinsic political nature of aesthetics (as I have extensively discussed in Chapter 2). Having delineated this highly diversified local scenario I now look further into the extent to which such merging practices fit within ruling debates on what documentary film is about. For this let me open a (theoretical) parenthesis.

What (or when) is a documentary? The very term documentary was coined by John Grierson. Defined as the ‘creative treatment of actuality’ (1966: 145) Grierson looked upon doc­ umentary as a ‘new and vital art form’ (p. 21). As opposed to fiction films this form allowed for the ‘opening up the screen on the real world’ (ibid.: 21). This opening was, however, not a mere mirror of reality but rather an active com­ bination of what would later on be called the ‘pre-filmic’ with the ‘filmic’ (that is, what exists in the absence of a camera vis-à-vis what is staged for the camera). Documentarians had, in Grierson’s view, the duty to intervene. Documentary makers had to make choices and craft a viewing experience for

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the viewers in such a way that they would be affected by what they saw. This active intervention was for Grierson, however, not guided by pure stylistic intentions. This was an act of political intervention and the documentary was to be seen as a ‘hammer to denounce injustices’. Grierson’s interpretation, involving a blend of observation of what is out there with the techniques of movement, cutting and composition belonging to cinema, is mirrored in the later works made by scholars of documentary film. Bill Nichols (1991) has suggested that a documentary film must be ana­ lyzed in relation to three different sites. These are the practitioners, (i.e. the makers, the institutions, the funders etc.) the texts (i.e. what the films actually narrate and show) and the viewers.5 For Nichols the constituency of viewers is guided by two main assumptions: in the first place that documentaries have their origin in the historical world but also, secondly, that they do not just portray it but also make an argument about it. Paraphrasing Nichols, Eitzen states that ‘documentary is therefore not the representation of an imaginary reality; it is an imaginative representation of an actual historical reality’ (Eitzen 1995: 84). Plantinga also addressed this dimension stating that an ‘assertive’ stance distinguishes documentaries from fiction films. Like fiction films, says Eitzen paraphrasing Plantinga, documentaries ‘present a world for our consideration. Unlike fiction films, however, they make claims about it’ (1995: 86). Documentaries state that a particular event or state of affairs is true in the lived world. Fiction can basically make assertions of similarity, but documentaries make assertions of truth. Bill Eitzen (1995) contested the definitions provided by both Nichols and Plantinga suggesting that ‘I am not persuaded, however, that people really make sense of documentaries in the way that Plantinga and Nichols imply, at least not all of the time’. Eitzen then goes on to say, ‘People do not always appear to interpret documentaries as “arguments”. In fact, they sometimes appear to be indifferent or even completely oblivious to any truth claims the documentaries may be making’ (Eitzen 1995: 87). The question of truth in documentary film has been a widely contested one. For Eitzen the real question is not whether or not it actually ‘tells the truth’. It depends on whether it is perceived in such a way that it makes sense to ask, ‘Might it be lying?’. He suggests that ‘the applicability of this question, “Might it be lying?” is what distinguishes documentaries, and nonfiction in general, from fiction’. (Eitzen 1995: 88). All documentaries, hence rely upon a matter of trust rather than of truth. So, in the end, it is not the formal aspects of moving (or still) images that determine whether viewers ‘frame’ it as a documentary but rather a combi­ nation of what viewers want and expect from a film and what they suppose or infer about it on the basis of situational cues and textual features. In other words, the question that distinguishes documentaries, ‘“Might it be lying?” is one that is posed by viewers, not texts. In short, documentary must be seen, in the last analysis, not as a kind of text but as a kind of reading’. (Eitzen 1995: 92). Such reflections do indeed echo the insights gained by other scholarship

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in the context of both photography and writing. Regarding photography, Howard Becker (1986) suggested long ago that we should stop looking for an ultimate truth in images. Every photograph he says contains a partial truth but not necessarily ‘the whole truth’: ‘Every photograph, because it begins with the light rays something emits hitting film, must in some obvious sense be true; and because it could always have been made differently than it was, it cannot be the whole truth and in that obvious sense is false.’ (Becker p. 275) Regarding writing, Ricoeur (1986) suggested that knowledge always allows itself to be communicated only through a process of ‘textualization’ and hence, through authorial choices which are indeed a matter of form (cf. also Foucault 1977). In the context of ethnography, the same argument had been developed in the early nineties also by Sanjek (1991). According to him any piece of anthropological work (whether visual or written) is composed by two separate (but dialoguing) aspects, i.e. by ‘ethnographic validity’ and ‘ethno­ graphic authority’ (1991). The former refers to principles of theoretical transparency, methodological rigour and continuity between the raw material (field notes, raw footage) and the end product (be it a text, a film etc.). The latter instead relates to the capacity of an author to convince her or his reader/viewer/listener about the thesis put forth and is, therefore, based on the aesthetic, formal, rhetorical choices made for constructing a convincing argument. Sanjek insists that any ethnographic work is the result of a dialec­ tic between these two aspects, i.e. between validity and authority. These can never be kept apart from each other. According to all these authors hence, formal intervention moves therefore hand in hand with the relevance of the ‘raw material’ of the world out there. Going back to the context of documentary films, Eitzen (1995) phrased this beautifully suggesting that the real question to be asked is hence not ‘what’ is a documentary but ‘when is a documentary’. The core issue then is not to categorize films as texts but rather to try and discover the ways in which people make sense of ‘those particular moments and elements of films that they frame as documentary – whenever that may be’ (Eitzen 1995: 96). The same approach has been followed by other film scholars. Stella Bruzzi speaks of it as a ‘pact’ (2006: 6): ‘a documentary is a negotiation between reality on the one hand and image, interpretation and bias on the other’ (ibid.: 7). And Sobchack (1990) has suggested that the dualism between real and unreal should be overcome by means of another category, that of the ‘irreal’ or something that is neither observable reality nor fantasy. I suggest that independent Indian documentary has developed in relation to these dialogues. Born in response to key crucial social and political events it is, in the first place, characterized by an attention to intervention. Bringing back Grierson’s original vision of the social and political role of this visual

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form, filmmakers such as Patwardhan, Kak, Sharma, and also some younger authors as well as collectives such as the Shared Footage Group (see Chapter 5) seem to have prioritized this element of intervention over pure formal experimentation. In the second place, they do not seem to buy into the idea of the pure mirroring of reality into the image. Rather, they position the film as a commentary, challenging (as I will describe below in depth with the work of Sanjay Kak) also ruling cinematographic criteria such as the centrality of a plot and of the characters. Most of Kak’s films appear as commentaries, as arguments opening up the terrain for the viewers’ questioning. Finally, and attached to this aspect, these films bring to the fore the centrality of the viewer in the negotiation with the filmic ‘text’. The viewer is the centre of their attention in a dialogue that again brings to the fore the idea that films should stimulate, engage, intervene and cause critical reflection. My analysis below will be constructed along these three co-occurring dimensions. My aim is also to respond to the need highlighted by Basu and Banerjee (2018) for digging further into the ‘sheer range and depth of documentaries [that] remain largely unknown and unexplored in the popular knowledge’ (p. 3). As Kak mentions, this is a scenario where ‘the truth-telling of straight-forward reportage travels side-by-side with political agitprop, and the reflective doc­ umentary essay coexists with the observational film, as well as deeply personal aesthetic and formal narratives’ (ibid.: 15). I will now start unpacking this question with more concrete reference to one of Kak’s films, the Red Ant Dream (RAD). To do this, however, I need to take a step back and first introduce the readers to the contested idea of India and to the figure of Bhagat Singh. These debates lie at the core of Kak’s film and interventions and require, therefore, an introduction.

A contested narrative – Bhagat Singh and the idea of India An exchange of correspondence between Nehru and Gandhi, dated from the period immediately before independence, gives us a sense of the profoundly contested nature of the definition of ‘India’ promoted by the intelligentsia. In one letter Nehru replies to Gandhi’s search for a sense of purity and essential Indianness in the humility, freedom and antiquity of village India stating: ‘I do not understand why a village should necessarily embody truth and non-violence. A village, normally speaking, is backward intellectually and culturally and no progress can be made from a backward environment. Narrow-minded people are much more likely to be untruthful and vio­ lent … There seems to be no reason why millions should not have com­ fortable up-to-date homes where they can lead a cultured existence.’ (in Chandra 1994: 46–47) Nehru’s dream was one of a modern state founded on progress, science, technology and industrialization. Inspired by his atheistic, socialist, secularist

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beliefs, Nehru felt that India had to overcome ‘the dead wood of the past … flout customs and traditions; put economic welfare before cow worship’ (Nehru, quoted in Varma 1998: 42). Notwithstanding this, even his vision contained an idealized past tinted with spirituality and antiquity. Nehru wrote extensively about the nobility and greatness of India, addressing the country through the anthropomorphic image of ‘Bharat Mata, Mother India, a beau­ tiful lady, very old but ever youthful’ (quoted in Varma 1998: 34). Yet, in his eyes, it was precisely when evaluated in the light of a present made up of modernity, progress, development and change and when projected into the future, that India’s past was useful: ‘Proud of their heritage, they [the people of India] will open their minds and hearts to other peoples and other nations, and become citizens of this wide and fascinating world, marching onwards with others in that ancient quest in which their forefathers were the pioneers.’ (Nehru in Tagore et al. 1983: 221) Gandhi, on the other hand, also undoubtedly acknowledged the eternal magnificence of India. He wrote: ‘I believe that the civilization India has evolved is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestors. Rome went, Greece shared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was broken; Japan has become westernized; of China nothing can be said; but India is still, somehow or other, sound at the foundation.’ (Tagore et al. 1983: 60) In the Gandhian representation of India, which became popular (if not hege­ monic) at the time of independence, the peasantry, the masses and the villages were the chosen symbols of India’s living past and expressions of what was ‘natural’ about India. For Gandhi, the purity and essential Indianness of India resided in the humility, freedom and antiquity of the village. He even modelled his own personal image on this vision. His way of conducting campaigns, walking barefoot from village to village, the humbleness of his clothing and diet, his insistence on the notion of ahimsa (non-violence) as a major symbol for India’s resistance to the British, his (a)sexuality (cf. John and Nair 1998), his idea of morality and simplicity in conduct, etc. all embodied his vision of India. I mention the exchange of ideas between Gandhi and Nehru to show the negotiations that have surrounded the construction of a coherent narrative for India. The two main leaders of independent India nurtured significantly dif­ ferent visions of what the country was and should be in the future. In addi­ tion to this, the notion of the peaceful revolution too (which was mainly conducted by Gandhi) was challenged by political organizations and activists on both the left and the right. India’s communists as well as the Hindu Right were both envisioning a different future for the country.

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The figure of Bhagat Singh emerges in this historical phase and offers us a different view on the making of Independent India. Born in 1907, in a village in Punjab, Bhagat Singh was raised in a Sikh family with strong involvement in the Indian independence movement. Despite the influence of the Arya Samaj6 in his family and life, Bhagat Singh began to identify himself as an atheist and communist at a fairly young age. ‘No more mysticism, no more blind faith. Realism became the cult,’ states Nayar (2002: 27) when he describes Bhagat Singh’s progressive passage towards a Marxist, materialist reading of life and society. Bakunin, Lenin, Trotsky, Marx, Engels became his heroes. He was also strongly inspired by Mazzini’s project for a new Italy and by Garibaldi as well as by Nirlamba Swami’s book Common Sense, which provided him with a model for a form of atheistic mysticism. Bhagat’s life was exposed to the major events that were to transform India into an independent nation. As Pinney writes: ‘Bhagat’s historical moment ineluctably tightens us to a chain of connecting events that seem to be locked into others with a grim retributive inevitability’ (2004: 117). In 1919, at the age of 12 he visited the site of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre right after the mass killing of hundreds of unarmed attendees at a public protest meeting. As the story goes, he brought home ‘blood soaked sand’ (cited in Lal 2007: 3712). Two years later he heard about the killing of 140 unarmed protesters at the Gurdwara Nankana Sahib (in today’s Pakistan). After his early enthu­ siasm for the Non-Cooperation Movement, Bhagat Singh soon grew disillu­ sioned with the vision of Gandhi and his non-violence. He ‘blamed Gandhi for encouraging such a sense of resignation among the people’ (Nayar 2002: 45) and joined hands with the Young Revolutionary Movement. For him, resistance had to be a concrete act of revolution. Lal writes: ‘Bhagat Singh and his comrades were convinced that to awaken the country from its slum­ ber, the youth needed to perform some daring revolutionary nationalist actions and make sacrifices to advance the anti-colonial movement’ (Lal 2007: 3713). Bhagat Singh envisioned the life of a freedom fighter as one defined by martyrdom: ‘Revolutionaries were like tiny insects that hovered around a candle and threw themselves into the flame’ (Nayar 2002: 23). The very idea of a revolution was, for Bhagat Singh, a fairly complex issue. As already noted, he wrote in his diaries that ‘Bombs and pistols do not make a revolu­ tion. The sword of revolution is sharpened on the whetting-stone of ideas’. Revolution was for him hence both a matter of armed intervention and of culture; both were key in order to get the needed visibility against the British but also to ensure that the revolutionary ideas would sustain into the future too. Bhagat Singh basically saw his activity as an act of freedom that was bound to generate an awakening capable of not only liberating the country from colonial oppression but also to protect it from future generations of rulers. Following this vision, Bhagat Singh became a very prolific writer; he wrote essays, pamphlets and political commentaries for a variety of different local newspapers and organizations. He also wrote extensively in jail

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and drafted four manuscripts while incarcerated. Lal suggests that ‘Bhagat Singh was a revolutionary with a rare sensitivity’ (2007: 3716). He states that: ‘The spirit of Bhagat Singh needs to be lived much more than in 1931. I would recommend the study of Bhagat Singh’s Jail Notebook and other writings with Bhagat Singh’s own words, which he wrote as an introduc­ tion to a poetry collection of fellow revolutionary, Ram Saran Dass.’ (Lal 2007: 3718) In Lal’s view Bhagat Singh’s Jail Notebook should be raised to the level of a classic comparable to Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. In 1928, Bhagat Singh and his comrades (Sukhdev, Bejoy Kumar Sinha, Shiv Verma and Jaidev Kapoor) founded, upon the basis of the HRA (the Hindustan Republican Association) the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA). Freedom fighter Chandrashekhar Azad was a key figure in this process and he supported Bhagat Singh during the secret negotiations aimed at the reformation of the HRA into the HSRA. Bhagat Singh never gave too much weight, however, to any organization nor to its participants, looking upon them as mere tools in the hands of a broader agenda: ‘it was revolution that was important, not they’ (Nayar 2002: 23). Sacrifice, martyr­ dom, did not scare him, rather the opposite. In a letter to a friend he cited a few lines from Delhi’s famous poet Ghalib: ‘Like the last flicker of lamp at dawn, I have but a few breaths of life left’ (cited in Nayar 2002: 23). As he kept growing in popularity among young revolutionaries, Bhagat Singh eventually became the target of the colonial administration. The Lahore Police arrested him for the first time in 1926 for suspected involve­ ment with a bomb attack. The killing of Lala Lajpat Rai by a British super­ intendent of police called James Scott was a turning point in his life. In the aftermath of this event, the HSRA decided to retaliate and put together a team of fighters. The team was assembled with a precise division of tasks: Jai Gopal had to identify Scott; Bhagat Singh and Rajguru had to shoot him; Chandra Shekhar Azad was to provide cover to the whole team. Because of a mishap, however, they ended up shooting the wrong person, police officer John Saunders. As the news spread, it became evident that the punishment for this action would be symbolic, i.e. death. As a consequence of this awareness, and inspired by his faith in martyrdom, Bhagat Singh, supported by his comrades, decided ‘to perform as many spectacular revolutionary acts as possible in the short duration of his remaining lifetime’ (Lal 2007: 3714). After a few months spent in hiding, they started reorganizing their activities and planned another action that could have as much resonance as the killing of Saunders. They organized an incursion into the central assembly of the British central government. The plan was to throw harmless bombs and fill the space with flyers calling people to the revolution. A first quote used in the pamphlet was ‘it needs an explosion to make the deaf hear’, a phrase that would echo throughout India in the following years. The other slogans in the

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pamphlets contained phrases that would also become historic such as ‘Inqui­ lab Zindabad’ (Long Live the Revolution) and ‘Samrajyavad Ka Nash Ho’ (Down with Imperialism). The attack created the expected turmoil. Bhagat Singh and his comrade BK Dutt let themselves get captured during this incursion by surrendering their guns on the tables. In the statements they made after the attack, they both declared that they had carefully thrown the bombs in vacant places and that their goal was really to get arrested and then to voice, through the arrest, their dissent during the trial. According to Lal (2007), Bhagat Singh and his comrades had two main goals with their incur­ sion. The first was ‘[t]o expose British colonialism through the courts, using them as a platform to spread their ideas’; the second was ‘[t]o expose the brutalities of British colonialism in jail by resorting to hunger strikes there and thereby drawing public attention’ (Lal 2007: 3715–16). British Imperialism was, however, not the only enemy these young revolu­ tionaries aimed at defeating. Their attack stood also against all forms of communalism and against caste. As a matter of fact, the message of Bhagat Singh remained very popular in the years to come, to give one example, among the Dalits, who had been united through the activism of Dr. Ambed­ kar under the banner of Buddhism. The tensions with Gandhi’s views are here multiple and self-evident. In 1930, Bhagat Singh was sentenced to death by hanging along with two of his closest comrades, Shaheed Sukhdev and Shaheed Rajguru. They were executed in 1931. Bhagat Singh’s legacy has indeed lived on, albeit in a set of very different representations and incorporations. He is the object of a broad production of iconic images that show him wearing different symbols. He is portrayed with the hat (indicating his cosmopolitan look); with a turban (hinting at his Pun­ jabi origins); or with a gun. Pinney (2004) discusses the extent to which Bhagat was the object of numerous chromolithographs. His figure is also portrayed in popular Punjabi literature where he is commonly addressed as a ‘virgin-martyr’. Gaur writes: ‘His revolutionary militancy and non-con­ formism, as described in the popular Punjabi verses, are not simply of patriotic-nationalist-leftist variety, but are also projected as rooted in the Punjab heroic and chivalric traditions’ (Gaur 2008: 55)7. Images of him still circulate widely on Instagram and other social media platforms as well as on the streets of India (see Figure 3.2). Several films, books and comic books have been based on his story and his face, as portrayed by Kak’s RAD, appears in political demonstrations as well as in street art installations. A graffiti (inspired by a film dedicated to him) decorates a large wall in the garage of one of Delhi’s biggest shopping malls (Figure 3.3). The popularity of Bhagat Singh’s icon is constructed across these various narratives. It has been appropriated by the most varied political organizations (from extreme left, to Congress and BJP). And in each of these contexts, it stands for different qualities. I address this point further in the following

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Figure 3.2 Composite of two screenshots from Instagram and one photograph. By Paolo S.H. Favero.

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Figure 3.3 Bhagat Singh mural in the parking lot of a Delhi shopping mall. Photo credit: Paolo S.H. Favero.

section where I look in more detail into Sanjay Kak’s portrait of Bhagat’s role in today’s India. Let me, however, stress that one of the possible key char­ acteristics of Bhagat’s popularity have to do with his mimicry of British cul­ ture (see Simran Gell cited in Pinney 2004), of his ‘performative/deformative incarnation of the Englishman’ (ibid.: 127). He was the antithesis of the image that Gandhi had projected of himself as a ‘poor shambling man’ (ibid.: 127). As Pinney suggests (citing Gell again) in his description of the events that followed the murder of Saunders: ‘Whereas Gandhi was thrown out of a first class compartment, Bhagat Singh, by impersonating a British soldier shortly after killing one defiantly claims what is his by right’. He imperso­ nated, paraphrasing Bhabha (in Pinney 2004) ‘mimicry as menace’ (p. 127).

Bhagat Singh and the Red Ant Dream – red salute or anthem to eternal youth The figure and story of Bhagat Singh is used in Kak’s RAD for destabilizing ruling narratives about India. As hinted in the opening of this chapter, the film is filled with quotes from either Bhagat Singh’s own writings or from other figures such Karl Marx, Carl von Clausewitz and the socialist leader Kishan Pattanayak. It opens with one quote from Bhagat Singh’s diaries, which is a declaration of eternal resistance against ‘the state of war’: ‘Let us declare that the state of war exists and shall exist. The choice of the course, whether bloody or comparatively peaceful, which it should adopt rests with you. Choose whichever you like but that war shall be incessantly waged.’

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The choice for this kind of introduction does play in strong contrast with the opening of another film on Bhagat Singh, the mainstream Hindi cinema production Rang De Basanti (2006, produced and directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra). This film opens with a quote too, this time from Chan­ dra Shekhar Azad. The quote states: ‘If your blood still doesn’t rage, it is water that flows in your veins, for what is the flush of youth if it is not of service to the motherland.’ These words appear as the viewers witness a filmic re-enactment of the moments before Bhagat Singh’s hanging: he exchanges words of under­ standing with a British soldier and then walks away to his destiny. In line with this quote, the film focuses little on the political message of Bhagat Singh and his comrades but rather on a generalized portrait of a courageous young man facing his death with dignity. These two quotes together (the one from RAD and that from Rang De Basanti) speak of the evidently contested nature of Bhagat Singh’s present-day legacy (and of that his comrades and of Chandra Shekhar Azad in parti­ cular). On the one hand, Kak speaks of the need of militantism as an act of resistance against the ruling state of war. Mehra instead, reframes this figure within a generalized patriotic rhetoric on the relationship between youth and motherland which of course fits better within the logic of a mainstream neoliberal film industry. During my several meetings with Sanjay Kak, I have had an opportunity to look in depth into his approach to Bhagat Singh and the motivations that informed the making of RAD. In 2016, I also had the pleasure of organizing a screening of RAD in Rome at the University La Sapienza for a workshop8 on India and politics. Following the screening we held a Q&A for which I also invited Giulia Battaglia, an expert in Indian documentary practices. As the initiative-taker for this (visual) part of the Rome workshop, I must admit that I was quite nervous about the outcome. A politically engaged and positioned film characterized also by a very particular aesthetics and by a length of two hours, I feared that RAD may not meet the favours of the viewers nor the institutions involved (among them also invitees from the Indian embassy). I wondered, in particular, whether the politics of the film would have agitated the souls of some Indians who were in the audience. I was also unsure about the extent to which the length of the film may scare away the local students. The response, however, was very interesting. During the Q&A we had a very lively discussion and Kak received qualified and engaged questions. No one seemingly reacted to the length of the film (somewhat unusual for a doc­ umentary film especially for a western audience) nor to its open presentation of the world of (Naxalite and Maoist) activists that the Indian government has labelled as ‘terrorist’. Our conversation at La Sapienza tapped into a number of topics that I had the pleasure to discuss with Kak during many other meetings across the years. Yet the conference also opened up new

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questions and gave him also the opportunity to sell copies of his films. I will get back to some of these topics below but let me first, in response to the approach that characterizes this book, briefly introduce Sanjay Kak and his career. Born in Kashmir in 1958 in a Pandit family, Sanjay Kak grew up in Delhi. An activist and a self-taught filmmaker, he studied economics and sociology at the University of Delhi. And it was there, in the midst of the ‘Emergency’, that he encountered the world of documentary film. It was, in fact, that first screening by Anand Pathdawrdhan of the Prisoners of Conscience that trig­ gered in him the feeling that documentary could be a useful arena for poli­ tical resistance. Along with most film historians (see above) Kak considers Indira Gandhi’s ‘Emergency’ rule to have been a key moment for the world of Indian documentary (and activism). In an interview with Shuddhabrata Sen­ gupta (2013) he says: ‘The Emergency was a watershed, wasn’t it? … It changed the way you looked at everything – at even the smallest of things.’9 Sanjay Kak’s first films are political, addressing social and environmental issues. Punjab: Doosra Adhay (1986) a three part, made-for-television series that focused on Punjab in the aftermath of the Khalistan struggle, and Pra­ dakshina (1987), a seven-part series on the river Ganges and its decaying conditions. According to the Indian art magazine Caravan, One Weapon (a film that looks at elections and voting as a tool of resistance against the hegemonic powers) is probably the film that marked his public entry as a political filmmaker. Words on Water (2002 on the struggles around the Nar­ mada Valley) and Jashn-e-Azadi –How We Celebrate Freedom (2007, about the Kashmiri freedom struggle) consolidated this reputation. The latter film is more than ever actual today following the abrogation of the article 370 (that gives the region of Jammu and Kashmir a special status) and the commu­ nication lockdown that Kashmir has been exposed to. Kak’s trajectory signals those key passages in the development of Indian documentary that I sketched before. His beginnings were marked by the ‘Emergency’, and the next steps were triggered by the further technological developments (video first and then digital) making possible the production of new, more participatory and low-key forms of filmmaking. He has also (partly) embraced the new venues that have opened up for documentary film in India. Despite declaring himself not to be a fan of art galleries as spaces for screening documentary films (‘I want a seat … see a film … not a gallery piece,’ he told me during one interview) he produced, in 2008, the installation A Shrine to the Future: The Memory of a Hill, about mining of bauxite Odisha for the Manifesta. Sanjay Kak is also a prolific writer (Until my Freedom Has Come: the New Intifada in Kashmir [2013], is his most recent book) and he has recently curated Witness: Kashmir 1986–2016 – 9 Photo­ graphers (2017) a marvellous photographic book exploring the destinies of contemporary Kashmir. The trajectory and progressive diversification of Sanjay’s career (this could be looked upon as a move from documentary to multiple media) mirrors hence the changing scenario of possibilities for

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making politics through images. Despite not being a key actor in the scene of emerging digital practices, his work is truly an ongoing multimodal perfor­ mance. Kak systematically also refuses to apply for the approval of the board of censors. His films and books are largely self-funded or funded by the sup­ port of friends and colleagues. RAD is the third in a cycle of films that interrogate the workings of Indian democracy (the other two being Jashn-e-Azadi… and Words on Water). Dealing simultaneously with a number of resistance struggles in Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Punjab the films asks one core question: ‘are revolutions even possible anymore?’10 Entering the world of what India’s present Prime Min­ ister once defined as the ‘single greatest internal security threat to the nation’11 the film offers insights into the lives of activists (who describe themselves as ‘freedom fighters’ in the film) in all these environments. Maoism underpins the ideology of several of these groups and so does, importantly, the figure of Bhagat Singh, the real glue stitching these various groups of activists together (to paraphrase Kak, Bhagat Singh is the ‘coagu­ latory’ factor). Following the heritage of Bhagat Singh, RAD brings us into different envir­ onments that are united by the common struggle against capitalist exploitation. I suggest that RAD follows the heritage of Bhagat Singh not only in terms of this ideological content but also in terms of (political) form. Above, I mentioned Singh’s views of the revolution as an ongoing process of fighting, learning and of continuous questioning. Similarly, RAD invites viewers to question the arguments and material that are shared in it. Stretching this fur­ ther it could be said that the film in fact does not have a real thesis, a readymade narrative. This is not a conventional story-driven nor a character-driven film. Rather, it constitutes an open-ended exploration. Using a non-linear nar­ rative that constantly jumps between different contexts and characters, Kak brings to the viewer a set of contrasting experiences all united by the red thread of the revolution. The camera-work mirrors this approach. During long sec­ tions of the film the camera seems to search for its subjects. We are hence offered long, slow moments of panning over the landscape. These moments allow us to gather insights into the nature and material culture that surrounds the people addressed in the film. We follow demonstrators as they organize rallies and long training sessions in the forest and we listen to public speeches delivered to large audiences. During these moments the camera ‘searches’ more than it ‘shows’. Kak seems to craft his (open) argument as he explores these worlds by means of images and sounds. We also attend long conversations with various characters. In these moments, often filmed by the participants them­ selves, the camera is wobbly, searching for its focus, generating in the viewer the feeling of an intimate, and at times, clandestine encounter. The form mirroring the content. In these moments, time is given to the characters of the film to fully develop their arguments and ideas. The interviews collect significant insights such as when the spokesperson of the Communist Party of India (whom we only hear but do not see) says:

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‘The only terror that is really terrifying the people of our country is state terror, saffron terror and the terror of the exploiters and the oppressors. No people’s force in history has preserved itself through meek submission to the enemy. Maoism teaches us that self-preservation is possible only through war.’ Kak does not seem, however, to search for a catchy phrase; rather, as the focus of the images shifts irregularly between foreground and background, he lets an argument unfold, slowly, with time. Rather than being imposed by the director by means of editing or punchy voiceover lines, it is the accumulation of these moments that allows the viewers to stitch the ideological connection between the various groups that make up the object of this film. The final edit of RAD also uses found material filmed by the fighters. This adds to the film a further layer of directness, intimacy and access to a world often beyond the cameras. Such material strengthens the openness of the film and its capacity to host a variety of different aesthetics and formats. Alter­ nating with moments of interview and open search of the landscape, the film contains also many instances of aestheticized images. The opening scene, for instance, shows a night landscape; trucks driving past, inundating the frame with orange light as shadows of men and trucks move across. The camera is steady, letting this scene unfold in front of it as we get wrapped in the notes of Word Sound Power’s song Badang: ‘I heard the news several days ago … It made me want to blaze arrow … upon dem … the sword of zorro … bandalero … reduce dem in a zero.’ In specific passages Kak resorts to the use of a voiceover. Yet, Kak’s voice generally only serves the purpose of offering the viewers some needed back­ ground instead of promoting a full-fledged argument. So, despite its Grierso­ nian inspiration (this is evidently a film characterized by a political intent) the film is not ‘expository’ (Nichols 2001). Rather, going back to the categories of Nichols, I would suggest that it alternates between ‘observational’ and ‘expository’ modes within a structure that is largely characterized by a sense of participation, reflexivity and interactivity. I suggest that RAD shows us the necessity to rethink and enlarge the four ‘modes’ (2001) on which Nichols built his typology. Merging his typology (expository, observational, inter­ active and reflexive) with the categories used by Barbash and Taylor (1997) and by a greater attention to today’s digital practices, I suggest that we can, by means of this film, also acknowledge the coming together of a new typol­ ogy made up of five categories. Adding to the expository, observational and reflexive modes we can, perhaps, also speak here of ‘impressionistic’ moments that are characterized by a lyrical/poetical tone. Such moments evoke rather than show and explain and they are implicitly more aestheticized, subjective and emotional. We can also expand Nichol’s category of the interactive including in it the multiple ways in which viewers can be made into

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co-creators of the interpretations and materials. This resonates with Kak’s idea that: ‘documentary film is walking people to a zone where they are part of the argument’. In the present scenario, the core challenge for filmmakers seems to be to learn to become more and more respectful of their audiences. Resonating with the argument about the ‘pact’ between documentary filmmakers and audi­ ences that I addressed above through Bruzzi’s work (2006), Kak suggests that filmmaking is today increasingly not simply about ‘truth telling’. This new engagement take very complex forms but, in his view, ‘audiences are not put off by that … they are not looking for documentaries as testimony or news from the frontline’ they are ‘open to it as argument’ (Kak, personal inter­ view). Films seem, therefore, to have grown more political not only in terms of their content (which was indeed already there before) but also in terms of their ways of interpellating their viewers, of addressing them as active con­ tributors to meaning-making. The digital has contributed to this. It has cre­ ated an interactive climate opening up new ‘dialogic possibilities’ (Kak, interview). This, I suggest, is how a film like RAD now manages to reach the viewers. This has also opened up the possibility, according to Kak, of addressing topics such as Maoism that were, in India, until a few years ago practically taboo. ‘In 2007 you could not use words Maoist without someone wanting to speak about violence,’ said Kak during one of our conversations. Referring to the Delhi documentary scene he also told me that the very way in which people gather and participate has changed significantly: ‘In Delhi if you have a film-screening and you don’t have a discussion you might risk getting beaten up,’ he ironically told me. As I have witnessed through my attendance at many screenings in the city, people, in fact, no longer want to see films, they want to engage, to have a discussion. So, as I mentioned above, the digital here does not simply entail more quantity but first and foremost more quality. It seems to have made it possible for viewers to feel entitled to express their opinions and to participate. In Kak’s words, social media have ‘changed my self confidence in knowing that people will hear of it … it has changed its politics’ (interview). Despite these openings, RAD has been criticized for offering a partial view. In a benevolent critique Sengupta (quoted in Monteiro and Jayasankar 2015: 59) writes that Kak is ‘almost end[ing] up as a ‘prisoner of love’, mesmerised by the unquestionable dignity of the guerrilla with her comrades’. Following the argument that I have set above, this partiality is, in my view, exactly part and parcel of what Kak tries to do with his films (and this is perhaps also what underpins Sengupta’s critique). This is where his approach to doc­ umentary filmmaking touches upon Bhagat Singh’s idea of texts as something to be critiqued (see below). In my interviews with him, Kak often reflected upon this question. During one of our conversations in Rome he openly declared that RAD ‘is not a balanced document’ nor was it ever meant to be. Walking a thin line between visibility and invisibility, i.e. between bringing certain issues to the forefront and leaving others behind, this film stimulates

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viewers to question their assumptions, coming to the roots of what they think the real issues behind the events portrayed in the film actually are. In doing this he fully exploits the capacity of films to function as agents of meaningmaking rather than as tools for communicating a preconceived under­ standing. His film brings to the fore the nature of knowledge as a ‘processual aspect of human social relations’ (cf. Banks 2001: 112) rather than as a static thing ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered and ‘documented’. RAD contains, therefore, all the elements that allow us to reflect on the transformations that Indian independent cinema (and probably non-fiction film at large) has been going through during the most recent decades. Atten­ tive to a changing media scenario and to changing viewing practices, it also holds on to established (old-fashioned perhaps) ways of making documentary films. It pays careful attention to the negotiations of meaning with the audi­ ence; it resists story and character-driven narratives and builds upon dis­ tribution and production strategies that have made possible the decentralization of documentary practices in contemporary India that I hinted at above. In a way it constitutes a bridge between the past and the future of independent documentary cinema. I would like to claim that these three areas constitute the roots of the politics of contemporary documentary filmmaking. And I will also go so far as to suggest that Kak’s approach to documentary as an open dialogic form (which prevails in the structure of RAD) mirrors Bhagat Singh’s own view of the function of writing. Singh was very conscious about this and, as I already mentioned above, stated with regards to his written message, ‘do not read it to follow blindly and take for granted what is written in it. Read it, criticise it, think over it [and] try to formulate your own ideas with its help.’ (Lal 2007: 3718) In the following sections I unpack these dimensions bringing RAD and Kak’s views on documentary film to bear upon other artistic experiences that I have conducted research upon during my fieldwork in India. I suggest that these insights point towards the future of the documentary practice in India. Addressing the historical and theoretical terrain with which I opened this chapter, I will hence progressively expand also away from documentary itself into contemporary digital visual communication practices.

To ‘matter’ from the margins During my many conversations with him, Sanjay Kak often referred as we saw, to the political roots of Indian documentary film. For him, filming is not to be seen only as ‘part of nation building’ (as it has conventionally been utilized by the FD etc., see above) but also as an active form for questioning it. Kak once told me in one of our conversations that from 1977 till today, ‘documentary cinema is very much part of a certain questioning of the official narrative’. From ‘Emergency’ onwards, filmmakers have aimed at making things ‘ocular’. Yet, such an activity is tightly connected to a sense of mar­ ginality. ‘I see myself firmly in the margin,’ Kak stated during the Q&A at La

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Sapienza. Yet, during the same conversation he also added, paradoxically perhaps, that this is ‘what keeps me going is because I know that I matter’. Hence, ‘to matter’ and to be ‘marginal’ are not antithetical positions. Rather, the former is dependent upon the latter, allowing for the emergence of a new position from which to speak openly: ‘there is a kind of morality that is returned to the discussion and it can be only discussed from the margins’ (Kak, interview). It is possibly as a consequence of this systematic renuncia­ tion to governmental and market support (both at the level of production and distribution) that ‘people respect and understand documentary film’ (Kak, personal interview). The marginality that Kak speaks of is constructed at the crossroads of dif­ ferent transformations. Today, however, the borders of the margins have been redefined by the new practices for making and sharing images that have been made possible by digital technologies. But it also has to do with the presence of censorship and the struggles to bypass it. Censorship plays a key role in the journeying of films in the Indian market. A pre-requirement for any kind of distribution in cinema halls and main­ stream festivals, censorship can today be bypassed thanks to the new tech­ nologies and communication means. Kak remains a leading figure in the struggle against censorship. He is actively engaged with organizations such as the Campaign Against Censorship (CAC, located in the UK) and also sys­ tematically renounces mainstream distribution (in India) in order not to have to expose his films to the evaluation procedure imposed by the board of cen­ sors (which, given the topics he addresses in his film, will almost surely be unwilling to give him the green light). The arrival of digital technology and the Internet have therefore been revolutionary to Kak’s practice allowing him to distribute his films all over India and abroad. For him, social media (and Facebook in particular) have been central to this transformation. ‘Facebook is an element of filmmaking practice which has changed my work. I have done more screenings with more people … we are just putting it out there’ (Kak, personal interview). As it happened in Rome, Kak regularly travels to his screenings with DVD-copies of his films and sells them on the spot: ‘people buy DVDs … 10 years ago maybe 2 people would buy a DVD. Now for every screening I might sell 23000 rupees12 worth of DVDs’ (Kak, perso­ nal interview). This semi-clandestine industry combined with possible fees for presentations and lectures, with donations from friends and colleagues, con­ stitute the real funders of his films and of those of many other fellow doc­ umentarians in contemporary India. Testifying to piracy as a ruling form of ‘modernity’ in the Indian context (see Sundaram 2009) forms of clandestinity are also at the centre of the experiences of many other key realities in the context of contemporary Indian documentary film. To mention one example, the Cinema of Resistance (from here onwards CoR) has in the recent decade emerged as a key venue for the distribution (and partly also for production) of politically informed doc­ umentaries beyond the grid of control of public institutions and NGOs.

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Founded in 2006 by members of the ‘People’s Culture Forum’ (that was ori­ ginally created by poet Gorakh Pande as a platform for writers, poets, film­ makers, painters, etc.) CoR started its activities as an independent screening space in Gorakhpur, a city in the heartland of India’s Hindu far-right forces. This festival started with a fairly simple agenda; it had to be an interactive cultural program with ‘no VIPs, no lighting of lamp, no tickets, etc.’ (personal interview with Sanjay Joshi). In the words of Sanjay Joshi, one of the foun­ ders and today the main engine behind its activities, the festival simply ‘clicked very quickly’ (Joshi, interview) and then spread to all parts of north­ ern India. Today CoR is a big reality in Indian independent documentary film. It is hosted not only in Uttar Pradesh but also in Bihar, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Haryana, Delhi, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. The basic mission of CoR is ‘creating space for honest people’ regardless of their political position.13 Today, the organization is composed of two people working full time and a large number of part-time volunteers (around 50 in total). Active without corporate or government support, this festival has managed to create, according to Joshi, ‘a true peo­ ple’s culture’ that has contributed in introducing individuals from all over the country to forms of music, painting, literature, film and photography that do not often find space in mainstream culture. The festival also supports the production of new (mainly short) films that are distributed via YouTube. The funding structure of CoR mirrors Kak’s own agenda for funding his films. The festival builds upon voluntary contributors: ‘we do crowdfunding but without a computer’ Joshi jokingly told me once mimicking with his hand the movement of a beggar collecting money from passers-by. He and his partners look upon piracy, however, as key in their activities; this is where the world of computers and the internet truly enters their lives. A personal com­ puter armed with Utorrent (the illegal downloading site), a projector and a large number of external hard drives are key to their activities: ‘Cinema of Resistance has only been possible through LCD projectors and DVD piracy’ (Joshi, personal interview). Joshi travels around India with a laptop and small speakers. Often, when on the train, he opens up his laptop and starts showing films on development, children, women, etc. to the other passengers: ‘this was not possible 20 years back!,’ he said triumphantly during one conversation. Even though the activities of CoR are present in all main social media, Internet is of much less relevance for their activities. According to Joshi: ‘in my area internet will not work for next 20–30 years’ and as a consequence, Facebook is not their target. Mirroring Kak’s argument on the political sig­ nificance of marginality Joshi stresses the importance of being able to work and live ‘offline’. Before I go any further, I need to stress how for Kak, Joshi and this generation of documentarians digital technologies are really mostly interesting as means of distribution rather than production. As Kak suggested the digital has not fully developed ‘new material’ but has had a great impact on the ways in which his old material is allowed to travel today. In this sce­ nario, he told me, ‘I do no marketing, films are simply there’.

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In parallel to these technological changes, the Indian independent doc­ umentary film scene has also been significantly influenced (and perhaps lib­ erated) by another major global transformation. The economic crisis that symbolically started with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 led to a decrease in international funding in the Indian art and film market. For many young filmmakers this has been a dramatic change, reducing the possibilities of official funding to a handful of key actors and mainly to PSBT, NGOs and corporates. This situation has, however, also pushed young documentarians to find new creative ways for producing their films. Many have started using online crowdsourcing sites or are learning to blend different forms of filming and to diversify their work. As a result of all these changes the scenario is today a much more differentiated one, both in terms of types of film as well as in its geographical identity. I will discuss this diversification in greater detail in the next section by looking at the experiences of some young Delhi-based documentarians. But let me for now add that while being often associated with Delhi (and perhaps Bombay) independent documentary film is today a much more tentacular landscape reaching out also to rural India. The lack of institutional funding in ‘post-FD’ has hence, according to Kak, been a bles­ sing in disguise: ‘secretly I am happy that we do not have more funding … because lots of filmmakers are making very good work … it has created diversity’. The overarching changes taking place at the level of technology and econ­ omy have indeed also been mirrored at the level of viewership. ‘As the main­ stream media have become more and more idiotic, audiences have started gravitating towards the independent space’ (Kak, personal interview), hence giving the authority of documentary film a new momentum. Sanjay Joshi highlighted the same view when he told me that the present political climate, dominated by ‘extreme Hindu right politics’ and by capitalist practices, is paradoxically helping his festival out: ‘in India there is a lot of space for leftist and liberal practice, because society is moving quickly towards fascist forms of power, so people will follow you’. In his view the country ‘is moving too fast in national politics, if you are honest, people will come to your place, people will fund you’. Bringing back to life the role that cinema had in colo­ nial times as a tool to unify the masses against the colonisers (see Chowdhry 2001 above) Joshi suggests that Cinema of Resistance is conscious about the fact that their role is not confined to cinema only: ‘we do not only screen films … films have to come with some logic, with participation … we are not film appreciation expert, we use cinema as a political tool’. The work of CoR signals hence a major change in comparison to previous film movements (see for instance Cherian 2017). They consciously aimed to move away from organizations such as the India Film Society Movement, whose focus (build­ ing upon the film archive of Pune with their copies of Godard, Hitchcock, Coppola, etc.) was, according to Joshi, entirely on Western cinema: ‘We had to watch Godard etc. but we don’t understand Godard, yet we have to say that we appreciate it’ (Joshi, personal interview). With the arrival of digital

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technologies, a possibility has materialized for getting fiction films and doc­ umentaries from Iran, and countries from Asia and Africa. The CoR can, in other words, be looked upon as a proper operation in the decolonization of the cinema canon. The combination of technological, financial and political change may, therefore, not have fully revolutionized the attitudes of producers of doc­ umentary films but it surely has transformed that of their audiences: ‘I am not willing to accept that there is a new camera but certainly for us in India there is a new audience,’ Kak said during one interview. According to him we should, therefore, ‘not over-valorise new technologies’. Promoting an argu­ ment that links to what I discuss in the introduction to this book in terms of the dialectic between the old and new, Kak suggests that ‘the digital has done fairly conventional tasks … nothing new, just faster better ways of doing the same old things’. According to him the ‘new’, rather than killing the ‘old’, has set it in motion: ‘new technologies are becoming a way for older forms to travel more successfully’. As an example he mentioned the two-hour long documentary form that was indeed unfriendly for television watchers but that can be used in both online sharing as well as in private screenings. Both Sanjay Kak and Sanjay Joshi seem to have designed their present activities in the world of documentary film at the crossroads of the old and the new and embrace their marginality as a tool for conducting sounder and more impactful political battles. The digital has provided them with a terrain within which they can act and enact their politics. Their reflections testify to the argument I make on iDocs and other forms of digital visuality (see Chapter 5) as providing a closing of the gap between images and everyday life with its politics and materiality and as signalling also a different (more dia­ logic, open-ended) relationship between image-maker and the viewers (see Favero 2013 and 2018). Mirroring this argument, Kak suggested that digital images have put films in motion in a new way: ‘contrary to the atomistic viewing of laptops, etc. … people want to talk about films, it is no longer just about watching they want to discuss … that is a cultivated art’.

New scenes, old politics As described previously, in the contemporary scenario, documentaries seem to have drifted into a variety of new territories born at the confluence of technological, financial and political change. The variety of practices is wide and ranges from linear documentaries to art installations, online archives and smartphone apps. Young filmmakers in particular are taking this heritage further, inserting it also into a new territory. The move from conventional screening spaces to the digital room has created an unprecedented situation for India allowing for the birth of new types of documentary formats. It has also allowed, as we saw, for the scattering of films centrifugally making them reach out to formerly unexpected places. Within this diversifying scenario the ways of making and distributing documentaries as well as their very aesthetics

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have changed significantly. Conducting fieldwork in this terrain, I stumbled upon a variety of experiences and actors that reveal the tentacular characters of the territory today. In hindsight, my material is extensively inhabited by works and projects that crisscross the line that separates documentary from fiction, film from contemporary art. This confirms that it makes little sense today to strictly attempt at adhering to the consolidated categories within which we have conventionally addressed documentaries (see above). What the new emerging projects that I have focused on seem to have in common is the need to subjugate form to content, foregrounding the sense of political participation that characterized the work of their predecessors. A first terrain worth looking into is that of young filmmakers who stick to the linear form and who managed to survive by alternating between independent films and commissioned work (mainly by NGOs and corporates). Let me start with a couple of film-centred experiences based on the work of two filmmakers. Srijan Nandan is an emerging documentary film director that I have had the pleasure to meet on several occasions. Born in Bihar in 1978, Srijan has devoted his career to work with the marginalized and especially with the Dalits14. He started his career writing articles about the situation in Bihar and especially about the presence of the biotechnology corporation Monsanto. Travelling from village to village, he collected material and wrote stories for newspapers. While continuing this work, he developed an interest for making films. His idea was that short films could be impactful to convince legislators and policy makers about the risks involved in the introduction of the products promoted by Monsanto. Eventually he produced some images and a visual presentation. Some years down the line the Bihar government banned Mon­ santo (the first state in India to have done so).15 Inspired by this change, after completing his studies in social work, Srijan joined a public sector company for one year and then Praxis, an NGO devoted to helping the poor and marginalized sections of society. Praxis did already make films and had a proper documentary section, so he decided to get involved. This was his breakthrough and after a few years he managed to focus on making films for them (one to three films per year). Srijan opted early on to not make corporate films (another leading way for getting films funded in India). He refused this for ideological reasons. Instead he chose to alternate between his own productions (sometimes sponsored by PSBT) and commissioned projects for NGOs. For him, this combination became important to live up to his goal of using films to criticize today’s development rationale as well as the direction that the country is taking. ‘The development of India is actually not for everyone,’ he said during one of our conversations. Coming from a family engaged with the fight for the rights of the Dalits, Srijan is today also exploring questions of race in his cinema. ‘People think that race does not happen here,’ he told me suggesting that he wants to prove the opposite. Nandan’s commissioned work offers an interesting blend between conven­ tional ‘expository’ and ‘observational’ modes (see Nichols 2001). Interviews

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and narration offer clearly delineated arguments about specific topic relating mainly to poverty and marginality. In his films he pays, however, also great attention to visual aesthetics. The employment of DSLRs and tripods gen­ erate images that are stable, crisp and often characterized by low depth of field (typical for the latest generation DSLR cameras). This is an aesthetic that largely contrasts with that of Sanjay Kak, Anand Patwardhan, or Rakesh Sharma, with their more exploratory style. The formal aspect is pushed even further in his personal projects. In his recent PSBT produced film Shadows on the Road (a film focusing on the lives of those individuals in Delhi who earn their living on the streets), Srijan produces a narrative that while building upon an extensive research and many interviews is characterized by a videoinstallation style. A number of key characters return several times in a non­ linear story dominated by parallel editing and sustained by a large amount of time-lapses, slow motions and the use of, in selected moments, an electronic music soundtrack. An alternative example to Nandan’s approach can be found in some of the works of Black Ticket Films (from here onwards BTF), a company funded and formed by Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas that is emerging as a key actor in Delhi’s contemporary documentary scene. Their 2011 film Dilli offers, similarly to Srijan’s film, a portrait of Delhi that focuses on the lives of individuals who become victims of urban development. Filmed during the preparations for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, Dilli too is characterized by a video-installation aesthetics. Merging still, moving images and anima­ tions with great attention to sound (the latter a characteristic of con­ temporary productions), the film functions basically as a photo-voice project. We hear characters talking about their experiences of living in Delhi though they are never filmed with a frontal camera. We see them during a variety of actions aimed at inserting them in the city. With its intense use of graphical effects (including texts, and many ‘picture in picture’) this film, in a way, constitutes a linear version of what could already be an interactive doc­ umentary or a video installation. During my first interview with Ghosh and Thomas in 2014, they pointed out that this film could have developed into an online documentary. Yet, at the time, they felt that they were not really ready for that experience. They also feared that because of infrastructural reasons, in India this kind of format would have a very limited distribution. It is hardly surprising that in the coming years some of their works have been selected in prestigious set­ tings such as the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA). The design of BTF as a production company is also interesting per se. It offers a window into new conceptions of making documentary films in India. In their online presentation they state that this ‘is an award-winning media strategy agency, a production house, an independent voice – all of these and a little more’.16 Designed as a media company (rather than a centre for the production of documentaries) BTF pitches the growing diversification that the digital has made possible. They offer ‘designing branded content,

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social impact films, interactive digital content and a wide array of fiction and non-fiction series for multiple platforms … Most of all, we are storytellers’. Among their clients they have the World Health Organization as well as Roche and other corporates. They also focus on participatory formats and in this mission statement they say: ‘Come, share your story with us, as we share ours with you!’17 Enlarging the terrain, I could also address the manifold examples of doc­ umentary films that cross the line of fiction cinema while still being anchored in the attempt to comment on actuality and politics. Nila Madhab Panda is one of most important voices in this field. Born in Odisha in 1973 Panda started off his career as a documentary filmmaker devoted to social and environmental issues. Addressing topics that are at once of local and global relevance he has constantly jumped between different genres and media. In 2002, he authored, with help of Nobel laureate Kalash Satyarthi, a number of documentaries that paved the way for the development of new child labour laws in India. Between 2003 and 2006 he also made a TV drama series (in collaboration with the government of India) on female foeticide and on girl­ child rights. A case of ‘[s]oap opera with a cause’ (SPAN magazine, Jan 2006), these series had an impact on Indian debates on the rights of girl children. Panda rose to fame in 2010 with I am Kalam (2010), India’s first fiction film explicitly devoted to young people. Addressing the right to education, this film is centred on the destiny of a young boy from the countryside who dreams of becoming the President of India. Screened across 70 festivals and winning 30 international and one national award, I am Kalam puts the right to education narrative back at the centre of the government’s agenda. Panda has also produced films for and with the support of leading international organizations. He has made awareness films on drinking water, conservation and sanitation with the Government of India, SWHO (Summit Women’s Health Organization), and Unicef; on the right to education with the Gov­ ernment of India, and with UNESCO. Halkaa, a film on the importance of toilets and sanitation was produced in partnership with NGO Swachha Bharat and the Ministry of Urban Affairs. Screened in many Indian schools with the purpose of influencing children on the importance of toilets and hygiene, the film has also travelled to several festivals across the globe. Climate’s First Orphans (2006) is considered one of India’s first films on climate change. It inte­ grates scientific evidence with popular wisdom and national policy-making. Among Panda’s most recent productions, mention must be made of Babloo Happy Hai, a movie that touches upon the spread of HIV-AIDS among youth. Promoting the use of condoms and creating general awareness on sexual health, the film constitutes at the same time a colourful entertaining ‘masala’ movie experience that manages to simultaneously generate enjoyment and reflection. Blending international film styles with local forms of storytelling, his ongoing production Yesterday’s Past (2019) tackles the destiny of a single human being, a man, whose economic and personal trajectory gets enmeshed with that of the surrounding decaying nature. The story aims to open the eyes of

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worldwide audiences to the consequences of global warming. While doing so, this film also offers a window onto the world from the perspective of a small village in coastal Odisha, shrinking due to rising sea levels. Another important expansion of the documentary film in India is that into the terrain of contemporary art galleries. Amar Kanwar is probably the most evident example of this move. Starting off as a documentary filmmaker and a researcher in the field of labour and safety he decided eventually to focus his career on indigenous rights, gender and ecology. In his recent installation The Sovereign Forest (2016) Kanwar explores a world, to paraphrase him, on the brink of extinction. Dealing with the multiple threats that surround Orissa’s rural and tribal areas, this installation is made up of a variety of documents in different media: videos screened in cinema format, clips projected on the pages of a book that can be flipped, newspaper clips hanging on the walls, photographs and posters and maps and a variety of identity documents. One room also hosts different varieties of rice corns and booklets containing images of murdered or suicidal farmers. This space, rather than offering a ready-made narrative, instigates in the viewers the production of new stories through their own ‘knowledge-seeking strategies’ (Färber 2007). What can be found in this exhibition is, therefore, a conceptual blueprint for the multimodal structure that characterizes iDocs (with the exception perhaps of the tactility that Kanwar seems to be very eager to highlight). Kanwar praises the experience of art galleries: ‘there is a kind of preciousness to galleries, you necessarily have to lift everything to … metaphor … like moving from grass to high value drug, it gets more rarified’ (personal interview). In recent years, the arrival of digital technologies has also boosted a number of initiatives aimed at offering instances of participation and crowdsourcing of materials. Stretching the terrain of documentary practices into that of online communication (and archiving), these projects probably have their precursor in Cybermohalla18, by Delhi-based SARAI (an Urdu term defining the rest house for travellers and caravans). An experimental arts group born in Delhi in 1998 out of the collaboration between a group of academics and an artists’ collective (RAQS, see above), SARAI has been on the forefront of the experimentation with digital practices in India. With Cybermohalla (meaning a cyber neighbourhood) born in 2001 in collabora­ tion with Ankur: Society for Alternatives in Education, the collective explored the possibility of shaping material localities and communities through the creation and use of virtual environments. A web-based project, Cybermohalla plays with imagination as a force that materializes itself through digital technologies and that is capable of shaping communities. Creat­ ing self-administered media labs and studios in various neighbourhoods of Delhi the project aims at drawing resources from the intellectual life of these various localities. In their words: ‘Through gathering multiple narratives, [Cybermohalla] produces the possibility of a dense and unstable archive of biographies, events and ordinary life, re-imagining and re-enacting forms of revisiting the locality and the city’19. In total, the project has included 450 young

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people, all involved in sharing practices for producing materials, memories and other signs representing life in the urban world. Cybermohalla resulted in a collection of books, broadsheets, installations, radio programmes, blogs about the city widely distributed in India as well as abroad. Simultaneously to SARAI, India witnessed in the mid-2000s a series of similar attempts at engendering local knowledge and connections through the digital medium (albeit not through bottom-up approaches). The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library20 is an archive of indigenous systems of medicine (including traditionally identified substances, herbal remedies, as well as Yoga postures) belonging to the Indian territory. A project that in paper form would correspond to 30 million pages, the Library aims at subverting the monopoly of chemical multinationals and it urges us to consider the way in which the new spaces opened by the digital become a resource for claiming copyrights upon traditions and knowledge. Sahopedia (2016), the online encyclopaedia of Indian culture is another such example and to this list we could also add TasveerGhar (literally, the house of pictures), a deposit, as the site declares, for posters, calendar art, pilgrimage maps, cinema hoardings, advertisements and other forms of street and bazaar art. The common goal of all these projects is to strengthen awareness of India’s history and cultural heritage. Bottom-up participatory projects have, however, taken central stage in this field in recent years. Digital Green is a project initiated in 2013 by US-based Rikin Gandhi (at the time a 32-year-old-man). Dreaming of becoming an astronaut, Gandhi decided, instead, to move to India in his late twenties and to devote his life to help farmers. He created this organization (which reached the peak of 65 employees) and designed a site and a media strategy to teach farmers to make short 10-minute videos in which they would share their concerns, solutions and practices. In the first five years, 2,600 videos (in 20 different languages from more than 2,000 villages) were uploaded onto the site and reached 150,000 viewers21. However, the most interesting experiences of crowdsourced intervention are to be found in the area of gender rights and gender violence. The project Bell Bajao (Ring the Bell, 2008) by the organization Break Through is a campaign targeting men to intervene against domestic violence. Made up of a series of online video clips (uploaded by amateur filmmakers but also by some wellknown filmmakers), this project recounts true stories of men intervening to stop domestic violence with one ring of a bell. Bell Bajao has now reached more than 130 million people in India alone and won 25 awards, and its clips can be explored online or seen on television. In order to reach smaller places Bell Bajao has organized ‘video vans’ that travelled across the country. It has also been referenced in soap operas and television quiz shows. Another simi­ lar example is Project Kalki. Born from the initiative of activist actress Kalki Subramaniam, Project Kalki aims at training underprivileged transgender women of Tamilnadu as community journalists and documentary filmmakers. Addressing mainly the transgender community of southern India, the project

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aims to create a space for third-gender subjects to produce and share their stories. A failed project that I managed to follow while conducting fieldwork in Delhi was Tasveer: Confronting Rape Culture. A participatory platform aiming to offer citizens a space to post images and comments regarding gen­ dered violence, this project was born in response to what became known as the Nirbhaya Case, i.e. the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old girl in December 2012 in a Delhi middle-class neighbourhood. Considered the pre­ amble to the birth of the #MeToo movement in Delhi (Bhatnagar et al. 2019) this event was followed by mass protests and debates. The creators of this project, however, never managed to get it off the ground. Despite knowing one of its directors I was unable to gather concrete information or under­ standing the reasons for this failure. I can only speculate that the overall failure of this project may have depended upon the overload of visibility that the Nirbhaya case received in Indian media. With so many arenas (especially social media but also all major television channels and newspapers) offering space for debating these issues, perhaps no extra room was needed. It is cru­ cial to mention that in the aftermath of the gang rape in New Delhi in 2012, there has been a plethora of apps designed to help women to protect them­ selves from possible aggressions. Among them, probably the most popular is the Circle of 6, an iPhone and Android app that lets the user pre-program six friends and a set of SMS messages such as ‘Call me, I need an interruption’ or ‘Come pick me up, I’m in trouble’. With two easy taps the user can hence alert their ‘circle’ to their whereabouts through GPS location. The Sahodari Foundation has also gone the mobile way. Instead of creating an app they have simply adapted their requirements to available platforms. They have created a successful WhatsApp group that offers 24 hours counselling. The Priya Shakti project is probably the most avant-garde of the multiple media and cross-platform projects that I have come across during my research in India. This was also introduced in the aftermath of the New Delhi December 2012 rape. The project gathers inspiration from the mythological figure of Priya, a devotee of Goddess Parvati, who survived a brutal rape. Ideated by Indian-American filmmaker Ram Devineni, this project plays with Hindu mythology for the construction of a narrative in which Priya and Parvati join hands in the struggle against gender-based violence. Aimed at reinserting into public consciousness, the ‘ancient matriarchal traditions that have been displaced in modern representations of Hindu culture’22, the pro­ ject resulted in a mixture of comic books, augmented reality interventions and exhibitions. An example of mixed or augmented reality (MR/AR) the main characteristic of Priya Shakti is that it engages, through digital means, the world offline. One of the strands of the project is in fact the use of the aug­ mented reality app Blippar which allows viewers to get extra content while exploring images in physical space. Exploring/scanning these images with the help of the app, viewers get access to special animation and movies that pop out of the walls (Figure 3.4).

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Figure 3.4 Screenshot of promotional trailer Priya Shakti. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLSsdI_FJKc

Bombay-based CAMP’s (Critical Art and Media Practices) ‘Gulf to Gulf to Gulf ’ is another example of participatory practices. Artists from the col­ lective share the act of making images with sailors from the Gulf of Kutch following them on their journey across the Persian and Aden gulfs. Recorded mainly on smartphones, this documentary walks the thin line that separates documentary film from art installation and has been presented both in film as well as exhibition contexts. This indeed mirrors the works of RAQS Media Collective, one of the true key actors in the field of cross language between documentary and art. Finally, mention can also be made of Remembering 1992 a platform developed in 2012 by students from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. Based on official justice documents and reports, this site catalogues and maps all the events that happened during the 1992/93 Mumbai riots. Part of a larger project devoted to exploring questions of marginality in the city of Mumbai, the database, which has been created by the students of the school, allows viewers to explore the materials by date and place. The structure of the website is provided by the different types of memories connected to these events. Organized around a set of themes such as dislocation, divided city, struggles for justice, peace initiative and media representations, such mem­ ories offer multiple possibilities activating the viewer in their searches. Let me close this section by looking back, into my material from the late 1990s. I met ‘audio-visionary’ artist Ashim Ghosh when he was busy working on a set of multiple media performances aimed at making dialogue across cultural and technological boundaries possible. Among these works was a multiple location play that would take place through a set of phone calls. Actors located in different parts of the world would act together through the

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mediation of an amplified telephone hence offering a first (analogue) version of what digital practices would make more spectacularly available much later on. This performance never took place but the multiple media approach gave birth later to a series of works such as Ghosh’s New Delhi Belly (2009), a live multiple-media performance in which live music, narration and acting alter­ nate with projections of documentary material and photographs. Ghosh can be looked upon as a true precursor of interactive performative practices in the context of contemporary Delhi and India. Despite being very different in both visual form and technical terms all the experiences that I have described above are connected by a shared desire to open dialogue with the viewers and to question ruling narratives on Indian society and culture. Inspired by Grierson’s idea of documentary as a hammer to denounce injustices and by an active exploration of contemporary digital practices’ potential functioning as tools for participation, they seem to express a continuity with Kak’s understanding of documentary film as an open ter­ rain for questioning, for debate and for igniting social change. Designed at the crossroads of digital technology and of different visual forms (from doc­ umentary pure to fiction, interactive storytelling, online archive and AR/MR) they address and intervene upon historically situated discourses on nation, identity, gender, race and caste.

Conclusions In this chapter I have explored the continuities between different experiences in the terrain of the documentary practice. Starting from a historical back­ ground on the (political) history of cinema and documentary film in the sub­ continent, I have shown how technological, political and economic changes have contributed in shaping a range of practices that has a desire for social, political intervention at its very core. From Kak’s documentaries to the experiences of the Cinema of Resistance to the various engagements by young emerging filmmakers and designers, the necessity to open up the image to various forms of interaction and dialogues with society and to a radical questing of ruling narratives on state, nation and identity, is foregrounded. In the contexts I have addressed in this chapter, images are often subjugated to the service of change and resistance to ruling narratives. A matter of choice or of necessity born in response to political economic and technological changes, documentary makers have entered a position of marginality. This position is, however, not one of isolation. Rather, thanks to new (digital) possibilities for making images travel and for interacting with them, it is one of active ques­ tioning. It brings back to life Homi Bhabha’s reflections on the (marginal) novel as a space that ‘gives evidence of the profound perplexity of the living’23. Respecting and interpellating the viewers as co-creators of meaning image-makers have learned to give increasing space to various forms of questioning using the space of the documentary as another whetting-stone on which to sharpen ideas.

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Notes 1 Adivasi is the official name of the scheduled tribes, that is of the ethnic groups that supposedly were the original inhabitants of India. 2 I will not use the term ‘Bollywood’ further in this text as this term, with its incor­ poration of the reference to ‘Hollywood’ is not free from colonial echoes. Further in this text I will only speak of Hindi or Indian cinema (depending on whether I address film in Hindi or in other Indian languages). 3 This primacy is still valid today see https://www.statista.com/statistics/252729/lea ding-film-markets-worldwide-by-number-of-tickets-sold/ 4 The term ‘parallel cinema’ was first used in India to describe the work of Shyam Benegal, Saeed Mirza, Kundan Shah and others in the late 1970s and 80s (Basu and Banerjee 2018). 5 Banks (1992) suggested something similar in the context of ethnographic film. According to him the ‘ethnographicness’ of a film is to be found in the spaces of ‘intention’, ‘event’ and ‘reaction’. 6 The Arya Samaj was a Hindu reform movement born in 1875 that foregrounded the existence of one single God, the rejection of idols and the authority of the Vedas. 7 https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b77c/01ed163ce7c6503b158d5ac215fca8535b2d.pdf 8 ‘Image-making practices in Contemporary India’. For the panel ‘Visions of Poli­ tics – Political Visions’, conference on ‘Religious Pluralism, Cultural Differences, Social and Institutional Stability: What can we learn from India?’. University of Sapienza, Rome (Italy), June 9–10. In am indebted to Prof. Tito Marci for orga­ nizing this two-day activity. 9 https://caravanmagazine.in/reviews-and-essays/long-march 10 http://redantdream.com 11 https://peaceandcommunity.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/red-ant-dream -screening-london/ 12 This roughly amounts to around 240 GBP. 13 When Sanjay pronounced this sentence, I challenged him and asked ‘regardless of political position even for RSS?’. He replied, ‘we are not that liberal’. 14 The Dalits are an ethnic group that is also often referred to as ‘scheduled caste’. 15 Indeed, Nandan’s contribution in this ban is difficult to prove. 16 http://www.blackticketfilms.com/ 17 http://www.blackticketfilms.com/ 18 http://sarai.net/category/projects/cybermohalla/ 19 http://sarai.net/category/projects/cybermohalla/ 20 http://www.tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/common/Home.asp?GL=Eng 21 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-23867132 22 https://www.priyashakti.com/ 23 https://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bhabha/dissemination.html

4

The ghost of an image On photographs, truth and colonial violence

Sometimes a photograph is all that we have left. This may be about the last moments of someone’s life, or the first ones. It may be about a specific event, unique and unrepeatable. Photographs do often come into our lives just like that, intersecting with the sacred. And, just like the sacred, they often do so also by exercising a degree of violence. Photographs seem to attempt at mediating (hence taking possession of) those moments when human beings are the most exposed. They appear in the most unexpected moments, awa­ kening memories, giving a visual facade to verbal stories. Think of the pho­ tographs of our childhood; don’t they already contain a bit of the future (which corresponds to the present in the act of viewing)? But don’t they also contain something that never truly unfolded? Hence we are often left, when viewing ourselves in old photos, with the question: ‘Is that really me?’. Something is me, indeed, but something is also not-me, despite not being fully other. As Omar Khan (in Llewellyn-Jones 2017: 28) said a ‘photograph is a bullet shot from the past into the future’. And indeed, a photograph does trespass the boundary that separates present, past and future. Yet its mission is not simply to catapult the past into the future but also to encap­ sulate it in a more propositive fashion, pointing us towards it, like dreams are said to do. This chapter looks into the terrain of photographs and enquires further into what these particular image-objects are, do and mean. My analysis is centred on a particular early photograph which contains an evident ele­ ment of (unbearable) violence while being at the same time an ambivalent object (Figure 4.1). This image appears, to quote from Didi-Huberman (2003) ‘in the fold between […] two impossibilities the imminent oblitera­ tion of the witness, the certain unpresentability of the testimony’ (p. 6). The result of a skilled, theatrical act of choreography, the photograph in question was taken by travelling photographer Felice Beato in northern India in 1858. It portrays the aftermath of a massacre that took place in 1857 during the uprising of Indian soldiers (and civilians) against the British (these events are often reported under the contested label of the ‘Great Mutiny’). I will not, however, look at this photograph in isolation but rather address it through a theatrical experience that I have had the joy of

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Figure 4.1 Felice Beato. Secundra Bagh after the Indian Mutiny. Wellcome Library, London, no.: ICV No 38229.

following up during the past years. Called The Transparent Performer (from here onwards TTP), this is a live performance written and designed by Zuleikha Chaudhari in collaboration with RAQS Media Collective. Exploring this performance and the manifold (material, virtual and con­ ceptual) transformations that it exposes Beato’s photograph to, this chapter reflects on the changing meaning of photographs in the contemporary sce­ nario, one where digital practices meet with theatre and contemporary art. I will suggest that this photograph is treated according to notions that can be located in the global flows of technology and aesthetics. Yet, it also addresses specific culturally and historically situated questions. In line with the under­ pinning logic of this book my exploration will offer reflections, starting from this performance, on the changing meaning of images in the contemporary world. Simultaneously, it will also reflect on how colonial history is dealt with by artists in the context of contemporary India. Core attention of this chapter is devoted to the relation between photo­ graphs, truth and (colonial) violence. I will start my analysis with a con­ textualization of the performance under scrutiny as well as of the notions, ideas and trends that underpin this project. This will also constitute an intro­ duction to the work of Chaudhari and to the influences that she brings to bear upon her work, offering insights into the Delhi and Indian scene of performing arts. I will then proceed to look in further depth into the photograph that is at

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Figure 4.2 Photograph from the performance ‘Seen at Secundarbagh’ by Zuleikha Chaudhari and RAQS. Photo credit: RAQS.

the centre of this performance. exploring its connections to both classical themes in the history of photography and, especially through the treatment that it is exposed to by the authors of TTP, to ruling trends in contemporary digital arts. My analysis will then proceed to address specific questions regarding its connection to truth and violence and also explore the extent to which photographs ‘in performance’ can be understood by means of magic. Building upon the work of Jean-Luc Nancy and Didi-Huberman but also James Frazer I will suggest that Beato’s photograph is used in the context of TTP for both its representational and narrative capacities as well as for its phenomenological and performative ones. More than a ‘sign’, it is a ‘forcesign’ (Nancy 2005: 23), a ‘symptom’ (Didi-Huberman 2015) that liberates both ‘imitative’ and ‘contagious’ qualities (see Frazer [1890] 2009). Beato’s photograph, I will suggest, fails, due to its evident reconstructed (or right away fake) nature, in representing violence. However, it succeeds in entering the context of viewing ‘with’ violence. Reproducing a mode of colonial domina­ tion (that is implicit in the photograph) it forces the viewers to engage in an act of critical reflection. They are asked to build meaning interlacing the var­ ious elements that compose the performance rather than rely on a passive role as receivers of a ready-made narrative and meaning. I will conclude this chapter by suggesting that Beato’s photograph should be addressed as a ‘ghostly image’, a porous, ephemeral entity capable of revealing (rather than communicating) knowledge through an ongoing play of veiling and unveiling. Let me now start by taking a step back and describe my first encounter with this performance.

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The performance and its author A photograph hides behind the grey digital noise that fills the screen located in the centre of the main hall of the Triveni Art gallery in central Delhi (Figure 4.3). I do not initially notice this at all as I walk into the venue hosting The Transparent Performer. I, and the other spectators, will, however, soon discover the presence of Beato’s photograph. As the event begins, the grey magma that covers the screen does in fact progressively lift up, revealing black and white photographic details: a column, an arcade, bricks, a wall, and eventually bones and skulls. However central to TTP this photograph is, nevertheless, never explicitly addressed. It simply ‘is’, right there, at the centre of the stage, claim­ ing its own presence, voice and space in the middle of this multifaceted per­ formance. The performance goes on with the actors entering the scene. Surrounded by the backlit black-and-white photographs from the colonial era that hang on the walls all around it, they declare abstract sentences. Eventually the photograph is revealed in its entirety as the viewers get wrapped in inverse sounds and metallic buzzes. And the performance goes on with objects appearing and disappearing from the stage, with new sentences being read aloud by a voiceover, with the stage enlarging and shrinking under the effect of the lighting design. I will describe the performance in greater detail below but let me now immediately address the photograph that is at its core. The photograph that is progressively revealed to the viewers during TTP dates, as pre-announced, back to 1858 and was taken by Felice Beato, an

Figure 4.3 Photograph from the performance ‘Seen at Secundarbagh’ by Zuleikha Chaudhari and RAQS. Photo credit: RAQS.

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Anglo-Italian war photographer who had spent a large part of his career serving the British Empire. It portrays the aftermath of the infamous mas­ sacre of Sikandar Bagh, when the British army killed more than 2,000 men in retaliation for the revolt of a large number of Indian soldiers (the so-called sepoys) who were serving what was about to become the Raj (the British Empire of India). In it we see a skilfully choreographed sea of disinterred bones, supposedly those of the victims of the British attack on the neo-clas­ sicist building that is visible in the background. This photograph is from its very birth an act of ‘theatre’ rather than of documentation. Despite this it has, however, journeyed through newspapers, magazines, books and exhibitions. It has become a document, a statement, almost an icon of the massacre of Sikandar Bagh. In the context of TTP this photograph is, however, allowed to travel back to its origins. It becomes once again ‘theatre’ in an ongoing undefined set of dialogues with a variety of external elements: actors, the gallery with its photographs and captions, the spectators, the stage, the sounds, the letters, the texts, the props. In TTP Beato’s photograph is a somewhat ‘uncanny’ (Freud 1919), open and dynamic object that appears through a series of transformations. This is no longer just a ‘photo-graph’, that is an object whose production is the result of the material imprinting of light onto a chemical surface. It is something more. First by being photographed and scanned, it has been translated into a digital image, that is into a computational item, resulting from a process of decomposition and re-composition of the original image filtered by the algorithm of a processor. This computational image has then most likely been copied, compressed etc. and transmitted via a memory stick, a hard drive or an email to a set of different users (graphic designers, artists etc.). During this process it has then been re-edited to fit the needs of the performance (including the technologies available by the author and the venue). After this it has been morphed and animated with the addition of the haze (the foreground fog moving on top of a still background, the photo), hence becoming an object constructed across the space that sepa­ rates moving from still images (hence embodying one of the core character­ istics of digital images, see Chapter 2 in this book). After this journey and all these transformations, Beato’s photograph is, however, as I mentioned above, never directly addressed during the performance. It is simply there, an unavoidable presence pointing in the direction, and reclaiming the memory, of a tragic event. So what kind of image is this? What does it stand for or mean? What is its evidentiary value? Is it analogue or digital? What is left of the indexical truth that it originally supposedly contained in all the passages that it has undergone? In order to answer these questions, I will have to unravel a few details regarding the changing epistemology and ontology of photographs and pho­ tography in a digitizing world hence bringing also some terminological clarity on terms such as ‘images’, etc. But, before I do so let me proceed further into the exploration of this performance offering some insights into the biography

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of its director and creator, Zuleikha Chaudhari. Just like the rest of the staff involved in this performance (the actors, the co-authors of the texts, RAQS Media collective, etc.) Chaudhari is a product of the ongoing exchange between local and translocal influences while constituting also a window onto Delhi’s (and India’s) art worlds. Mirroring what I said with regards to doc­ umentary film, this too is an environment characterized by the continuous desire to address issues that have a local bearing while being simultaneously also conscious of, and capable of responding to, global trends. Chaudhari’s work can be looked upon as an art generated at the crossroads of streams and flows that connect New Delhi with other international metropolises. Follow­ ing the logic that underpins this book, it therefore, makes sense to speak about this performance not as an ‘Indian’ product but rather as a product happening in India. The crew that makes up the core of this performance comes from a broad international exposure. A theatre director and lighting designer, Chaudhari today lives in Delhi where she is also visiting faculty at Ashok University. A true key actor of Delhi and India’s art scene she is very much part of global circuits. Her works have been hosted in prestigious international settings, and she was also trained in international contexts. She conducted her studies in theatre direction and light design in the US. I first met her during a one-day workshop on art and memory organized in London in 2009 by arts group Moti Roti. Since then we have kept in touch on a regular basis. I had the privilege of following and discussing with her the creation of several projects and exchanged views and ideas as her work progressed. Chaudhari kindly granted me backstage access to her work, to the process of the creation of ideas, inviting me to workshops and performances and also, as in the case of TTP, making me an active part of it. Zuleikha Chaudhari is the descendant of one of the most established families in the cultural intelligentsia of Delhi. Her grandfather was Ebrahim Alkazi, an eminent figure in the Indian scene of theatre and dance. Particu­ larly interested in scenography, Alkazi became known for exploiting the proscenium (the vertical facade of the stage, in front of the curtain) and for using open-air venues. He directed the National School of Drama of New Delhi from 1962 to 1977 (Rubin 2004, Lal 2004) and gave birth also to the famous Alkazi collection, a body of art and colonial photography (which is today curated by Chaudhari’s two brothers). With his wife Roshan, Ebrahim Alkazi also founded the Art Heritage Gallery in Delhi, which continues to function today. Alkazi can be looked upon as the founder of a dynasty that, as anticipated, has had a large influence on Delhi’s artistic and cultural life. His daughter Amal Allana, a theatre director and costume and scene designer, took over from him the direction of the National School of Drama (which she ran until a few years ago). Together with her husband, Nissar Allana (a medical doctor who took an interest in stage and lighting design), she is still involved in important institutions such as the Triveni Gallery, Art Heritage, the Ibsen festival etc.

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Zuleikha Chaudhari’s professional trajectory is, hence, part of a much larger narrative that touches upon some of the key phases and figures in Delhi’s cultural life. Yet, she often claims that she was never pushed into this profession by her family; they did in fact let her find her own way. Never­ theless, I cannot avoid noticing the evident (and also moving) connections between her present professional interests and those of her grandfather. In her official presentations, Chaudhari describes her work as ‘an exploration of space and the role that space plays in the construction and experience of narratives – whether it is the space of the human body, or the space of the place within which the performance is happening’ (Nagree 2011). This pro­ cessual dimension, the idea that a story is never preconceived but rather the result of co-writing taking place in the encounter between actors, spectators and the various elements that compose a scene, is strongly remindful of Alkazi’s orientation towards the theatre of ‘revelation’ (see Ramnarayan 2008). According to him, theatre is a ‘creative expression emerging in perfor­ mance … It emerges in dynamic relationships between text, stage space, characters, actors’ bodies, all related to conflict, depicting the movement of a human being from darkness to self-discovery’ (ibid.). TTP offers evidence of this heritage. Designed as an act of rehearsal, this performance can in fact be viewed as a concrete attempt at blurring the distance between the performer and the spectator through a creative use of the scenic space and the venue. It is in the interaction between these elements that a narrative (however personal and fragmented) is allowed to emerge. In our conversations regarding TTP Chaudhari said that her goal with this work (and with her following perfor­ mances) was to force the spectator to take a position: ‘you have to think about it, to consider, to take a position’ (Chaudhari, personal interview). TTP does not try to tell a story (which could actually also be possible given the ‘thickness’ of the materials offered in it); it does not want to share a truth but rather invites the viewers to close down the gap between them and what they see and experience, and hence to engage in an active play of meaning-making. As a viewer, Chaudhari says, ‘you have to discover what you think about it’ (personal interview). And indeed this discovery process becomes particularly meaningful when immersed in a terrain of visible evidence such as the one evoked by the presence of a photograph. The interactive and participatory dimension that characterizes TTP (I will get back to this in greater detail below) has grown even stronger in Chaudhari’s later project Rehearsing the Witness: The Bhawal Court Case. Here, she challenges that boundary even further, creating a performance around an actual legal dispute that took place between 1930 and 1946 (i.e. in the pre-independence period). The case verged around the figure of a sanyasi (a Hindu religious ascetic) claiming to be the second Kumar (a term that in this context addresses the title of a prince) of Bhawal and hence the heir of one of the last large zamindari (landowners) estates in Dhaka. The Kumar of Bhawal had disappeared a decade earlier under unclear

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circumstances and had been, eventually, presumed dead. The appearance of a sanyasi claiming to be him awakened a major disruption. Given the value of the property at stake, it eventually also led to a legal dispute. For the court case a large amount of evidence was presented that tried to define the identity of the sanyasi: ‘the physical attributes, birthmarks, portraits, and testimony were collated as forensic evidence to establish the claimant/sanyasi’s identity as being the Kumar. Hundreds of witnesses, including doctors, photographers, artists, prostitutes, peasants, revenue collectors, tenants, holy men, magistrates, handwriting experts, relatives, and passers-by were deposed.’1 In order to collect these materials, Chaudhari conducted research in archives in Delhi and London. It is on the basis of this research that she wrote the performance, carefully embedding such elements into the narrative structure. The key aspect of the performance is, in my view, its particular modality of narration (or story-creation). Rather than a conventional act of storytelling, Rehearsing the Witness asks spectators to construct meaning as they proceed in their own exploration. Just like in TTP (or perhaps even more evidently), spectators are asked to test their own assumptions about truth and evidence. As declared by the official presentation: ‘Rehearsing the Witness: The Bhawal Court Case uses this trial about a possible impostor to re-examine the enormous archive that the case pro­ duced, through performance as a means of problematising the notions of evidence, archive, and identity.’2 I did attend, upon Chaudhari’s invitation, one of these performances at Khoj, an art gallery that makes up one of the pillars of Delhi’s art scene. I found this piece/installation very enlightening and it helped me grasp a better understanding of TTP and of Chaudhari’s work at large. First of all, just like TTP this performance too blurred the distinction between theatre and exhi­ bition. The experience was hosted in the room of an art gallery decorated by a number of black and white photographs representing some of the material under discussion. A video was also presented on an LCD screen, displaying a re-enactment of the court case with the help of actors. The core part of the performance consisted, however, in the actual involvement of the spectators. On the occasion of my viewing, I was asked to become an active participant. Seated in front of a small audience of bypassing viewers I was given a script in my hands and was instructed to read the lines that were written as answers to the questions that the judge (in this case Chaudhari herself) would ask me. I was quickly pulled into an unnerving and scary story that dealt with the fall from a balcony (and subsequent death) of a small child. I was someone (I think a lady, probably a domestic helper, I cannot remember) who had seen the child falling and who could not prevent the event from happening.

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Reading the lines and answering the questions I was asked, moved me very much. The story was strong and activated a sense of empathy in me for the powerless woman and indeed also for the victim. As I was wrapped in this emotional moment, I suddenly received a new question from the ‘judge’: ‘have you ever been driving drunk?’. I looked at the script in confusion only to find no answer to that question. Just a blank space. I must have looked surprised as Chaudhari gave me a sign with her head, lifting her chin, indicating that I should go on, say something. I thought about it for a few seconds and said ‘yes, often I guess, but …’. The ‘judge’ interrupted me with yet another question: ‘have you ever betrayed your partner?’ This was trickier; yet another blank space in the ‘script’. By now I knew that the question was really meant for me. This time I gave it, probably because of the personal nature of the question, a good thought. Who was the answering subject after all? Was it me, Paolo? Or the character in the story? Or neither nor, a fictive character that I could just make up as I went along? Did I have to invent and then inhabit a character? I decided to go for the former, for my ‘true self ’ (what­ ever that actually meant at that point of time), feeling that after all, especially for people who did not know me, there was no better fictive character than my own fiction of my own ‘true self ’. Suddenly, I was again thrown back into the story by yet another question by Chaudhari that had to do with the events that unfolded on that balcony. Coming back to the case, this time the fictive story seemed even more real (and more painful) to me. In conversation with Chaudhari I realized later, that my process, the questioning of my role in front of the audience, was exactly what she was expecting from the participants at this performance. In her view this was all about the breaking down of ‘the story’ as something preconfigured and about the shift of this story into a dynamic territory, where a constant act of refashioning and interaction was taking place. Chaudhari largely made the actor absent, merging performers and spectators, bodies and minds. ‘It is not about being elsewhere,’ she repeatedly said during a workshop that we organized together on her work; it is about ‘blurring the border between what is real and what is not real’. Echoing the words of her grandfather, she said that ‘theatre wants to replicate reality but without being real’ (Chaudhari, workshop recording). Attacking the boundary that separates ‘the acting’ from ‘the mundane’ her performance seemed to push the latter to the fore as something (and my experience would tend to confirm this) that is ‘more performatory than acting itself ’ (Zuleikha Chaudhari, work­ shop recording). In a way, as she suggested during the workshop, viewers have to learn ‘to become spectators’. Echoing ideas of contemporary rela­ tional and participatory art as well as the sociology of Goffman (1959), Chaudhari inverses the roles here, making the viewers experience the banal, the mundane as the result of an active performative engagement. In a follow up performance, The Transparent Performer III: Some stage direc­ tions for [24 Jor Bagh]1/x,3 New Delhi (2014) she pushed these ideas even further.

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I have offered the detailed descriptions in order to show the artistic ambitions and conceptual influences that inform Chaudhari’s work. Despite dealing with historical issues that are deeply grounded in the Indian context, she has been able to, in her performances, address contemporary trends in the world of arts and also (as I will show with regards to her mise-en-scene of the photograph) con­ temporary digital/visual cultures. I now want to start looking in depth at these interconnections focusing particularly on the role of the photograph in TTP. I will suggest that her usage of the photograph addresses both transnational as well as locally and historically situated ways of dealing with images. In order to do this, however, I need to take a few steps back unpacking some of the key concepts upon which this analysis inevitably needs to build with my primary focus on the meaning of images (and photographs) in a digital habitat.

Photographic worlds As I anticipated in Chapter 2, today there is a changing awareness regarding what images do, mean and want that is growing across the world and espe­ cially in those parts that have been directly involved in the flows of digital technologies. The arrival and progressive expansion of new ways of produ­ cing, processing, sharing and distributing images has affected the way in which many human beings are engaging with the visible world (and hence also with the world of photographs which is the core focus of this chapter). Images seem to have become contradictory things; they are simultaneously too heavy, serious and invasive (as the motto goes, ‘ubiquitous’) and too light (considered to be superficial, virtual, empty of meaning and value). Yet, they are more than ever central in human life. As Jean-Luc Nancy (2005) sug­ gested images can be considered violent today due to the visual bombardment that they expose human beings to through advertisements, news, art, urban screens, social media etc. And this bombardment, especially when inserted in the context of online platforms, social media and image-sharing smartphone applications, has indeed also brought back photographic images to the centre of many of our mundane experiences and activities. Long gone are the fears for the death of photography which Ritchin (1990) prophetically addressed and that Mirzoeff (1999) famously summed up by saying that ‘after a century and a half of recording and memorializing death, photography met its own death sometime in the 1980s at the hands of computer imaging’ (ibid.: 86). This idea did indeed inspire many authors and still lingers on in many popu­ lar debates about photography. To mention a few examples in anthropology, Elisabeth Edwards, in her magnificent essay Photographs and the Sound of History (2006) spoke about ‘digital pseudo-photography’ (p. 42) as a practice that could not allow for the creation of that depth which characterizes ana­ logue photography. In her words: ‘[t]he social act of gathering around a computer screen to look at images is markedly different from that of handling photographs, touching them,

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stroking them and handing them to kin and to friends, or sitting alone in quiet contemplation of an image held in the hand.’ (Edwards 2006: 90–91) The foregrounding of relationality, interactivity, multisensoriality that, as I discuss in Chapter 2, lie at the core of the way in which images are engaged with in contemporary digital habitats, lead us, obviously, to other kinds of conclusions. In a different disciplinary terrain, communication scholars Robert Hariman and John Lucaites (2016) have suggested that the so-called ‘post-photographic era’ (Mitchell 1992) has grown hand-in-hand with the consolidation also of a ‘post-truth’ regime. And in the terrain of documentary film, Bill Nichols said something similar speaking about digital images as ‘pure surface, pure simulation of thought. Its material surface is its meaning, without history, without depth, without aura, affect, or feeling’ (Nichols 2000: 104). It is important to remind the reader about the extent to which such voices, all equally addressing the digital as a space of shallowness and mean­ inglessness, have been countered by diametrically opposite narratives cele­ brating the act of sharing images as a precious step towards the creation of a future ‘digital utopia’ (Rosen 2001: 318). I discussed this in greater detail in Chapter 2 but let me only stress that the ever-growing number of images cir­ culating on the net combined with the bare fact that more and more indivi­ duals in the world are actively engaging with them, has split the field into two: on the one hand, the ‘techno-utopians’ (Mandiberg 2012: 4) claiming that this is a sign of a move towards a more democratic future (see also Jen­ kins 2006, Kellner and Kim 2010, Marciano 2014) and on the other, dysto­ pians and sceptics looking at this as the entry into an epoch dominated by multinationals and centralized forms of power (see Marciano 2014). I believe that the truth is probably to be found somewhere in between these extremities. It should be no surprise that scholars and others have largely overcome such simplified dualisms. We have overcome simplified dualistic opposition between the immateriality and virtuality of the digital that I have critically interrogated elsewhere (see Favero 2016) and that have been fundamental to early debates on the meaning of the digital. Inhabitants of digitized worlds have today become more sophisticated in relation to their understanding of the world of images. Abandoning naïve ideas about the image as a ‘trans­ parent window on the world’ (Mitchell 1984: 504) and becoming more aware of the possible deceptions and mystifications that these objects can generate, they address also the world of photographs in a more critical manner. As Robins suggested some time back, we are today ‘warned against the seduction of naive realism […] we have become more reflexive, more “theoretical”, more “knowing” in our relation to the world of images’ (1995: 4). We have learned not to assimilate photographs’ indexicality with claims of truth hence inter­ rupting a silent connection that has dominated the rhetoric of photography. Slowly living up to Howard Becker’s (1986) invitation, they have stopped looking for ultimate truth. They accept instead that pictures can have multiple

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meanings and that their ‘truth need not be the whole truth’ (p. 275). Truth, Becker suggests, has to be addressed as partial, fallible, contextual. It cannot be contained or ‘verified’ by a single photographic image. In his words: ‘Every photograph, because it begins with the light rays something emits hitting film, must in some obvious sense be true; and because it could always have been made differently than it was, it cannot be the whole truth and in that obvious sense is false.’ (ibid.: 275) Despite this growing critical, analytical lucidity, human beings have, however, far from lost their fascination with photographic images. They seem to have retained that sense of wonder and ‘enchantment’ (Gell 1992) that have accompanied their engagement with the image world since the ancient times and that we find traces of in TTP. Their lives are perhaps more than ever spent, paraphrasing Melinda Hinkson (2017), in the ‘company of ’ images. When it comes to such questions, I believe that it makes little sense to spend precious time discussing the limits of the analogue and the digital. In Chapter 2 I discuss in detail the various ways in which this divide can be questioned and overcome. I also highlight the importance of realizing that, as McQuire suggests, ‘[a]t one level, the end result – a picture – remains much the same for viewers’ (2013: 225). In a recent book I have suggested that images (and photographs as a spe­ cific subcategory of this family) must, today more than ever, be looked upon as ‘present’ (Favero 2018) to human life. With this term I wanted to simulta­ neously highlight the timeliness and ontological status of the images that cir­ culate in today’s digital circuits. I spoke of them as ‘present’ in the sense that they speak about this particular historical conjunction with its specific dia­ lectic between the digital and the analogue. But the ‘present’ in ‘present images’ also stands for presence. It aims at ontologically foregrounding that sense of being that translates into the reciprocity, relationality and materiality of images that I discussed in greater detail in my theoretical chapter and that lies at the centre of many contemporary practices. I believe that the notion of ‘presence’ is particularly suited for addressing the performance that is at the centre of this chapter and especially the way in which it addresses the photo­ graph of Beato and its meaning. Pitching both novelty and a sense of con­ tinuity with the past, this performance addresses the twofold nature of the mission of photographs, their simultaneous duty to represent, to be and to perform. In an argument that resonates with Manovich’s 1995 statement about digital photographs as ‘paradoxical’ items ‘radically breaking with other modes of visual representation while at the same time reinforcing these modes’, (1995: 240) the photograph in TTP just as many other photographs travelling in digital networks, acts simultaneously within representation, pre­ sence and performance. Let me now go back to TTP and start, on the basis of such reflections, to unpack its various layers.

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In the presence of Beato’s photograph The Transparent Performer – seen at Secundarbagh is designed, as I mentioned above, for a variety of different kinds of venues, morphing according to the space in which it is hosted. It is, however, especially designed for art galleries and museums. When I first saw it, it was hosted in the main exhibition hall of the Triveni Gallery, one of the neuralgic centra of Delhi’s art world. That night I had been invited to open the evening with a lecture on the ontology and politics of digital images. I was quite excited to receive this invitation directly from Zuleikha Chaudhari and also happy to serve as a kind of slider into the performance. I realized only later that my talk was a constitutive part of the show, one of the many pieces that were meant to sti­ mulate the spectators’ active construction of meaning and their progressive transformation from viewers into performers. Designed as an ongoing act of rehearsal (which is ‘potentially always a reproduction, an act, a double, or a fake’, Chaudhari’s notes4) TTP does in fact not have a proper start. No major change of lighting or sound pre-announces the entry of the actors who just walked in as I had finished talking. Surrounding the screen on which Beato’s photograph is hidden by the grey digital magma there is a delimited territory; an orange plastic surface defines what looks like a temporary, uncertain, sus­ pended stage. Backlit black-and-white photographs from the colonial era hang on the walls all around it. The two actors, becoming visible from behind the screen, appear at first like paper puppets in a shadow theatre (Figure 4.4). Eventually, one of them steps to the front of the stage declaring abstract phrases; I can, at first, only identify the words ‘voice’, ‘sound’, ‘authority’ and

Figure 4.4 Photograph from the performance ‘Seen at Secundarbagh’ by Zuleikha Chaudhari and RAQS. Photo credit: RAQS.

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‘multitude’. And slowly, the haze on the screen starts to lift up; the shape of a column that seems to belong to an old palace and that had earlier invited me to enter a space of melancholia, of loss and death becomes visible. An inva­ sive sound, a kind of industrial, metallic buzz immediately warns us against this fall into a benevolent nostalgia. At moments this sound overtakes the speeches of the actors; at other moments it fades, leaving us to their scattered sentences: ‘an acoustic reason is equal to authority and voice multiplied by echo’. Letters from Indian soldiers who participated in the WWI are read aloud. And as the performance goes on we get to see more and more of the photograph; the fog slowly disappears and Sikandar Bagh, the magnificent, neo-classicist palace is revealed. Parallel to its unveiling we witness a pro­ gressive dismemberment of the stage, obtained through the co-intervention of different elements. The lights keep expanding and contracting the space, revealing (or perhaps generating) new depths and boundaries. A dark tape pasted on the orange plastic carpet transforms the stage into a fictitious map. New objects are then slowly and progressively introduced to our atten­ tion: a television set brought onto the stage on a trolley; a panel made up of light bulbs composing the word ‘seepage’; cardboard silhouettes of a reflect­ ing human body and its shadow. The boundaries of the stage are also acted upon by the actors’ constant movement behind and in front of the photo­ graph (hence entering and exiting the realm of shadows), by the sounds and by the photographs hanging on the walls of the gallery. The stage gets inhabited by this myriad of small acts of trespassing and its boundaries are constantly transgressed. All the other elements I described above, the letters from World War I, the photos, the props, fill the experiential room of the viewers. Together, all these elements contribute in shrinking and enlarging the space of narration in an ongoing dialogue between the photograph at the centre of the stage and all that surrounds it, between what is contained by the frame and what the frame leaves out. I remember that as I saw TTP for the first time, I often caught myself looking down and closing my eyes, hence letting my hearing take over from my vision for a moment. The flexibility of entrance and exit of these various elements of narration is, of course, not coincidental. In line with her overall approach to theatre, Zuleikha Chaudhari envisioned, as I mentioned above, the whole perfor­ mance as a ‘process’ rather than a ‘product’. The form of TTP is that of a rehearsal. An assemblage of ‘speculations, propositions, and thoughts’ (Chaudhari’s notes), the performance seeks to bring into direct dialogue the photo with ‘other images … which in themselves constitute a range of possi­ ble ways of looking at this photograph or any other image’ (ibid.). This, I suggest, is what happened to me when I decided to close my eyes, let my head fall and get pulled into this plethora of different sensory expressions. And indeed, the term ‘images’ here stands for more than visual images alone (I will discuss this in further detail below). According to Chaudhari, the aim of the performance is not as much about representing the past (visually or in other ways) but rather to bring ‘alive the way in which

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material from the past is brought into the present’ (Chaudhari’s notes for the pamphlet). The various media combined to help, in the author’s view, transcend the historicity of the staging, each one functioning as a pointer in the direction of the other (I will get back to this act of ‘pointing out’ more speci­ fically in my analysis of the photograph). Viewers too are drawn into this set of (transcending) dialogues and contribute to the act of dissolving the border ‘of the photograph and of the proscenium arch’ (Chaudhari’s notes). So what is the place and role of Beato’s photograph in this context? The mise-en-scene of TTP not only makes a specific way of building up a solid narrative impossible; it also constitutes an attempt to respond to Chaudhari’s vision of photography as a form of, quoting from the pamphlet she wrote for the performance, ‘staging of reality’. The photograph seems to act as a bar­ ycentre for the performance, as the point of confluence of the broad nebula of elements that dissolve into each other within the space of the gallery: of the backlit black-and-white photographs hanging on the walls of the gallery, the metallic buzz, the scattered words and phrases pronounced by the actors and by the recorded voiceover, the lighting effects that expand and contract the scenic space, the objects appearing on and around the stage, and, indeed, me too with my lecture. Interestingly enough, however, it is, as I already stated a few times, never directly addressed, never spoken about. It is simply there, an object among many, appearing and disappearing along with the other ele­ ments that make up the mise-en-scene of this performance. Everything revolves around it but its evidentiary value or to use a different term, its claims to truth, are not brought to the fore. Sometimes in the light, sometimes in the dark, this image contains a ghostly dimension (I will discuss this term in greater detail in the conclusions); it positions itself in a territory between presence and absence, between meaning and action, between affirmation and negation. In fact, it speaks about events that have truly taken place while being in itself fake, the result of an act of staging. What are really foregrounded in TTP instead, are the phenomenological and relational qualities of the photograph, something that can be identified already in the intentions of the director. In the notes that Chaudhari kindly shared with me, she writes that Beato’s photograph is defined by a triangular gaze (three of the men portrayed seem to look at the camera while one looks onto the landscape) which embeds also the spectator. In her words: ‘The role of the spectator and the performer collapses; their gaze becomes inter­ changeable. The performer becomes transparent’ (Chaudhari’s written notes). Enlarging, suspending or to use Chaudhari’s words making ‘elastic’ the time of the photograph, the act of seeing ends up in this context encapsulating, within the present moment of the display of the image, all the performers involved (in the photo and on the stage) and hence also the viewers. ‘The act of staging allows a moment to transcend its historicity,’ states Chaudhari hinting hence also at the photograph’s ever-changing meaning. The meaning of the photograph is hence generated within this set of pas­ sages, within these exchanges. This ‘ghostly’ terrain is defined, as I described

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above, also by dialogues across media and technologies, across trends in the world of contemporary art and across different (culturally and historically situated) discourses and practices in the field of visual culture. Yet, what remains of the photograph with these passages? Does it retain any evidentiary or documentary value? In order to attempt answering these questions I need to explore further the photograph under discussion.

Entering the photograph Beato’s 1858 photograph was taken in Sikandar Bagh, literally the ‘gardens of Sikandar’, the summer residence of the last Nawab of Oudh in Lucknow, northern India. Born in Venice in 1832 British-Italian Felix (or Felice) Beato ended up here during his various (and successful) attempts at bringing the camera to remote places. Besides India, he also took the camera to Egypt and Japan becoming one of the first producers of photographic exotica. Beato is today looked upon as one of the first photographers to turn the practice of travelling photography into a proper trade (Bate 2016: 195–96), something that can also be detected in his attempts to systematically (and commercially) experiment with panoramic formats (Bate 2016: 132–33). He was also strongly attracted by the experience of the war. With Roger Fenton he covered the war of Crimea; yet, differently from Fenton, he was interested in looking at the death that wars provoked rather than the heroism that was associated with them. The combination of travel and war is what took him during the spring of 1858 to Sikandar Bagh. Having landed in Northern India right at the time of the Indian rebellion of 1857 he heard rumours about the events around Luck­ now. Following his interest for ‘photographing violent deaths’ (Fraser 1981: 55) he decided to travel to the area and explore the aftermath of these events. Beato is considered to be ‘the first commercial photographer in India during the mutiny’ (Llewellyn-Jones in Llewellyn-Jones 2017: 20). Upon arrival, however, Beato did not really find what he was looking for. So he produced the evidence that he could not see, making ocular the stories and rumours that he had collected. He directed a proper act of mise-en-scene. The photograph portrays the aftermath of the infamous massacre of the 16th of November 1857. On that occasion more than 2,000 revolting sepoys, who had sought refuge in the destroyed palace portrayed in the picture, were killed by British soldiers. The carnage that is ‘implied’ (notice, I do not use the word ‘shown’) by this photograph went into the history books as an act of ‘pre­ viously unknown savagery’ (Llewellyn-Jones in Llewellyn-Jones 2017: 11). It led to the death of not only soldiers but also civilians, intellectuals and pea­ sants. This act was a retaliation for the revolt as such but also for the killing of around a hundred British women and children allegedly at the hands of the sepoys in Kanpur (Cawnpore). Sikandar Bagh and Kanpur mark two of the most critical events of the rebellion of 1857. This is indeed not the place to go into any depth with the history of the East India Company nor to debate and evaluate the events that lead to the uprising. I must, however, mention that

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the rebellion of the sepoys became ‘useful evidence’ in the hands of the British for justifying their need to transform what had been until then an economic protectorate into a proper colonized territory. It signalled the end of the ‘Honourable East India Company’ (as it was also called, see Llewellyn-Jones 2017: 10) and the beginning of the Raj, i.e. the phase of direct colonial rule. This passage hence, marked the last step in a series of progressive transfor­ mations that had been in the making for a long time. Having arrived to India at the end of the seventeenth century, the East India Company had started to progressively develop a fairly unilateral control over the territory of what was about to be called ‘India’. By the 1850s it built its railway and telegraph ser­ vice and with the help of missionaries it also built up a system of schools. The local populations, especially in rural India, quickly started resenting the company’s interference with local trade and political order. The uprising of 1857 was a response to this growing sense of dissatisfaction and tension and it spread rapidly leading to a series of aggressions towards British officers and also civilians. Approximately 800,000 Indians died during the repression of the revolt and the following famine. The photo by Felice Beato stitches together the various events that char­ acterized the ‘mutiny’ into a singular moment. This is a unique photograph for that period, a ‘grimly realistic photograph compared to the usual views of damaged buildings with a few Indians standing or reclining in the foreground’ (Fraser 1981: 51). Most other photographs of the mutiny only show the material culture surrounding these events.5 Beato’s interest in the human side of the war pushed him to produce a fairly unique (albeit ‘fake’) document. This document, as we saw, does not present reality (as Fraser suggests above) but rather stages it. As such this photograph does not ‘capture’ a particular moment. It does not ‘freeze’ or ‘slice’ time (as in Sontag’s early words 1977: 15) but rather, spinning further on what Chaudhari suggests in her pamphlet and comments, ‘opens it up’. Behaving like Kant’s ‘pure image’ (in Nancy 2005: 23), it makes, to paraphrase Nancy, ‘the opening of unity’ (ibid.: 23) possible. The pure image, writes Nancy: ‘is the earthquake in being that opens the chasm of the fault of presence. There where being was in itself, presence will no longer return to itself: it is thus that being is, or will be, for itself. One can understand how time is, in many respects, violence itself ’ (Nancy 2005: 23) This is what this photograph does. It suspends, through an act of violence, the particular moment in time which is the object of the image in a cobweb of different historical trajectories and political narratives. I will get back to vio­ lence below but let me now describe the events behind the making of this image. As I mentioned above, despite referring to such a key dramatic historical event, this photograph is nothing but a theatrical reconstruction skilfully

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designed for impressing the camera and the eventual viewers. What we see in the photograph are (supposedly) the skulls and bones that remained after the blood bath. Yet, as may be quite evident to most viewers, their distribution within what could be looked at as the ‘pre-filmic’ space, has been carefully choreographed for the camera. Hence this photograph is to be understood within the realm of the ‘pro-filmic’. Beato had, according to the historians and curators who have engaged with this photo (see Fraser 1981 but also my conversations with Rahaab Allana, curator of the Alkazi Foundation), made his servants disinter the corpses of the murdered soldiers. He also, most likely, asked them to collect other cadavers that could be found in the area to add to the sea of human debris. He then choreographed the distribution of the bones as to generate a dramatic effect. Finally he placed the living servants in the frame, had them pose and then, clicked. In terms of historical facts, we do know for sure that the photograph was taken five months after the siege and the carnage. This is revealed by various witnesses mentioning the presence of a photographer at that particular point in time (see Fraser 1981). Sir George Campbell wrote in his memoirs that after the retaking of Lucknow ‘there was a first rate photographer in attendance taking all the scenes’ and that by the time of Beato’s arrival ‘[t]he great pile of bodies had been decently covered over before the photographer could take them, but he insisted on having them uncovered to be photographed before they were finally disposed of ’ (ibid.: 54). The corpses had in all likelihood, already been cleared away by the time of his arrival, partly by the British after they took control of Lucknow, and partly perhaps because they had been eaten up by dogs in what, some testi­ monies described as an act of cannibalism. Fraser states that: ‘It seems very likely that by the time Beato took his photograph the remains would have been cleared away, and there is one piece of evidence which indicated that this had been done, but that Beato was aiming at an appropriate effect and that he produced a faked photograph, faked in the sense that he carefully arranged for the bones to be there to be photographed.’ (Fraser 1981: 54) Shahid Amin says, ‘it was photography – the thousands of frames of blasted ruins, hanged rebels, mutilated corpses rotting down to strew bones – that held 1857 up as an object lesson in the logic of empire for all colonial masters and their subjects’ (in Llewellyn-Jones 2017: 33). Beato’s photograph was indeed part of this scenario. Yet he had a very concrete agenda about it. A photographer at the service of the Raj, he wanted with this photograph to make visible for the Indian (colonized) subjects, the consequences of resisting the Brits. What in the context of today’s world may hence appear as a docu­ ment of (British) colonial brutality (this is the reaction of most, and especially Western, viewers upon a first glance of this image), the photograph does instead fit within the logic of the ‘White Man’s Burden’ (as in Kipling’s well

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known poem). According to this logic, the Indians should have been pre­ vented from resisting the Raj for their own best. And the burden of the white man was to make this evident to them. This was most likely Beato’s mission and as Amin has suggested, his photograph ‘is not much about the Black man’s rising as it is about the White man’s suppression of that uprising’ (Amin in Llewellyn-Jones 2017: 33). Despite, or rather because of, the theatralization involved in it, this photo­ graph seems to fail (at least for a present-day viewer) in truly representing the violence of the siege. An evening described as ‘a sickening sight’ by Lord Roberts, the actual carnage was, as a matter of fact, an act of sheer violence, something that a photograph does not seem to be able to convey. In the words of Fraser: ‘In comparison to the gory scene that was actually enacted inside the Sikandarbagh, Beato’s photograph, with its mere scattering of bones across the courtyard, is only a pale reflection of the real carnage and agony.’ (Fraser 1981: 52) Another report speaks of the carnage in terms of the smell. One assistant surgeon (Francois Collins) wrote that ‘the stench here of the decaying bodies is beyond description’ (ibid.: 53). And yet another witness (Lieutenant Medley and Lang in March 1858) states: ‘we found quantities of human hair and bones still lying about and the smell, even now, was intolerable. So we both beat a rapid retreat’ (ibid.:54). It is evident that, when Beato walked in, he could only enter in conversation with the ghost of these sensory experi­ ences, visualizing them through the stories and rumours that he collected during his journey. So, what is this photograph showing after all? How does it connect to truth and to the violence attached to it? To respond to these questions, I need to further enlarge the theoretical space of my enquiry.

The paradoxical, magical nature of photographs Rather than a document of a past event, Beato’s photograph should be looked at as a beacon for the future (to paraphrase Kandinsky, see the intro­ duction to this book), an item designed to transform life rather than portray it. This is after all, the destiny that Beato had envisioned for it so this is probably the best conceptual space within which to address it. His photo­ graph was meant to act, to warn, to change the course of events. Despite being a commercial photographer, and having identified a market for his work, Beato never publicized this particular photograph in the UK. However, it circulated widely in India. We could say that this photograph is hence a true relational and performative item interested in doing much more than depict­ ing and illustrating. Like many other of today’s ‘present images’ (Favero 2018) it is dynamic, keener on connecting elements, on doing things, than in func­ tioning solely within the realm of representation. And this dimension is

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heightened by the form of TTP. In the context of Chaudhari’s performance, the photograph is in fact made to function as an object to engage with, appearing and disappearing from the screen, separating front- and back-stage. The photo is actively performed by the various ‘actants’ (Latour 2005) that make up the mise-en-scene. I want to dig further into this dimension of the image using TTP as an entry into a reflection on the continuity that images have as performative objects across time. To do this I need to take a step back and unpack some key notions regarding photographs and their passage from analogue to digital. Visual culture scholarship has extensively stressed the extent to which (analogue) photographs have historically been addressed as prolongations, substitutes, attachments of the index, the referent, the ‘real thing’. To mention but a few famous positions, Susan Sontag famously stated that: ‘a photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an inter­ pretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stencilled off the real, like a footprint or death mask.’ (Sontag 1977: 120) Anchored in the reality that it portrays, a photograph is, therefore, for her, something different from a painting or other manually produced forms of visual art: ‘a fake painting … falsifies the history of art … a fake photo­ graph … falsifies reality’ (ibid.: 66). In a similar fashion, André Bazin (1967) spoke, long before her, about ‘the essentially objective (“objectif”) character of photography’ (p. 7). For him photography suffers from a ‘mummy complex’. In its struggle to preserve something from dying and fading away it is better understood within the category of relics, with its underpinning principle being that of ‘transference of reality from the thing to its reproduction’ (p. 14). For Roland Barthes too, a form of ‘adherence’ to reality is what makes up the kernel of a photographic image. In his words: ‘The Photograph belongs to that class of laminated objects whose two leaves cannot be separated without destroying them both: the window­ pane and the landscape, and why not: Good and Evil, desire and its object: dualities we can conceive but not perceive I didn’t yet know that this stubbornness of the Referent in always being there would produce the essence I was looking for.’ (1980: 6) And John Berger too approached photographs as records of things seen out there, providers of a link with lived reality, ‘traces of what has happened … [P]hotography has no language of its own. One learns to read photographs as one learns to read footprints or cardiograms’ (Berger 2013: 20). At the same time, however, these scholars also point out photographs’ double (perhaps paradoxical) dimension. According to Berger, a photograph

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makes ‘observation self-conscious’, it ‘bears witness to a human choice being exercised’ (ibid.: 18). A matter of ‘play’ with time, photographs are, therefore, never just automatic stencils of the real, they are a carefully and consciously selected real, guided by the choice of not only photographing this or that but of photographing at this or that moment. This double dimension was also identified by Susan Sontag who pointed out that photographs are made up of both ‘witness’ and ‘record’. In her words, a photograph is at once: ‘both a faithful copy or transcription of an actual moment of reality and an inter­ pretation of that reality’ (Sontag, 1977: 26). Barthes too (1977) addressed the paradoxical nature of images, suggesting that every photographic image is characterized by the co-existence of a message with no code (the analogue) and one with a code (the treatment). I suggest that this paradoxical nature of photographs, of being able to offer different and at times contrasting messages, can also be addressed from another angle, that is from the terrain of magic. According to James Frazer ([1890] 2009) ‘sympathetic magic’ can function through either the law of ‘contagion’ (in his words a ‘homeopathic law’) or the law of ‘imitation’. The first one can be defined through the following principle: ‘things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed’ (Frazer 2009: 36). The latter, also known as the law of mimesis can be summed up with the obser­ vation that ‘like reduces like, or that an effect resembles its cause’ (ibid.: 36). In order to exemplify the co-existence of these two principles in magic, Frazer enters the terrain of visible forms and images. Tapping into the longterm human tradition of using images as mediators for life, he explains that such visible items are conventionally depicted through some kind of princi­ ple of similarity, yet they exercise influence upon everyday life through a principle of contagion. This is the case of objects such as voodoo dolls or burning wax statues and protective icons. They can damage or instil energy, preventing or generating sickness, provoking the rain or causing floods. Following his approach, we must acknowledge that images are, therefore, sacred (see below) and dangerous. Humans have consistently used them for managing that ‘ghostly’ terrain that separates life from death, light from darkness. Looking back in time, we can find many examples of this. The tombs of the Etruscans, to mention one evident example, were decorated by dense depictions of human life that should have accompanied the dead in their journey to the afterlife. Treating death as a proper after-life, as yet another form of life, the Etruscans used strong contrasts and lively colours so that the deceased, in the darkness that wrapped the journey towards the realm of the dead, would have been given a chance of seeing them (Argan 2008). A play with the border that separates life from death does also char­ acterizes the history of photography. Photography’s connection with the realm of the dead can be found both at the level of writings on photography as well as in the very practice of making photographs. To give a few insights into this,

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Bazin (1967) suggested long ago that photographs are modern tools for embalming time; Barthes stated that the photograph has the ‘power to open a punctum to the realm of the dead’ (Mirzoeff paraphrasing Barthes 1999: 72); and Berger (2013) that ‘the photograph is a memento from a life being lived’ (p. 53). This connection is also evident from an empirical perspective. The daguerreotype proved immediately to be a substitute for the death mask, and the obsession with death went on with Nadar’s historical portrayals of the catacombs and cemeteries of Paris, with Atget’s photographs of empty cities, and others. The early years of photography witnessed also the increasing use of the camera as a tool to prove the existence of ghosts (cf. Clanton 2016) and hence for entering a dimension beyond human experience. And indeed, Fenton and Beato’s photographs of war constitute yet further evidence of this connection. The photographic camera has always functioned as a tool to enlarge and enrich human perception beyond the boundaries of the empirical, bringing humans in touch with a dimension that may not have always been part of their mundane experience. There is, in other words, something transcendental about photographs which still lives on today even among the inhabitants of the so-called modern world. Photographs are still extensively used as media­ tors in earthly matters while being simultaneously invested with a kind of transcendental power. As I discuss elsewhere (Favero 2018), how often do we see films portraying widowers covering the pictures of their departed partners on their bedside tables when entering physical intimacy with their new lovers? And what about the necklace portraits that were so popular in earlier days or the photos that many people carry in their wallets? And when have you seen someone burning the photograph (no matter whether analogue or digital) of a beloved? These practices seem to show that we too look at photographs as contagious objects capable of doing things to us. They should makes us rea­ lize that, despite all, as Latour (1993) once said that ‘[w]e have never been modern’.6 I want to suggest, that today too, in a world which constantly brings the analogue and the digital to co-exist, we engage with photographic images along a continuum that goes from the ‘homeopathic’ to the ‘imitative’. We invest images with a magical power and are caught with awe at their appearance. Addressing this paradoxical nature of images from a more conventional angle we can say that photographs are simultaneously both representation and presence, narration and performance/transformation. And indeed, in the act of viewing and engaging with them one of these principles may take over the other. All the authors mentioned above seem to acknowledge the co-existence of these two principles in photography claim­ ing that photographs contain this double dimension, of being able to both narrate something (hence functioning as a document) but also of presence, a sense of pure being. This entails that photographs are able to be ‘true’ in different ways. Yet, now I want to look further into what this presence is able to transform itself into.

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The absent presence and present absence of a photograph As anticipated above, the presence of Beato’s photograph in TTP seems to make different simultaneous claims to truth. In order to explore this dimen­ sion further, let me unpack the photograph further and explore the relation­ ship it creates with the viewers. Let me start by using Jan-Marie Peters (1961) scheme as a tool to do this. According to Peters an image can be analyzed according to three dimensions: its content or referent (in Dutch voorstelling/ inhoudelijke aspect), its formal qualities (vormgeving/vormelijke aspect) or its substance or material dimension (substantie/materiele aspect). Following such a model, the referent is what we see in the image such as in this case, the bones, the helpers, the destroyed palace, etc. This is the supposed window onto the historical moment that the photograph helps to bring to the surface. As I anticipated above, given its modalities and temporality, the referent in this photograph provides us indeed only with a kind of ‘generalization’ of the events that it aims to portray. Yet, it is nevertheless entrapped in the single (present) moment in which Beato, after having asked his helper to disinter the bones and distribute them spatially according to his own wishes, clicked away. And this moment does not contain the historical events it aims to portray, (the killing of the sepoys), but only a summary of them. It offers a ‘pointer’ (Chaudhary 2012: 68) in that direction. Shifting attention to the level of form, this photograph seems to offer us more clues as to what Beato possibly wanted to show. While the referent speaks of what Barthes called the ‘denotative’ dimension (i.e. the ‘analogon’ itself), the formal qualities in fact open up room for ‘connotation’, i.e. for the various ways in which meaning can be added to an image by means of con­ textual references. In his early analysis of press photographs (Barthes 1977) he suggested that every photographic image is a simple ‘reduction’ of reality carrying a perfect analogical correspondence with reality. Yet at the same level the image was also the result of the interferences of culture and ideology. More than simply ‘denoting’ images, therefore, also ‘connote’ adding layers of meaning which are external to the ‘analogon’ that is to the ‘thing out there’ which gets imprinted onto the photograph. So, it is at this level, that the bones become a message. Yet this message is situational, dependent upon the context of viewing. To a contemporary viewer, as was my first reaction, this photograph speaks of colonial violence and of the brutality of the British, yet, from historical documents we know, as discussed above, that this photograph was meant to function as a threat, a message to the colonized to abandon any kind of resistance against the British Empire. From this angle we can also infer a number of aspects that belong to the practice of photography during the period in which Beato was active (the graininess, the type of exposure, the framing technique, etc). We can understand his innovation compared to Fenton, his desire to step more into the human destiny of the people involved in the war rather than just focusing on its material culture; his desire to get closer to the scene anticipating hence a movement made possible mainly by

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the arrival of the Leica 35mm (that is when the camera entered the very action of war). Finally, a focus on what Peters calls ‘substance’ would provide us with yet more insights. We learn about the materials used during the epoch and hence about the politics surrounding the endeavour (was Beato using up to date technology? Was he rich? Was he supported by the powerful?). Indeed, in the context of my analysis, this aspect becomes problematic, given that the pho­ tograph comes to us, at least in the context of TTP, through a digital repro­ duction that is, in turn, projected onto a wall. So, analyzing this dimension entails bringing into the picture the very act of viewing and the transforma­ tions that have brought the photograph to us in this specific shape. Before I proceed in my analysis, I need to add another few terminological reflections. First of all, let me stress the fundamental distinction, often blurred in conventional speech, between picture and image. A picture is indeed a material object, something that can be hung, touched, burned, torn apart. An image, however, stands at a higher level of abstraction. ‘An image is what appears in a picture, and what survives its destruction – in memory, in narration, in copies and traces in other media’ (Mitchell 2015: 16). In the case of Beato’s photograph in TTP both these dimensions (that of the pic­ ture and of the image) co-exist. While the ‘picture’ is made up of a parti­ cular set of materials (the negative, the print, etc.) the ‘image’, here, is what is projected onto the screen. This image is composed not only of what is visible but also of a number of other sensory experiences that come together in the space of the performance. Appearing and disappearing on the screen in its digital format Beato’s photograph highlights also a variety of dimen­ sions of ‘imageness’ to use Rancière’s (2008) term. In an older text, pre­ dating the arrival of digital technologies, W.J.T. Mitchell suggested that the family of images can be divided into 5 main branches: graphic (pictures, statues, designs), optical (mirrors, projections), perceptual (sense data, ‘spe­ cies’, appearances), mental (dreams, memories, ideas, phantasms) and verbal (metaphors, descriptions, writing). These are of course not exclusive cate­ gories as they can obviously overlap within the space of the same image or picture. Beato’s photo is indeed an example of this multidimensionality. In the context of TTP, his photograph is in fact, first of all a graphic object (it is after all at the core an analogue picture that has undergone a number of transformations, or at least we could say that it refers to a graphic object); it is optical (appearing as it is in projection), but indeed it is also verbal or acoustic (or sonic), being wrapped into an ongoing exchange of evocations with sounds and words with their embedded capacity to produce visions and stories. This photograph is, however, also intrinsically perceptual and mental. These two dimensions are more difficult to pinpoint. If we are to follow Mitchell the former category (the perceptual) is populated by ‘strange creatures that haunt the border between physical and psychological accounts of imagery’ (2015: 505). The mental one, instead, is connected to what I call the verbal dimension (in his original diagram Mitchell does in fact position

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them next to each other on the extreme right of his graphic illustration). The Greeks called this capacity of words to evoke images ekphrasis which I believe is central to the exchanges taking place between different sensory stimulations in the context of TTP. In Mitchell’s view, mental images are, differently from pictures and other visual images, much more unstable; they change meaning according to context and to the person experiencing them. Yet, if it is true that, as Elkins states, imagination ‘is a place inhabited by images’ (1996: 224) then the mental and visual plane are tightly connected. This connection is contained by the notion of the ‘figment’, i.e. those mate­ rializations of the imagination that come to us in form of images via a photograph, a painting, a story, etc. As Carruthers (in Ingold 2010) has suggested, the phenomenal world is ‘figmented’ (p.17) filled with such ele­ ments that readily cross the boundary between different media. Jean-Luc Nancy (2005) suggests something similar when he states that the image is never simply there, and for it to exist it has to be ‘imagined’. This strengthens the idea that images are therefore also verbal and acoustic. In Mitchell’s words ‘[m]edia are always mixtures of sensory and semiotic ele­ ments … mixed or hybrid formations combining sound and sight, text and image’ (Mitchell 2015: 14). This is also the meaning that Rancière gives to images. In ‘The Future of the Image’ (2008) he suggests that today the end of images is behind us and that we need to think of them in terms of: ‘a regime of relations between elements and functions … relations between the sayable and the visible, ways of playing with the before and the after, cause and effect’ (Rancière 2008: 6). Addressing the dimension discussed above, Nancy too has stressed this aspect suggesting that the image is never only visual ‘it is also musical, poetic, event tactile, olfactory or gustatory, kinaesthetic and so on’ (2005: 4). In its delicate play across different media, images highlight also that inter­ play of body, memory and imagination that has been at the centre of, among other scholars, Belting’s attention. Belting reminds us that images are not a mere matter of visibility. They are a point of conjunction between ‘mental frames’ (Belting 2011) and the physical, material world out there. An image, paraphrasing Belting, is always both internal and external, personal and col­ lective (p. 9). An image is, therefore, not only what it shows or tells (they are not just a matter of representation); it is also a thing that acts in the present and in the presence of specific situated viewers. This is, according to Nancy embedded in the principle of imagination itself: ‘Imagination is not the faculty of representing something in its absence; it is the force that draws the form of presence out of absence: that is to say, the force of self-presenting’ (2005: 22). The image makes possible the co-existence of ‘the presence of a world and presence to a world’. The co-existence of presence and absence is summed up in his term ‘force-sign’ (Nancy 2005: 23). ‘The image is the pro­ digious force-sign of an improbable presence irrupting from the heart of a restlessness on which nothing can be built’ says Jean-Luc Nancy (ibid.: 23). The image, in Nancy’s view, comes with a force; it ‘throws in my face an

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intimacy that reaches me in the midst of intimacy – through sight, through hearing, or through the very meaning of words’ (ibid.: 4). Playing the improbable paradox of being ‘a thing that is not the thing’ (Nancy 2005: 22) an image has, as its main characteristic, a capacity to be simultaneously here and not here. It is a particular kind of presence, a matter of exhibiting, bringing to light, ‘setting forth’ (ibid.: 22) but always through a distance, a distinction. It is here but it approaches the viewer ‘across a dis­ tance’. Images do offer themselves but only ‘as images’. This is why the image is, Nancy suggests, sacred. Its sacredness resides in its capacity to be there and yet, be ‘distinct’. Nancy reminds us that ‘sacred’ means in fact to separate, set aside, remove, cut off, withdraw. So, what is sacred has to be at a distance, it is something that cannot be touched. An image, he says, ‘crosses the distance of the withdrawal even while maintaining it through its mark as an image’ (ibid.: 4). So an image is, according to this view, simultaneously a withdrawal and a passage, ‘a passage that however does not pass’ (ibid.: 4). Russian philosopher, theologian, and art historian Pavel Florensky (1993), whom I introduced earlier in this book, shared an interest for this kind of idea of the image as a passage. Images were for him portals allowing human beings to move across the border that separates the world of earthly and celestial matters (Florensky 1977). For Florensky, the image grants access to a world ‘ontologically reflexed’, a world literally upside down where truth can be perceived anew with fresh eyes. I will come back to this notion in this text later on. Following the scholars discussed above, the image is hence quintessentially a matter of relations; relations across media and the senses, relations across presence and absence. Images invite the transgression of these boundaries lit­ erally putting people in motion. I believe that Beato’s photograph, in the context especially of TTP, embodies this capacity of images to be multi-sen­ sory and ekphrastic, and to be simultaneously present and absent; absent presences and present absences. Promoting an ‘imageness’ which contains elements of both old and new ways of dealing with images, the photograph gathers its strength exactly upon the gap between presence and absence, between representation and performance/action. Insisting upon asking the viewers to engage with an interpretive labour, TTP provides a space with which they can attempt to stitch together the bits and pieces of information and stimulation that reach them through a variety of senses and media. The photograph is set in motion in this context. Even more specifically, it is the ‘passion’ or ‘force’ of the photograph itself that sets this in motion in a pro­ cess that is remindful of Nancy’s observation that: ‘It is the intimate and its passion, distinct from all representation. It is a matter, then, of grasping the passion of the image, the power of its stigma or of its distraction (hence, no doubt, all the ambiguity and ambivalence that we attach to images, which throughout our culture, and not only in its religions, are said to be both frivolous and holy).’ (Nancy 2005: 3)

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TTP brings the various layers of ‘imageness’ (Rancière 2008) in touch and possibly also in conflict with each other constantly crossing the line that separates, to use Frazer’s terms, imitation from contagion or, to put it with Nancy, mimesis from methexis (2005: 14)7. It is at this level that the very content of Beato’s photograph becomes evident. And it is through these multiple movements between mimesis and methexis, presence and absence that the image also enters the realm of violence. To explore this point further, I need to go back to the work of Jean-Luc Nancy one more time.

Images of violence, images as violence In his famous The Ground of the Image (2005) Nancy elaborates upon the connection between image and violence suggesting that the two (image and violence) are tied to each other by a set of powerful connections with truth. According to Nancy, violence in itself has no clear direction, it ‘does not participate in any order to reasons, not any set of forces oriented towards results’ (2005: 16). Just like images (especially in the contemporary world), it literally shoots in all directions. Violence has, in other words, violence as its own end goal. It is aimless ‘pure intensity’ (ibid.: 17). According to Nancy, there is therefore, nothing constructive about violence. Violence does not build, it does not transform what it assaults but is satisfied in just taking away from what it attacks. Violence has, therefore, no interest in knowing; it is ‘calculated absence of thought willed by a rigid intelligence’ (ibid.: 17). Vio­ lence we could say is empty, ‘a figure without a figure, as a “monstration” an ostension of something that remains faceless’ (ibid.: 17 italics in original). Truth and violence do have something in common. They share, according to Nancy, the act of ‘self-showing’ (2005: 21) or displaying. The image is central to this common agenda. Violence needs to demonstrate itself, to make itself seen. And the same is valid for truth. Truth is essentially about ‘self­ manifestation’, says Nancy: ‘truth cannot be simply being’, it ‘shows or demonstrates itself ’ (ibid.: 21). The image is hence what makes truth-making and violence possible, inextricably connecting the three: ‘the imaging trait or mark of violence comes from its intimate relation to truth’ (2005: 21). Violence is also connected to truth by the desire to substitute itself for it. Violence wants to ‘make’ truth rather than ‘represent’ it. In Nancy’s words, ‘[v]iolence does not serve truth: it wants instead to be itself the truth’ (2005: 17). And truth, Nancy states, is in itself violent too, it is a ‘violent irruption’: ‘There is no doubt that truth itself – what might be called, dare I say, the true truth [la véritable vérité] – is violent in its own way. It cannot irrupt without tearing apart an established order. Truth ruins method despite all the latter’s efforts. Truth does not operate through arguments, reasons, and proofs; these are more like the necessary but obscure flipside of truth’s appearance. Philosophy, throughout its history, has concerned itself with the way in which truth is a violent irruption (already truth

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The ghost of an image forces Plato’s prisoner to leave the cave, only to dazzle him with its sun). This ambiguity is also the reason why one could speak of good and necessary violence, and of loving violence, interpretative violence, revo­ lutionary violence, divine violence.’ (Nancy 2005: 18)

Nancy’s words do indeed resonate with Kuhn’s (1962) reflections on the extent to which science develops through revolutions. Paradigm shifts (such as the Copernican or relativity) were for him a matter of what Nancy would call a ‘violent irruption’. A mix of cultural history, enthusiasm and scientific evidence, they invalidated what was there before.8 Irruptions of truth, going back again to Nancy, are hence not only a matter of creation of new knowledge but rather, as a necessary start, a matter of disruption and suspension of whatever pre­ viously established knowledge. Functioning like a ‘symptom’, to use Didi­ Huberman’s terms (2015), I will get back to this below, truth does a simulta­ neous violent act of irruption and withdrawal. It opens up the space for the new. The violence of truth is, according to Nancy, ‘a violence that withdraws even as it irrupts and – because this irruption is itself a withdrawal – that opens up and frees a space for the manifest presentation of the true’ (2005: 18). I am devoting all this space to disentangle the relationship between images, truth and violence given that these three terms are, in my view, pivotal for an understanding of the role and presence of Beato’s image of Sikandar Bagh in TTP. Nancy’s work helps me in particular in identifying the extent to which violence (in relation to a photograph) need not be looked at at the level of content but rather of form and possibly also of substance (see Peters’ scheme above). Acting by means of not only ‘meaning’ but also importantly ‘pre­ sence’, hence bringing representation and performance in dialogue with each other, Beato’s photograph brings truth and violence in dialogue creating openness in the field of knowledge and experience. This is why, Nancy sug­ gests, images are sacred and monstrous: ‘The image is of the order of the monster; the monstrum is a prodigious sign, which warns (moneo, monstrum) of a divine threat’ (ibid.: 22 italics in original). I believe that this approach to the image is a central trait not only in TTP but also in Zuleikha Chaudhari’s work at large. As discussed in the first part of this chapter she constantly seems to push viewers to engage in meaningmaking, in asking questions, in throwing themselves into the stories and memories shared with them and, in her own words, to ‘take their own posi­ tion’ (Chaudhari’s notes). I believe that the coming together, in the act of viewing, of various (multi-sensory) stimuli combined with the continuous dismemberment of the photograph (as it appears on the screen) and of the scenic space, allow for this process to take place. The viewers are not offered a linear narrative. Rather, they are offered the opportunity to enact an ongoing (circular) exploration, a movement of departure from and return to the image, that is remindful of Flusser’s (2006) reflections on the act of scanning (i.e. of reading and interpreting) photographs. According to Flusser, photographs

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allow for circular readings in and through their connection with the con­ struction of narrative, of a story. During the act of scanning a photograph (or a painting), viewers are in fact allowed to move back and forth in the image, returning to the point from where they started their exploration, changing direction and hence gathering new meanings at every new gaze. In this chor­ eography of elements viewers construct meaning in an ongoing dialectic between the image itself and the narrative constructed in and around it. In the context of TTP, this dialectic is indeed stimulated not only by the photograph but also by the structure of the performance and by the various elements that compose it. Indeed, this modality of narration resonates nicely with Benja­ min’s understanding of storytelling as an act characterized by ephemerality and openness. Storytellers, Benjamin (1999) suggested, never give birth to fixed objects: stories are never finished, always in the process of being rein­ terpreted and reinvented; they are circular, and as Taussig (2006) has sug­ gested, they are ‘[f]orever postponing the end of the story that is life’ (p. 6). This openness and ephemerality are better realized, I suggest, in the terrain of photographs than in that of film. Photographs in fact leave the articulation of time in the hands of the viewers, who are allowed to move, or scan, flexibly into the image (differently from film where time is a tool largely in the hands of the filmmaker and editor). TTP maximizes upon this quality. In the con­ struction of truth, we could say addressing the triad image-violence-truth yet again, Beato’s photograph acts through violence. Its violent performance is an act of emptying, of removal, of creation of a void enacted by means of its theatricality, of its digitized, multi-sensory and relational displays. This pho­ tograph does not aim to promote truth (Chaudhari explains that she does not aim to provide a story about it). It imposes itself as truth and stimulates the production of truth by irrupting in the space of historically consolidated colonial narratives, bringing them to bear upon the lived present of the viewers. The ‘faked’ character of the photograph then does not negate truth. It reinforces it instead, acting like a liberating force, emptying the field of other (consolidated) options and narratives. When analyzing Beato’s photograph, we can therefore identify the evident co-existence of two types of violence; the one located, to go back to Peters’ scheme, in the ‘referent’ and the other in the ‘form’ (supported by the ‘sub­ stance’). The photograph simultaneously attempts to represent violence and to enact violence. Regarding the former it mainly fails to do so. A frustrated image, it cannot, in fact, show the real violence that took place in Sikandar Bagh. The photograph fails in conveying this sensory experience that evi­ dently Beato too was never directly exposed to. It cannot contain, mediate or translate that ‘heavy odour of decomposition pervading the enclosure’ that characterizes the written testimonies on Sikandar Bagh (see above). But simultaneously, the photograph succeeds in doing something else (and some­ thing more). It portrays, in a violent way, its own failure to represent, taking out all the frustration that characterizes this failure. Going back to Frazer’s distinction, we can notice how a co-existence between the two types of

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homeopathic magic co-exist here. The photograph acts simultaneously by contagion and by imitation. Yet the two enter in a short-circuit. The failure of the one (the attempt to narrate) leading to the force of the latter (the violent presence). The photograph irrupts in the space of narration displaying a content that imitates and reconstructs the signs that characterized the events that surrounded its making (the massacre, the deaths, colonial violence at large). Yet, it does not aim to claim for the truthfulness of these signs. Instead, colonial violence here is reproduced in the way in which the image installs itself as a (violent) authority taking control of the space being depic­ ted, emptying it of other significations. In its exercise of violence, the photograph does echo the kind of violence that characterized the events of Sikandar Bagh. One of the greatest (albeit implicit) sources of symbolic violence in the events of the massacre was what did not happen rather than what actually did happen. The British did not, for instance, cremate the corpses but rather threw them in ditches. This entailed a series of violent breaches. In the first place, for the Hindu soldiers, it entailed an improper funerary rite. But furthermore, the filled ditches also meant that visitors were allowed to walk on the corpses, something that believing Hindus, Muslims and Christians would regard as highly inappropriate. A testimony by Colonel Henry Norman narrates that ‘the ditch being filled up, ladies soon passed over the bodies without being aware of what was below them’ (Fraser 1981: 54). What the photo cannot show is hence the brutality of these various levels of violation of the bodies that we are offered to view, in Beato’s pho­ tograph, as a collection of dismembered bones. The photographer’s digging and further display of the bones is the ultimate violence to which the victims have been exposed. All these layers of violence are present, yet not visible. These reflections remind us that this image is, therefore, violent mostly for all that it leaves out. This brings back to mind Roland Barthes’ somewhat uncanny suggestion that ‘in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes’ (1993: 53). Violence in TTP seems to work its way to the viewers through invisibility. The photograph activates a process that leads us to look, think and sense away from it for finding those elements able to compose a story of violence. It teaches us, as Didi-Huberman (2003) suggests, that ‘in order to know, we must imagine for ourselves’ (p. 3). My looking down and closing the eyes during the performance constitutes probably one such unconscious attempt. Photographs often ask us to do this. Yet, as DidiHuberman (2003) has suggested ‘we ask too little of images … by immedi­ ately relegating them to the sphere of the document … we sever them from their phenomenology, from their specificity and from their very substance’ (p. 33). Like most other images dealing with death and dying, this photograph makes the viewer sense something – a monstrosity that ‘seems to exceed any attempt to document it’ (ibid.: 3). What these kinds of images portray is, in other words, of less relevance than what they stimulate us to imagine. What they represent is less important than what they do. In his writings on art and history, Didi-Huberman has identified two dimensions that characterize

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images. He uses the distinction between ‘sign/symbol’ and ‘symptom’ (the latter term borrowed from Freud9) suggesting that: ‘where the symbol reunites, the symptom divides … where the symbol reveals conformity of images and discourses, the symptom reveals just as many differences, flaws, conflicts incommensurabilities’ (2015: 19). A form of ‘porous’ objects (ibid.: 9), images are always more than mere representations. They are ‘objects that open up history to the heart of models of intelligibility, they are instruments of interpretation’ (p. 10). Images, he suggests, ‘wound’, they have an extra territorial power to cross boundaries and frontiers. They help rebuild history critically from what de Certeau (quoted in Didi Hubermann 2015: 14) called ‘the edge of the cliff’, the peripheries of consolidated accounts. Using Didi­ Huberman’s approach, I would suggest that images such as Beato’s, come to the viewers through an ongoing dialogue, friction, choreography of ‘symbol’ and ‘symptom’. While the former makes possible (even generates) identities, consistencies and narratives, the latter allows for the birth of ‘perforating/ piercing elements’ that bring conventional identifications to fail. The symp­ tom acts from the peripheries of established narrative, making them crumble and bringing them to short circuit into each other. True to, and encapsulated in, the moment of viewing, Beato’s photograph is, in the context of TTP, a prophetic image-object. Rather than narrating and representing the past it points outwardly, away from the image, the frame and the performance itself. It is a conveyer, a link between past events and the present of the viewer. It dwells in a space where both indexicality and repre­ sentation do indeed exist, but become of second-order importance. More than a document of a bygone time, Beato’s photograph along with the other documents presented (the other photographs, letters, objects) are tools for acting on the world, on the present moment. This is what spectators to TTP are forced to enact. In a sea of various narratives constructed by means of enunciated phrases, sounds, actorial movements, changes in space and light­ ing, the immobile photograph enters as potential continuous rupture, forcing viewers to ask questions, to interrogate all the elements to which they are exposed. Pushing this distinction into a Benjaminian terrain again, we could state that TTP brings narrative away from the terrain of the novel (with its consolidated structures, linearity, coherent links, etc.) back into that of story­ telling, which is in nature more open-ended, chaotic and largely dependent upon the storyteller’s constant reinvention of the story vis-à-vis the context in which he or she performs it (Benjamin 1999). In this context, the act of meaning-making comes to the fore, in a continuous (violent) act of construc­ tion and deconstruction. The act of viewing becomes central here as all the possible frictions and stitchings are made by the viewers through the very exposure to the multiplicity of elements that are offered to them. As a ‘symptom’, the photograph acts onto what Didi-Huberman has called, ‘the present of our body’ (2015: 19); it reveals what has been buried, forgotten, taken for granted. This is why, agreeing with Warburg’s idea, a history of images can only be seen as a history of ghosts, of phantasms (in

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Didi-Huberman 2015). Old photographs are not corpses. Images do not belong to the realm of the dead but to that of the un-dead and the un-born, i.e. to the realm of ghosts, of phantasms. In a conceptualization with strong links to the Buddhist principle of non-dualism (see Chapter 2) images may ‘represent’ something from the past, but they do so while acting upon the present. Such photographs come, like ghosts, into our lives disrupting the known, violently opening up our conceptualizations and experiences to the unexpected. In a (postcolonial) terrain, history can allow itself to be re-writ­ ten, possibly allowing, to use a Benjamian notion, to rehabilitate the ‘name­ less’ and to bring to the surface an ‘oppressed past’. They can grant the entry, to use Gramsci’s terminology, of anti-hegemony.

Conclusions – a ghostly image In this chapter I have suggested that Beato’s photograph acts, in the context of TTP as a ‘symptom’ rather than a ‘sign’, liberating the possibility of new narratives. A matter of ‘presence’ and of ‘the present’ (the moment of view­ ing) this image is, I have suggested, close to the figure of the ghost, the phantasm, that as Aristotle first and Lacan later explained, is also an emo­ tional tool allowing viewers to make sense of the world that surrounds them.10 In his analysis of eroticism in medieval poetry, Agamben (1993) sug­ gests that the phantasm constitutes a link, and blurs the boundary, between the internal and the external, the real and the imaginary. It mediates not only between agents and their external space but also between the ‘here’ and ‘there’, the ‘now’ and ‘then’ of our daily experiences, bringing together dis­ courses and memories (with different geographical and historical roots) that lie unspoken in our everyday life (cf. also Ivy 1995). A tool for acting on the world, the ‘phantasm’ permits the incorporation of the ‘Other’, the far away, the elsewhere and ‘elsewhen’, into locality and the present. For Agamben, the phantasm is not fixed in space and time, but rather evolves, appears and dis­ appears, leaving space for (and stimulating) imagination, experience, emotion, analysis and desire. Phantasms, Marilyn Ivy states, ‘reveal an irruption of the other world that is beyond the control of the living, beyond the reach of memory, of the predictability of the senses’ (Ivy 1995: 165). I believe that this metaphor is well suited for describing Beato’s photo­ graph, especially in the present context. An element of uncanniness char­ acterizes it. Despite not wanting to reduce my interpretation to a psychoanalytic perspective I think that the notion of the ‘uncanny’ has indeed one signification that can really help us going into further depth with its weight in the context of the performance under scrutiny. The uncanny implies, for Freud, the strangely familiar, something that we recognize but not quite and that therefore, forces us into further interrogation. Beato’s photograph contains in fact elements that are familiar to the viewers. They can easily place the photograph in a particular epoch, they can read its signs, etc. Yet, the theatricality in the photograph forces them, especially in combination

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with the other elements that pop up on the stage, to an ongoing act of inter­ rogation. ‘Is it really what it stands for?’. Appearing and disappearing, morphing and dialoguing with sounds, voices, light and other scenic elements, it reveals by hiding and by dissolving. In this interplay, Beato’s photograph is turned into a ghost. It instigates processes of reflection and meaning-making through the ‘porous’ boundaries that according to Didi-Huberman make up the nature of images. It allows different narratives to come in contact with each other in an ongoing play of affirmation and negation with historical facts, with the ‘mutiny’ and its aftermath. It ignites reflection on the meaning of colonization in today’s world, remindful of the words of Horkheimer and Adorno: ‘[o]nly when the horror of annihilation is raised fully into consciousness are we placed in the proper relationship to the dead: that of unity with them, since we, like them, are victims of the same conditions and of the same disappointed hope.’ ([1944] 2016: 178)

Notes 1 https://www.samdani.com.bd/rehearsing-the-witness-the-bhawal-court-case-a-talk-by­ zuleikha-chaudhari/ 2 Ibid. 3 https://outset.org.uk/supported-projects/zuleikha-chaudhari-the-transparent-performer­ iii-2014/ 4 Zuleikha kindly shared with me the materials she had written on the performance. They are referred to in this text as her ‘notes’. 5 Some lithographs describe the siege of Lucknow or Delhi. The lithographs and painted images constituted the public imagination of these events despite photo­ graphy being at that historical time a fairly established art. 6 In this critique, Latour refers to Cartesianism as the central pillar of modernism. According to him, Western societies have never been truly convinced and clear about the distinctions between nature and culture, body and soul, as it is often argued. 7 According to Nancy ‘mimesis encompasses methexis, a participation or a con­ tagion through which the image seizes us’ (2005: 14). 8 An interesting aspect of this is that anthropology is perhaps the only scientific discipline that never adhered to the principle of the revolution as suggested by Kuhn. Still today functionalism, structuralism, etc. do in fact survive alongside other more contemporary streams. 9 A notion with origins in Freudian terminology, the symptom ‘mobilizes a disturbing/uncanny crossing of the territory’ (Didi Hubermann 2015: 19). 10 Emptied of Plato’s reference to a clear distinction between reality and illusion, Aristotle sees the phantasm as the sensorial instrument used by human beings to grasp abstract concepts. Lacan added another dimension to the Aristotelian con­ ception. For him the phantasm domesticates our perception. It helps us to make sense of, understand and accept the world that surrounds us (cf. Jovanovic 2001).

5

The uncanny destiny of ‘raw’ footage The politics of image-making from analogic to digital, from filmmaking to archiving

On the 6th of June 2002 a dispatch appears on the homepage of onlinevolun­ teers.org (Figure 5.1) stating: ‘There is a need for 78 filmmakers in Gujarat … right now … All that is required is human resource, equipment, tapes, and emotion.’1 Signed by Gurpal Singh, a young professional in the field of film and television, this call was aimed at gathering resources (in terms of time, technology, skills and eventually also money) for supporting a small group of activists and filmmakers from Delhi and Mumbai who had decided to travel to Gujarat in the aftermath of one of the most violent events in contemporary Indian history, the 2002 Gujarat massacre. Driven by a mix of compassion, goodwill and sense of justice these young activists wanted to gather visible evidence of the slaughter of innocent men and women that had taken place (and that was partly still continuing at the time of their departure) in the aftermath of the events of Godhra (see below) where Hindu activists and pilgrims died during a fire as they were returning from Ayodhya. Soon to be known as the Shared Footage Group (from here onwards SFG), they created what I suggest is the first participated/participatory iDoc (commonly known as interactive documentary) in Indian film history. This is a large collection of images (in multiple formats and supports) offering insights into the long series of brutal attacks against Muslim communities in different parts of Gujarat. Designed as a living archive to be used by activists, lawyers, filmmakers, journalists, etc. the SFG material was intended to become an open and free space independent from political parties, NGOs, institutional media and cor­ porates. Another dispatch states: ‘the footage will be made available, free, to all those who may put it to some good use. Some of it is shot keeping in mind certain stories, illus­ trative of important aspects of the violence and carnage. Some of it is more general. A few of the specific stories will be ready to be edited, beginning mid-March. Before that we need help … mostly in Delhi and in Mumbai.’2 The footage produced by the SFG, however, failed to reach out. It was never engaged with by external actors and ended up for more than a decade being

Figure 5.1 Screenshot of announcement on onlinevolunteers.org. https://www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/volunteers/dispatches/gurpal060602.htm

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kept in a number of shoe boxes in different homes and basements. Only a few years ago it was revived through a collaboration between SFG and Mumbai­ based CAMP (Critical Art and Media Practices) one of India’s leading actors in the field of creative digital practices (I introduced this group in Chapter 3). The SFG received, more than a decade after these events had taken place, a proposal from CAMP to put the materials online in an open online archive called pad.ma (acronym for Public Access Digital Media Archive, an online archive of annotated video material). Not experts in coding themselves, the members of SFG found this to be an interesting proposal and decided to move ahead with it. They handed over approximately 80 (out of 250) hours of material to CAMP and ended up publishing 24 hours (see Figure 5.2). The materials appeared in pad.ma’s sophisticated site where materials are codes and can be explored and searched through a number of different criteria. Over time, the collaboration between the SFG and pad.ma led, however, to a number of frictions. This chapter aims to explore the destiny of the SFG and reflect upon the uncanny nature of this project and its materials. I have chosen to label this material as uncanny following Freud’s (1919) definition of the term as the ‘strangely familiar’ (see the previous chapter for more about this notion). Through the series of twists and adaptations that the material was exposed to (centred around matters of ethics and control), the SFG archive ended up in fact addressing events and topics through a modality that made them para­ doxically un-recognizable and hence politically harmless. Yet, such materials also spoke to a reality that was dramatically evident to all audiences. In line with the rest of the book, this chapter will pursue two parallel tracks. On the one hand I will reflect upon the political significance of this visual material in relation to the events of Gujarat 2002. I, therefore, hope that this chapter can in itself become an act of witness to the injustices and brutalities that had been committed then and to the heroic work of the SFG. Parallel to that I will also offer a rethinking of the conventional assumptions regarding the meaning of images (this time in the context of digital visuality and more specifically, of iDocs) from the perspective of an Indian example. I will open this chapter with a few background sections: I start with an introduction to the events of Gujarat 2002. I warn the readers that I will, given the dramatic and politically problematic nature of the events addressed, attempt at making this narration as direct, raw and informative as possible. This is particularly important given that these events are still at the centre of manifold disputes (in the last years they have been re-discussed in relation to the electoral campaign that brought Modi to prime ministership for the second time in a row and more recently to the final Ayodhya verdict, see the conclusions of this book). I will then proceed to offer some more background to the story behind the SFG and its main characters. Finally, I will introduce the reader to the world of iDocs, of which this material, as I stated above, is a kind of precursor. I will then proceed to analyze the archive itself. The core of

Figure 5.2 Screenshot of pad.ma, online archive initiated by CAMP (Mumbai), 0x2620 (Berlin), the Alternative Law Forum (Bangalore) and also Majlis and Point of View (Mumbai).

Figure 5.3 Screenshot of pad.ma, online archive initiated by CAMP (Mumbai), 0x2620 (Berlin), the Alternative Law Forum (Bangalore) and also Majlis and Point of View (Mumbai).

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my attention will be placed on the identification of the (political and ethical) frictions that characterized its developments.

‘The mobile phone and the sword’ On the 27th of February 2002, the Sabarmati Express, a train carrying Hindu pilgrims and activists on return from Ayodhya (a holy site for both Hindus and Muslims that has been at the centre of a long torn dispute, see below) was attacked by a mob at the station of Godhra, Gujarat, western India. The official causes of the aggression have never really been ascertained. The raw facts are, however, that four coaches of the train caught fire and that even­ tually 59 individuals were found dead. Another 48 were injured. One popular theory suggests that the attack was caused by a fight that had broken out between some sevaks (Hindu activists) and some street vendors (identified as Muslims). The commission set up by the Government of Gujarat stated that the fire was the result of the action of a mob of a few thousands individuals. Another commission (appointed by the central gov­ ernment) suggested instead that the fire was the result of an accident. The case is still a matter of debate today and no final verdict has been pronounced on the actual cause of the fire. However, 31 men (all Muslims) have so far been convicted for these events. On the 28th of February, the day after the events in Godhra, a long wave of brutal attacks against the Muslims in the areas of north and central Gujarat began. This, according to many activists, ‘planned pogrom’ triggered off 157 ‘riots’. The riots and attacks went on for weeks after the Godhra accident. Angry mobs armed with swords, knives, gas cylinders and a variety of other weapons were reported to have raided the area. Importantly, as confirmed also by most of the reports that have been published, one key weapon deployed by the mobs was the mobile phone. ‘Everyone had a mobile in one hand and a sword in the other,’ says a young woman interviewed by Rakesh Sharma in his award-winning documentary Final Solution (Figure 5.4) implying that the events had been coordinated. According to some estimates, these various acts of violence ended up cost­ ing the lives of more than 2,500 people, leaving another 250,000 individuals homeless. As Dionne Bunsha reports in her touching book Scarred (2006), Hindus suffered too, but the overwhelming majority of the victims were indeed Muslim. Many had to escape to the surrounding jungles and were saved by Dalit or adivasi (collective term for tribes of the Indian sub­ continent) neighbours (see Bunsha 2006). It is not the aim of this chapter to offer an evaluation of the events of Gujarat 2002. I surely have neither the authority nor the ambition to enter this delicate territory. Yet, I need to delve a little longer into these events in order to be able to offer to the reader a full appreciation of the context within which the members of the SFG acted. The goal of my account of these events

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Figure 5.4 Screenshot from ‘Final Solution’ by Rakesh Sharma. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6yY8DFSnfw

is to grasp the discursive and affective atmosphere that surrounded the mem­ bers of the SFG and the decisions they made. What by many authors, activists and politicians has been called the ‘Gujarat Carnage’ (Engineer 2003) is but one in a long series of violent communal aggressions (often, problematically, addressed by the media as ‘riots’3) that have stained the history of India. And just like every time one such event happens, this too instigated debates on the potential ‘softness’ (to paraphrase Gunnar Myrdal, 1968) of the Indian state. Considered by most scholars as a ‘tragedy foretold’ (Varadarajan 2002), the events of 2002 were the outcome of the progressive hardening of communal relations that had been taking place in Gujarat from the late 1960s onwards (see Shani 2007). In the background of this crisis there is indeed a long series of factors. In the first place, the tensions surrounding Ayodhya, the place that the sevaks were coming back from, are the natural cornice to the carnage. Ayodhya had been, for more than a decade, one of the tensest areas of India (Varadarajan 2002). Exactly ten years before the Godhra accident, in 1992, the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya had been, after a long series of friction, demolished by extreme right Hindu activists. Claiming that this was the birthplace of Lord Ram (a deity broadly accepted by most sects of Hinduism and hence capable of generating unity among them across caste-boundaries), the sevaks pro­ moted the idea that the Mughal ruler Babur had destroyed a (supposedly antique) Ram temple in order to build the existent mosque. The so-called Ayodhya dispute revolved mainly around the validity of the Hindu claims. A report by the Archaeological Survey of India suggested that the Babri Masjid

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had indeed been built upon the remnants of a previously existing structure. Yet, they suggested also that this was most likely another (and older) mosque and not a Hindu temple. Recent reports also suggest that Ayodhya was not the city of the sacred texts.4 Hearsay, however, slowly took over the debate and anger kept rising. In 1990, BJP leader L. K. Advani organized a rath yatra (a ceremonial march) that started from the south of India and led all the way to Ayodhya. And on the 6th of December 1992, BJP, VHP and RSS leaders and members, all joined hands at this site in order to perform a kar seva (an act of service to the community). The volunteers progressively found a way into the mosque opening the way for angry (organized) mobs. Soon the mosque was to be demolished and in the following six weeks, approximately 2,000 people (many of them Muslims) were killed during riots that eventually spread all the way to Bangladesh. Upon the destruction of the mosque, a temple devoted to Lord Ram was eventually erected in Ayodhya. Every year, on the occasion of religious festi­ vals, this site becomes the scenario of both celebrations and tensions. And often confrontations and riots occur as a consequence of the gathering of multitudes of pilgrims. This was probably the case in 2002, as the sevaks riding the Sabarmati Express were all coming back from a gathering at the site. For an understanding of the events of Gujarat 2002, attention must also be devoted to the overarching local and national political scenario. Gujarat has, in fact, since the late 1960s, been a stronghold of the Sangh Parivar (the broader family of right extremist Hindu movements). Conventionally known as the ‘Hindutva Laboratory’ (cf. Engineer 2003), Gujarat has been the stronghold of BJP, RSS and VHP and a significant contributor to the con­ solidation of these organizations at both local and national levels. This development has also been favoured by the large and affluent community of NRIs so that Gujarat can also be seen as a laboratory for the development of a transnational Hindutva too (ibid.). With regards to the political scenario, a few days before the Godhra events, Narendra Modi managed to win his byelection (albeit by a very narrow margin). An overall feeling existed that BJP was losing ground and popularity (also in combination with the scandals that had involved a number of BJP ministers during the earthquake in Bhuj in 2001) and that BJP would not perform well during the coming 2002 state elections. Speculations were made at the time that the hardening of the polarization between Hindus and Muslims could have boosted fresh energy into the Hindutva project. Finally, we must remember that all these events were taking place in the aftermath of 9/11 and hence in a global climate of growing hostility towards Islam and Muslims. During the months following the events, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was allegedly heard giving speeches in which he said that Muslims all over the world were a ‘threat to peace and tranquillity’ (see Engineer 2003: 23). Prime Minister Modi also kept this rhetorical position alive during his entire mandate in the following electoral campaign. The web is inundated by clips from his speeches confirming this.

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A large number of articles and books have been written on the events of Godhra. And indeed, as I will discuss later on, some films have also been made on it. In order to give the reader a sense of the debate surrounding the SFG let me address some of these works. In The Gujarat Carnage (2003) Asghar Ali Engineer holds Modi, at the time the Chief Minister of Gujrat, responsible for not protecting the Muslim community from the Gujarat Bandh (protest) that VHP organized on the 28th February 2002, in retaliation for the Godhra events. In his words, ‘Narendra Modi convened a meeting of the police officials and assured them that the Bandh would be peaceful and there was no need to take any special measures’ (2003: 19). In his book, Engineer collects a variety of reports of eyewitnesses who had seen a number of well-known dignitaries form the cabinet of Mr. Modi leading and coordinating the mobs. He also suggests (quoting journalistic sources) that there is strong evidence for the fact that the violence in Godhra was ‘not a planned act but a spontaneous one on the part of some Muslims of Signal Falia, near Godhra station’ (p. 18). In line with many other commentators, The Washington Post5 also reported that Hindu activists were seen harassing Muslim women, attempting to evict a girl etc. Engineer sums up the events that followed Godhra in the following way: ‘it was not a Hindu-Muslim riot. It was a carnage, meticulously organized and executed, directly against the Muslims’ (2003: 21). The Black Book of Gujarat (2002) too identifies in BJP and Modi’s ‘arbi­ trary and dark shadow’ the trigger that ‘helped to release the raw emotions of resentment and vengeance without providing any assurance to the majority community’ (Sondhi in Sondhi and Mukarji 2002: 3). The result of a con­ tinuous escalation of the feeling of communal hatred largely sponsored by the Sangh Parivar, the Gujarat tragedy was simply meant to happen sooner or later and its unfolding was largely, as the title to the introductory chapter to the book states, ‘BJP’s responsibility’ (p. 3). A similar position is also held in Gujarat: The Making of Tragedy (Var­ adarajan 2002), another collection of reports, essays and reflections on the events of Gujarat which too lays out the thesis that the carnage was a tragedy foretold and that it was not only not prevented but actually largely sponsored for purposes of political gain. In a short article published by the Times of India in March 2002, anthro­ pologist Dipankar Gupta spoke of the need for shifting away from social scientific explanations and analysis to social forensics for an understanding of the Gujarat carnage. According to him there was, at that stage, little use of social scientific reflections. What was needed was a rigorous ‘autopsy’ capable of identifying the chain of events: ‘If such an autopsy were to be conducted it would become abundantly clear that riots are created by interested organisations that have the tacit, or active, support of the government in power … Riots need a necessary

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condition, organisations that plot mass killings with governmental support.’ (Gupta 2003) Dionne Bunsha’s Scarred: Experiments with Violence in Gujarat (2006) is a call against the various divisions that affect Gujarat. Written as a series of personal reflections based on interviews with survivors of the events, the book stitches together the destinies of the violence in Gujarat with local and national politics. According to her, ‘Chief Minister Narendra Modi had an election to win, and he planned to polarize people by making the Godhra tragedy the main issue in his campaign. His ticket to victory was a burning train’ (2006: 7). As a matter of fact, in the 2002 state elections, the BJP tri­ umphed in the areas that had been mainly hit by the violence (ibid.: 19). While it is difficult to ascertain whether the events in Godhra were the results of a plan or ‘simply’ the outcome of an accumulation of rage, the ‘pogrom’ that followed was definitely an organized one. In the words of Bunsha, ‘The burning of the train was used by Hindutva forces in Gujarat to carry out a systematic pogrom against Muslims. The government and the police gave them full control of the streets’ (2006: 7). In her book Bunsha pushes her analysis as far as to make a comparison between the events in Gujarat 2002 and the burning of the Reichstag in Germany in 1933. Having successfully managed to declare it a communist conspiracy Hitler used this event to silence all opposition through the arrest of the leaders of the communist, social democratic and liberal parties. Bunsha states that both ‘tragedies were used as an excuse for “retaliatory violence”’ (ibid.: 7). Of course, in opposition to the texts cited above there have been a number of interventions in defence of Mr. Modi and his government. Most such approaches claim that an ‘action-reaction’ logic is what caused the unleashing of events and that all that happened in Gujarat was nothing more than a natural consequence of the events of Godhra (for which, the Muslims were to be blamed). Today these voices have become so hegemonic in public media that they barely need being repeated in this book. The recent Ayodhya ver­ dict, that has given the right to the Hindu community to build the temple on the ruins of the Babri Masjid, confirms the hegemony of this thesis. Among the many films based on the violence, mention must be made of Rakesh Sharma’s 2003 Final Solution. Building upon a large amount of interviews with witnesses to the massacre, the film circulated widely (different from the materials of the SFG) especially during the 2014 elections (won by present day PM Narendra Modi). I stumbled upon copies of the film on VCD and DVD in several parts of Delhi and Mumbai and their presence has been reported by friends and colleagues also in the slums. Final Solution was first banned by the government (the ban was lifted in 2004) and it had also been rejected by the government-run Mumbai International Film Festival (the MIFF, see Chapter 3). It was, however, screened within the circuit of ‘Vikalp: Films for Freedom’.

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The story of the Shared Footage Group I stumbled upon the story of the SFG during a conversation with filmmaker Sanjay Kak (see Chapter 3). As I was enquiring with him into the state-of-the­ art of experimental and interactive forms of documentary filmmaking in India, he pointed me in the direction of this project. Sanjay also added something important which provided me with the sparkle to start conducting research on this collective. He said that in his view this project had a ‘serious political depth’ and ‘for that reason one would want to know why nothing happened with it’ (personal interview with Kak). I took this challenge onboard and tried to trace the actors that lay behind this project, hoping that with their help I would be able to enquire into the reasons for its supposed ‘failure’. The first person I got in touch with from the SFG was Neeraj Sahay, one of the three minds behind the project. Now a lecturer in Kolkata at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Neeraj made himself available to discuss the SFG on many occasions. We spoke several times on the phone, exchanged messages and emails and we also met in Kolkata for a half day during a field trip I made to the capital of the state of West Bengal. I also met Hassath Hassath, another key figure of the group, a couple of times in Delhi and Mumbai. The conversations with her were also very open, engaged and personal. Hassath generously shared not only the events relating to the SFG but also how these intertwined with her personal life. I deeply appreciate her courage in doing this. I never had a chance to personally meet the other two key members of the SFG, Gurpal Singh and another member of the team (that I choose to keep anonymous). I spoke several times on the phone with the former and managed to get some insights into his views on the project. The latter, however, never replied to my emails and calls. The various responses received from the members of the SFG made it evident to me that this was far from a long forgotten, dead and buried project. The very nature of the topic combined possibly with Modi’s surge to power made the SFG more than ever relevant to contemporary politics. It awakened strong feelings and also an amount of uncertainty. I am, therefore, extremely grateful to the generosity of Neeraj and Hassath. And indeed, I also respect Gurpal’s dis­ cretion and carefulness as well as the anonymous member’s decision not to engage with my research. Indeed, the lack of feedback from him/her con­ stitutes a significant piece of ethnographic evidence. Let me go back to the history of the SFG. The group launched itself in May 2002 within the networks of volunteers involved in tackling the situation in Gujarat in the aftermath of the carnage. The key site selected by the SFG for spreading their calls has been onlinevolunteers.org, a crucial arena used by organizations, NGOs and activists for spreading information about their activities. During the aftermath of Gujarat 2002 this site coordinated the actions of witness, relief and rehabilitation in the context of what the site called ‘the targeted orgy of violence against the people of Gujarat’6. It hosted announcements regarding volunteers, donations, petitions, legal support, etc.

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An appeal published in May 2002 for instance, clearly identifies areas of special need such as: ‘post-trauma counselling’, ‘documentation/recording’, ‘working with children’, ‘craft’ (sewing, embroidery, paper cutting and other crafts) and ‘legal aid’. Notice that in this list of priorities, the need for ‘doc­ umentation/recording’ stands out as a key priority. The topics altogether clearly identify the exigencies of a terrain that, in an appeal issued in May 2002, is described by activists in the following way: ‘Islands of terrorized survivors huddle together across the state in over 100 miserable relief camps, in both urban and rural areas. Betrayed by neighbours and friends, left for dead by the state, they are a truly broken people. Children killed, maimed and orphaned; women stripped, raped, and burnt; families with their life savings destroyed, ashes scattered to the wind. They need your help. Give just a little of your time to help heal the wounds that are bleeding our nation.’7 In June 2002, the SFG posted the message with which I opened this chapter. They asked for volunteers willing and capable to support a project funda­ mentally based upon the idea of a bank of footage about the carnage. Their ambition was to cover the largest amount of aspects of the genocide in Gujarat. In response to the logic of this site, the tone of the announcements of the SFG is, as is already hinted at above, very concrete: ‘Volunteers with documentation skills are needed to record testimonies of victims, ascertain details of incidents, verify facts. Those who can commit up to 10–15 days of their time can help in documentation without necessarily having to go to Gujarat. Information can be sent to them via email to prepare issue-based reports, advocacy material etc.’8 And: ‘we also tried to assist the legal effort by recording testimonies or visual evidence where necessary. this is an effort of a group of individuals funded by themselves and some friends. in terms of people coming in to chip in with their time and effort, we were a little lacking … we hope that the “shramdaan”9 of those who came will bear fruit and many films will be made from this footage, which, if sensibly distributed, will go some way in stemming the growing tide of fundamentalism.’10 The tone in most messages of onlinevolunteers.org is indeed ‘partisan’. On the 15th December 2002 on the homepage of onlinevolunteers.org a dispatch appears stating that: ‘In the wake of the sweeping victory of “Hindutva”, this effort has become all the more pertinent. More people need to get involved in this,

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The uncanny destiny of ‘raw’ footage and other efforts aimed at containing the communal poison. In a strange way, this bank of footage is perhaps even more valuable now. If we find the resources and the people, we would now continue our shooting work in Ahmedabad for another month.’11

Through the sum total of descriptions, reports, calls, dispatches and appeals onlinevolunteers.org has progressively become in itself a memorial. Looking at it today it allows us to reconstruct the atmosphere that surrounded the SFG at this particular historical moment and the emotions of the people involved. Offering insight into this is the message by the SFG that I cited at the begin­ ning of this text: ‘When the reality of Gujarat hits you in the face, the first reaction is numbness and you think first about the futility of filming it at all. When the dust settles somewhat you realize the absolute importance of it … The “experiment” of the Parivar has been 99% successful and plans are afoot for other places like UP, Maharashtra, Bengal, Kerala, Goa, Rajasthan … the list goes on. It is our duty to call the bluff and to spread the message of peaceful co-existence.’12 Filming, here, is both witness and therapy. As I noticed during my interviews with Neeraj and Hassath this was, for them, a way to be alive, to participate in the destinies of the victims of one of largest human dramas that unfolded in the Indian subcontinent after Partition. Before I go any further into ana­ lyzing the materials that make up the archive of the SFG and analyze its further developments let me open a theoretical parenthesis. I have to address the field of documentary in an online, digital space. Looking at the terrain of what is conventionally referred to as iDocs this section provides the reader with analytical tools for reflecting on the possible dialogues between doc­ umentary and contemporary forms of digital visuality (hence going back to some of the reflections in Chapter 2).

Documentaries in digital visuality Interactive, non-linear, participatory, relational, ‘polyphonic’ (Aston and Odorico 2018) ways of making documentary films are today growing in popularity across the parts of the world that have been touched upon by digital technologies. Capitalizing upon the encounter between documentary film and emerging forms of online, digital communication, documentary filmmakers have started to produce audio-visuals that potentially challenge the conventional assumptions through which we have looked upon documentary films. Conventionally called iDocs, these practices are characterized by the encounter of documentary film with the hypertextuality and interactivity that characterizes the net (see Landow 2006). This opens up documentary images to new possibilities for quick production and distribution of images, as well as

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for the creation of new participatory and immersive environments. The field resulting from the encounter of these various technologies and practices is indeed very broad and difficult to define. During the past years I have devo­ ted quite a degree of my attention to exploring it (see Favero 2013, 2017a, 2017b, 2018). I have attempted at schematizing the various forms of doc­ umentary making that define this new terrain while also devoting time to explore the possible methodological contributions that such practices can give to the field of ethnography. I have also analyzed in depth the politics of this emerging multimodal form. Let me briefly sum these observations up. I will start by defining the field. Later I will address the politics that underpin it. iDocs constitute for many image-makers one of the last outposts of avant­ gardism. While being increasingly used by news-sites, etc. iDocs are, in fact, still in the search for an established market. Living in the cracks of other, more established visual forms, iDocs are today hosted in a variety of venues, in documentary festivals, in the context of Internet design competitions and also in that of journalism and contemporary art. While conventionally trans­ lated to fit the label ‘interactive documentary’, iDocs are today growing into an increasingly multifaceted and diversified field. In recent publications (Favero 2017a and 2017b) I have suggested that we can move beyond con­ ventional definitions of this genre as a ‘documentary which uses interactivity as a core part of its delivery mechanism’ (Galloway et al. 2007: 330). We can today rethink the meaning of the ‘i’ in iDocs term (conventionally referring to ‘interactivity’) and consider that this letter may stand for the personal pro­ noun (‘I’ in capitals), and hence be used to highlight the personalization that is part of the world of iDocs as well as of contemporary digital media at large. It could also refer to ‘intelligent’ or, playing with phonetics, to ‘eye’ foregrounding hence the artificial intelligence and the intellectual and sensory stimulation embedded in these practices. A number of typologies have been created to address this growing field. Nash (2012) divides the terrain in three formats: the ‘narrative’, the ‘catego­ rical’ and the ‘collaborative’. The former allows the viewer to connect events along a time-based sequence (similar to linear documentaries); the ‘catego­ rical’ focuses on particular topics that exist simultaneously for the viewer; and the third directly engages the viewer as a producer of contents to be inserted in the work. Aston and Gaudenzi (2012) distinguish, instead, between ‘con­ versational’ films (which trigger a dialogue between viewer and the machine used for viewing the documentary); ‘experiential’ ones (which, with the sup­ port of specific interfaces, bring digital contents in touch with physical rea­ lity); ‘hypertext’ (the explorable database); and ‘participative’ (which asks viewers to take on an active role in the making of the documentary by adding their own materials). Pushing these categorizations a little further and merging them with the established genre distinctions in documentary film that I discussed in Chapter 3 I suggest that we can create another typology based on the triad ‘active’, ‘participatory’ and ‘immersive’. I need to stress that these categories are not

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self-contained, stable and clear-cut. The space of iDocs must be viewed as a continuum where each product may contain more or less of each of these ambitions. In my typology, ‘active’ refers to those documentaries that offer the viewers a variety of angles from which to explore the materials that make up the documentary itself. Conventionally using a variety of different media (such as video clips, photographs, sound files, maps, etc.) these iDocs con­ stitute a creative archive that does not, however, allow viewers to actively change or expand the materials on display (unless minimally, by inserting comments etc.). Making up the vast majority of iDocs present in the market, such products can be exemplified by Prison Valley13, which focuses on Fre­ mont County, a valley whose economy is almost exclusively centred on the ‘prison business’, and by Choose your own Documentary14 a live performance where spectators have to choose the narrative path by voting. Typically, such documentaries allow viewers to choose their own path while jumping between the different media available. ‘Participatory’ iDocs instead focus primarily on the co-creation of new materials. Sharing the process of editing and produc­ tion with the viewers, they are exemplified by Al-Jazeera’s Palestine Remix15 a thought-provoking project where viewers are asked to actively re-edit snippets of materials on Palestine directly from the media company’s archives. The new crowd-edited short videos are incorporated into the archive, becoming available for the next viewers. Another example could be A Journal of Insomnia16 where the materials uploaded can only be visited upon a nightly appointment and where the visitors are also interviewed on the basis of their experiences of this particular condition. This iDoc too offers a concrete opportunity for generating materials that future viewers will be able to explore and reflect upon. ‘Immersive’ iDocs are, finally, aimed explicitly at closing the gap between the image and the everyday lived experiences of the viewers (both physically and metaphorically). Potentially experiential, haptic and/or emphatic, such iDocs move along a continuum that goes from expanded emplaced partici­ pation (bordering to augmented reality) to VR/MR/AR/XR (i.e virtual, mixed, augmented or expanded reality) and 360 degrees documentaries. Ranging from online documentaries to those designed for VR goggles or smartphones, the latter series of products offers an interactive experience allowing for a form of ‘disembodied embodiment’ (see Favero 2018). Among such works mention can be made of computer screen-based films – Google’s 360-degree productions Beyond the Map17 (on Rio’s favelas) and the Hidden World of the National Parks18; and goggle-driven VR documentaries include the works of Francesca Panetta such as 6X919, a VR project on solitary jail confinement. On the other end of the spectrum we can mention emplaced experiences such as Blast Theory’s Rider Spoke20. This is a live, emplaced experience that invites cyclists to narrate stories about their city as they move in it listening to the stories generated by other citizens. Based on geo-tagged sound files that activate at the passage of the spectator on a particular spot (Rider Spoke was originally designed for festival contexts), this documentary

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plays again with the possibility of crowd-sourced knowledge. Rider Spoke constitutes also a bridge between ‘participatory’ and ‘immersive’ iDocs, the category of iDocs that, in my view, mostly aims at closing the gap between the image (with its platform) and the (physical, concrete, embodied) everyday life of the viewers. Recent trends in immersive imaging have also given birth to a number of experiences that blur the boundary between the ‘actual’ and the ‘virtual’. Among them mention can be made of Draw Me Close21, an MR ‘experience’ (this is the term used in the official presentation of the perfor­ mance) authored by award-winning playwright and filmmaker Jordan Tan­ nahill. Using a combination of hand trackers and VR goggles this is a oneon-one performance. One at a time, the viewers are exposed to an intimate encounter in VR with the mother of the director who passed away due to cancer when he was a young boy. The performance stages his distant mem­ ories through an actress wearing sensors. The actress stages live the move­ ments and gestures that the viewers receive in the VR goggles in the shape of black-and-white drawings. Another example of the merging of actual and augmented is the collaborative India-US Priya Shakti22 (that I discussed ear­ lier in this book in Chapter 3). Across the years, my engagement with iDocs as a space for both commu­ nicating and conducting ethnographic research has led me to develop a number of insights. First of all, as an image-maker I have never been really able to move away from my original disappointment with the outcome of most such products (a dimension that may be connected to the supposed failure of the online version of the SFG archive, see below). Conventional iDocs seem to miss the narrative elements that trigger in me an affective connection with the material. The possibility of letting viewers ‘edit’ a film by connecting snippets to each other on the basis of their interest is, indeed, very innovative and creative on one level. Yet it deprives the directors from the possibility of alternating between states of mind and hence from creating emotional responses. Such a play of emotions is the core of the logic of melodrama which, as Peter Brooks (in Mishra 2002: 37) suggested, builds upon a play in-between ‘pure and polar concepts of darkness and light, sal­ vation and damnation’. A lover of Hindi cinema, that is known to build exactly upon these mechanisms, I do indeed enter with great difficulty, a visual narration lacking such affective elements. Finally, a core critical dimension of iDocs is the politics of co-creation and participation that they foreground. In a recent book (Favero 2018) I have suggested that iDocs offer us an opportunity to explore further the particular historical moment in which we live signalling (or perhaps igniting?) a shift in the political nature of contemporary (digitally-augmented) visual culture. In line with other publications (cf. Galloway et al. 2007, Nash 2012, Blassnigg 2005, Aston and Gaudenzi 2012, Aston, Gaudenzi and Rose 2017, Favero 2013 and 2014) I believe that iDocs help in rethinking a number of conven­ tional categorizations that we inevitably fall back on when addressing the world of image-making. Offering both something entirely new while also a

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significant continuity with the past of the documentary practice, iDocs seem to foreground the relationality, participation, multi-sensoriality and materi­ ality that are presently being addressed as key characteristics of images in the contemporary digitized habitats of the world (see Chapter 2). I will discuss such areas below along with my reflections on the destiny of the SFG. I will be suggesting that the absence of focus on these dimensions, and hence a dif­ ferent understanding of what images do in a digital habitat, lies at the core of the failure of the SFG materials to reach out to broader audiences. To do this I will have to start by unpacking and analyzing the materials that make up the SFG archive.

Unpacking the SFG archive As I anticipated above, the initial driving force behind SFG is located in four main figures, Neeraj, Gurpal, Hassath and one more that, as preannounced, I chose to keep anonymous. Rather than a devotion to image-making or art what these four individuals really had in common was a political inclination, a desire to contribute in creating awareness (and enhancing justice) about the events that had taken place in Gujarat. As Neeraj told me during an interview, what they had in common was ‘the politics of the effort’. They all shared the desire to become witnesses to this event and to make a contribution to the struggle for justice for the victims. Also, they shared the specific politics of the group which was centred around the idea of not allowing the project to be devoured by the interests of NGOs, political parties or other organizations and companies. Basically, they wanted to work within a (vaguely defined) network of likeminded people (‘through the grapevine’ see below). A major problem for the group, however, was not that of finding people willing to contribute to the actual filming (either by coming in person or by sending equipment) but of finding people capable and willing to work on the editing and cataloguing of the materials. The latest add-on to the group, Hassath, was the key asset for this and quickly became a central figure in the group. What she put at the disposal of the group was her time, her engage­ ment, and her organizational skills. During one of our conversations, Hassath told me: ‘I said, “I am no filmmaker, I cannot shoot but what I can do is to coordinate and I can give you unlimited time,” I told them “I can be there as long as you need me”’. This seemed to be what the group really needed, a total sense of devotion, a quality so out-of-time in a neoliberal, late capitalist world. Hassath stayed for the time needed, to coordinate all the movements of the volunteers and the organization of the materials that were coming in. She kept contact with the other members and volunteers of the SFG via email and responded to the various calls that I described above. She ended up working full time for the project for an entire year and spent more than half a year physically wrapped amidst the tensions of Gujarat. The division of work in the SFG was hence quite clear. Gurpal was in charge of reaching out to the people (most emails and dispatches are signed

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by him); Neeraj would follow the filming operations and Hassath, the orga­ nization of the workflow, including emailing, calls etc. The last figure (and for us, anonymous), was involved in all these tasks. He/she participated in the designing of the campaign and also helped Hassath with the logging. I must also add that one of the volunteers who produced footage and who was quite active in the phase of editing the material for the pad.ma project is Faiza Ahmad Khan (the author of the acclaimed 2012 documentary Superman of Malegaon). Her views will become central when I address the decision to put some of the materials online through the collaboration with CAMP. It is important to notice that all the participants in this project did pay a personal price for having involved themselves. Trauma and burnout were terms that would cyclically appear in our conversations. And indeed, Hassath, who was in Gujarat for the longest continuous amount of time, is the one who paid the highest price. After the months in Gujarat and the time spent viewing, reviewing and logging the footage, she had to stop, facing an inevi­ table burnout caused by the sheer violence of the material she was working on. ‘It was the nature of the work,’ she says, that got them all exposed to trauma (Hassath, personal interview). Referring back to her contribution, one (anonymous) activist (not a member of the SFG) said that Hassath was ‘doing this all on her own, going into this space of darkness and paranoia’. Hence, she fell sick, according to him/her. Hassath indeed remembers her time in Gujarat with great pain. Once she told me about her initial days, recounting the time when she was looking for the headquarters of SFG, unable to ‘see anything, but suddenly looking for the flat the SFG had rented, I saw a house that had been burned down, I still remember the feeling it evoked in me … I am sitting in the auto and the house is black, to be so close…’ (Hassath, personal interview). As she was sharing these memories, she suddenly fell into a silence that truly embodied the pain that these moments had brought along. After a while she started her description again and told me that later she would have got used to this: ‘I saw footage, houses ransacked inside, ceiling fans melted’. Hassath said that despite not being ‘a visual person’ these glimpses will stay with her forever. During one of my interviews, she also added that she felt that all the members of the SFG cultivated fears, during the filming in Gujarat, for their personal safety. They had to be careful with everything, careful in publicizing what they were doing and with whom they were speaking. They often felt under threat and on one occasion they also had to quickly abandon their ‘headquarters’ and find a new house in which to settle. Despite stating that all they did ‘was at great personal cost’, Hassath, just like the other members of the SFG, felt, ‘no regret’. After having recovered from the burnout, Hassath decided not to go back to the material again, fearing she would not be able to recover fully. Neeraj addressed a similar trauma when he told me that his ‘emotional level’ was kept at bay by his ‘role as activist, and as organizer … it was always my objective to put up SFG as a counter example of the kind of effort an NGO

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would make’. This political vision, which I will discuss in detail below and that functioned as one of the true pillars of the project, was his lifeline.

Documenting a massacre In this section I want to look with greater depth into the materials that make up the SFG both in its ‘raw’ version as well as in its online format on pad.ma. I will start by addressing the multimodal nature of this work and then look into the politics that underpinned (and in a way still underpin) the project. Once the filming in Gujarat was over, the members of the SFG found themselves with a vast variety of materials. In their own words they had: ‘250 hours, shot between May 2002 to February 2003, mostly on DV and Hi-8’.23 The next step was of transferring the materials onto VHS (the usual practice among documentarians before the arrival of digital technology), timecode it and log it (with keywords, links etc.). The plan was to do these activities in Goregaon, Mumbai and Delhi (where Hassath would be soon moving to). Delhi became nodal to these operations and in a new appeal on onlinevolun­ teers.com they asked for a: ‘place for SFG to operate from, where volunteers can come and pitch in (and where Hassath can also stay with her daughter) … if it is to be rented, we would look for something around 2000–3000 rupees per month (and the work is likely to go on till June). If we can get one with a phone, nothing like it.’24 In another call issued in February 2003 the SFG states their needs in great detail. They needed computers, shelves/cupboards for storing the materials and a VCR. In Mumbai too there was the need for a TV monitor and a VCR. The appeal also asked for help for the following activities (I cite them as they appeared on the homepage): 1 2 3 4 5

Transfers (from Mini DV to VHS and Hi-8 to VHS)

Conversion (Mini DV… NTSC to Pal … roughly 30 hours)

Burning of CDs from the VHS copies

Logging of tapes (you could do this after you get a brief from Hassath in

Delhi or Neeraj in Bombay) Transcriptions (this could be done from VHS or CD or audio tape). for this you could be anywhere, not necessarily Delhi or Mumbai.25

Basically the SFG found itself with a wide variety of materials in multiple formats and supports, all in need of proper archiving. The presence of the variety of supports (Hi-8, VHS, Mini DV etc. some are in Pal and some in NTSC) depended upon the fact that volunteers would join with what they had. Hassath told me, ‘we could not control what we had … we took all what people had … if they said we come with the camera we would not even ask

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what camera do you have’. The consequence of this was that a great amount of work had to be done afterwards, in the conversion, logging, coding and storing of the materials so that they could be accessed within a single plat­ form. But, how would this be done? According to Hassath this was something that none of them had expertise with (I must also add that in 2002–3 software and platforms for online archives were not yet common). And this led to the future connection with the digital media experts of CAMP. Basically, their work anticipated the shift that would occur later on from image-making as an act of direction to one of curation (that has been at the centre of con­ temporary debates on documentary film in digital environments, cf. Theu­ nissen and Favero 2020). The varied nature of the materials is, however, not just a matter of form and media support but also of content. After a first rough overview of the activities conducted Hassath realized that ‘there was a lot of material and a lot of volunteers but no structure’. A July call, signed by Neeraj, sketched a first ranking of areas of need. The first priority at that moment was to wind up the collection of ‘documents illustrative of ’: ‘police atrocities/role of police in “riots”’; ‘criminal injustice practiced and supported by the state’; ‘pain on loss of life/property/livelihood’; ‘apathy in relief camps’; ‘inhuman compen­ sation’; ‘token rehabilitation’; ‘sustained threat and discrimination’; ‘ghettoi­ zation’; ‘spread of violence to “well off” people as well’; ‘secular valour in the face of adversity’; ‘islands of sanity’.26 The second step was to further narrow down the scope of the filming and to focus on specific stories. They selected 12 stories and created a chart of things they wanted to collect, identifying also the needed visual requirements for these stories. I will discuss some of these stories below, yet what is important to stress is also that according to Neeraj, the key for appreciating the nature of the mission of the SFG (and its politics I would say) relies more in what they do not contain than in what they actually show. ‘SFG is more about what is not there’, Neeraj told me in one interview. Children, for instance, are one aspect that they choose to omit, given that this was exactly what television channels would do, ‘flashing out the wounds of children and elderly people’ (Neeraj’s words during one interview). Also, they opted for a fairly unilinear (partisan) way of addressing the events: ‘We did not include police, bipartisan views, etc. … we focused on people’s evidence’. We must always bear in mind that all visual materials were produced under extreme conditions. According to surrounding rumours, the SFG filmed fol­ lowing a logic of what I like to label as ‘guerilla filmmaking’. An anonymous filmmaker who worked closely with the group told me during an interview that different filmic tasks were given to different individuals. ‘Someone had to film close ups, someone long shots, etc.’ (personal interview, anonymous). Neeraj confirmed that this was at times indeed the intention and that the main logic was to be able to film a lot of material very quickly, before the police or other local inhabitants could get suspicious. According to Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran (the founders of CAMP) this cannot, however,

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really be feasible. The situation in Gujarat was so tense that it would not really have allowed for such sharp planning. ‘Imagine doing that in those conditions in a riot infested area, you take the close ups, you do long shots!’ (Shaina, personal interview). Yet, Shaina said that the marvel in that material is that it was, despite the conditions, beautifully shot. Such reflections under­ pin Shaina and Ashok’s main critical reflection on the SFG. According to them there was a significant gap between the ideal vision promoted by the members of the SFG and the actual implementation of it on the field. Each of the stories selected, whether based on a neighbourhood, or on an event etc. was hence the result of an active choice. The September 2002 Gujarat Gaurav Yatra (literally a procession) is one of the core stories that the group managed to put together four months after the ‘pogroms’. Organized as an attack against the Congress Party, and especially against Italy-born Sonia Gandhi, the Yatra, was flagged by BJP General Secretary Rajnath Singh and supported by Modi himself. Even with the motto that ‘The Con­ gress cannot return to power by wearing Italian spectacles’ and that India should not accept a person ‘not born of an Indian mother’s womb ruling the country’27 the Yatra did not luckily lead to further confrontation. Another key topic addressed by the SFG was the neighbourhood of Salat Nagar, one of the arenas that had witnessed the most violent events. Accord­ ing to both Neeraj and Hassath this part could actually have become a proper documentary film. Yet, as Hassath put it to me in 2016, more than 14 years after the events, ‘who is going to do it now?’ For Neeraj, however, this mate­ rial remains unique. It is powerful as it also indicates that the attack was actually also an attack against the Congress Party given that this was a mixed community neighbourhood. The Best Bakery case (also called Tulsi Bakery case) was another episode that the SFG followed closely. This was a legal case involving the burning down of the Best Bakery, a small outlet in the Hanuman Tekri area in Vadodara, Gujarat, India, on 1st March 2002. During the incident, a mob targeted the Sheikh family (the ones who ran the bakery) who sought refuge inside their shop. The aggression resulted in the death of fourteen Muslims28 (including the owners of the bakery) but also of three Hindu employees.29 This case has come to symbolize the carnage (and the alleged State Govern­ ment complicity in it). Twenty-one people were accused for the attack. Yet they were also all acquitted by the court due to, according to the newspapers, bad police work and poor evidence. It was nevertheless the first case to be tried with respect to the Gujarat riots.30 Overall the material collected by the SFG is mainly made up of moving images. And the largest part consists of interviews, of people describing the events, giving proper detailed indications to what had happened. There is also, however, a lot of evidence of material culture, ‘we have evidence of camps, of the situation, how food was being cooked, hygienic conditions’ (Neeraj personal interview). But it also contains newspaper clips, photographs etc. The result is a proper multimodal archive that is more remindful of what

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happens in the context of web docs and iDocs than in conventional linear documentary films. During one of my talks with Neeraj I used the term ‘raw footage’ to address what they had collected. I had at that point already seen some of the footage as it appeared on pad.ma. Neeraj was at first unhappy with this term. Yet, upon a second thought he admitted, during a follow-up conversation, that after all ‘in this context it is more raw footage than a film, it is not even a reportage’. In its multimodality, this project anticipated, therefore, the shift that has occurred with the entry of digital practices in the world of documentary images. And, indeed, I believe that despite their intui­ tion the members of the SFG were not prepared to fully take this challenge onboard.

‘I heard it through the grapevine’ – the politics of the SFG As I mentioned above, the sharing of the material of the SFG with CAMP led to a number of confrontations. The project never really took off and in this section I will analyze a number of reasons for this. I suggest that some of these motives have to do with the non-narrative, participatory logic of online interactive image-making forms. Others have to do with the politics that underline the project. The two are indeed directly connected at different levels and one first aspect emerging from this, is the viewers. The SFG had, as we saw, no clear view on how to use and share the mate­ rials they had gathered. The hope was that anyone could do this for a variety of politically motivated purposes. And indeed here, at the level of potential sta­ keholders, the group stumbled upon one major inconsistency: who were the actors with similar motivations? The SFG wanted to move away from the cir­ cuit of NGOs. They did not want to end up being trapped in the reception of funding given that this that would also lead to an enforcement of a particular aesthetics or content, etc. The material had to be free, free from overarching logics, free to use by anyone and hence informed by a solid bottom-up per­ spective. One of their dispatches also declares that ‘the footage will be made available, free, to all those who may put it to some good use. Some of it is shot keeping in mind certain stories, illustrative of important aspects of the violence and carnage. Some of it is more general’.31 And again: ‘We started off by thinking that we would try and create a bank of foo­ tage which could be shared by everyone … with no authorship or copy­ right … this could have been our humble contribution. We also tried to (and are still trying) to source other people who would be willing to share in such an effort with their footage. Sadly we have been very very par­ tially successful. We have had little or no support from our friends, to whom we kept pleading to join us … but their work and commitments kept them away. This is a desperate appeal to all such friends and friends of friends (and their friends …) to please come there and help in the humungous effort.’32

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In these lines it is easy to detect the idealism behind the project. What is the ‘good use’ that the first quote speaks about? And what is the circuit that they appeal to (and seemingly feel betrayed by) in the second quote? According to the members of the SFG that I have met, things looked fairly straightforward regarding the act of producing evidence (i.e. filming). Neeraj had a systematic plan to use everyone’s time, talent, effort and personality in the best possible manner. He also had a plan for logging, transferring and post-production. ‘All that is required is human resource, equipment, tapes, and emotion,’ says the dispatch signed by Gurpal that I mentioned already at the beginning of this text33. Yet, none of them was particularly clear when it came to matters of distribution. In one of my interviews, Neeraj significantly said that their hope was that the material would travel ‘in the grapevine’. Puzzled by his wording I asked him more about what he meant by it and he said that ‘this is just like what brought you here, the grapevine’. His point was that likeminded indivi­ duals would end up coming together through this project; they would hear about it and want to share their views and actions. Shaina and Ashok from CAMP are critical to this aspect of the SFG project. In their view, as they pointed out to me during one interview, two key steps were missing in the planning of SFG: one was how to manage access to the material and the second, what to do with people who may still be vulnerable to its content. According to them, the SFG should have envisioned the next passage. They should have formed a new group with real stakeholders, get the balance in place, etc. By not doing this they made the database into what Shaina called ‘an orphaned archive’. Evidently, the ‘grapevine’ was not enough. I believe, however, that this idea (of the grapevine) is a useful ‘clue’ (Ginzburg 2000) in my attempts at identi­ fying a political narrative. I believe that the SFG must be addressed at the threshold of two significantly opposite ways of conceptualizing the act of making politics through images that are kept apart by the passage from preto post-digitization. What we are witnessing here, and what possibly lies at the core of the frictions that led to the invisibility of the materials as they were posted on pad.ma, is a clash between different views on the politics of image-making represented also by two different generations. The members of the SFG seem to have invested their attention mainly on the images them­ selves, giving them a role of intrinsically powerful objects capable of carrying meaning. The words of Neeraj and Gurpal implicitly suggest that images can, in a way, speak on their own. Their belief was that anyone with similar poli­ tical inclinations could embrace them and use them in order to defend the rights of the victims of the carnage. Despite identifying the need for a bigger (archival) picture, they never really managed to implement it nor realized the importance of such an overarching infrastructure which as I stated in the Chapter 2 is key for understanding the meaning and politics of images in a digital context. The acceptance of working with CAMP came as a consequence of this, of the realization for the need of something different than what they had until

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then envisioned. Yet, once the members of the SFG were asked to make the material available (centripetally) on the site and engage a number of unex­ pected and uncontrollable dialogues with the viewers, a number of issues emerged. Who would actually be held responsible for the narratives promoted and for the possible consequences of the spread of this material? How could they make sure that the materials (given their rich detail of names, localities, situations etc.) may not expose the people filmed to possible consequences and retaliation? Such questions became particularly important in a changing political context that, in the meantime, had solidified in the hands of the party and the politicians that the members of SFG considered responsible for the carnage. This added yet another problematic dimension to the already complicated questions that have to do with the passage from linear, offline to online, interactive image viewing/sharing (which is where the lessons learned from the world of iDocs and digital visuality writ-large can be useful for a fine-grained understanding). Who are ‘the authors’ once audio-visual materi­ als are placed on an interactive site where authorship is ‘shared’ between the makers of the images, the designers of the site, the algorithmic logic that supported it and the choices of the viewers? Basically, all the dense material created by the SFG ended up getting stuck at the crossroads of different notions of image-making (with their attached politics). It got stuck in a no-person-land, neither archive nor film, neither linear nor interactive/polyphonic, neither raw evidence nor narration. Ashok and Shaina from CAMP told me that the material was rejected by many activists. The reason for this was, according to them, the imposition by Has­ sath and Faiza Ali Khan34 (who got very deeply involved with the project at this stage) of the removal of all specific references from the materials that would go online (such as names of people, streets and neighbourhoods, dates etc.). The presence or absence of such evidence was for Hassath and Faiza an ethical issue. They felt, as producers of the material, that they had to defend it and the people and stories appearing in it. For the members of CAMP, however, the absence of such information meant these visuals were neither story nor document. Without that, this material was useless. In Shaina’s words: ‘now it is a generic story of war and trauma … any active ingredient, any moment of agency is taken out … it is the same old generic story, the state created the problem and attacked a minority and so the story goes’ (personal interview). Ashok added that at these conditions ‘the risk was greater than the benefit’ (personal interview). In response, the SFG defended their right to ‘censor’ (two of them actually embraced this term) their own material so as not to expose people or localities. ‘Confidentiality, names and addresses should not go up there with pad.ma,’ said Hassath during one interview with me. To mention one concrete instance, Hassath refused for example to mention the name of Salat Nagar on the site. She allowed pad.ma only to display infor­ mation regarding ‘locality A’ and ‘locality B’. When I asked, ‘does this not become too generalized?’ Hassath replied ‘we don’t have the freedom to

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reveal this information … the material is more important; those human beings are more important!’ Faiza too, who filmed large chunks of the SFG material, strengthened, according to Shaina and Ashok, Hassath’s position claiming that filmmakers should ultimately be in control of the material they produce and be allowed to protect the characters depicted there. Embracing an approach that is typical within the context of documentary and ethno­ graphic filmmaking, Hassath and Faiza gave the priority to the duty of defending the people in the film. This was an act of ‘responsibility,’ Hassath told me, ‘I am stubborn, we will not reveal the names’. Neeraj’s position was somehow bridging the views held by Hassath and Faiza to those by CAMP. According to him, a lot of useful and detailed information was in fact already available on the site. Yet, it had to be grabbed from the ‘dense annotations’ that were to be found online next to the visuals (see Figure 5.2). This acknowledgment reveals indeed Neeraj’s capacity to identify the importance of the architecture of the site which, in the context of online practices of visual storytelling, is the ‘elephant in the room’ (Theunissen and Favero 2020, see also Chapter 2). The tensions between CAMP and the SFG evidently materialized the shift between different ways of envisioning the act of making politics through images in the passage from analogue to digital. CAMP wanted to invest the site (with its architecture, algorithmic logic and interactivity) with the responsibility of igniting exchanges with the viewers and creating new, unique co-curated stories. They clearly looked beyond the images themselves, acknowledging instead the relational nature of this (digital) apparatus. The members of the SFG instead seemed to keep their focus more strictly on the image itself, on the narratives that the audio-visual (rather than the sur­ rounding context) creates and attempted at exercising control upon the whole process. For the members of CAMP the refusal to let go of the material, translated into an impossibility to let the material talk online; this was, for them, an act of proper silencing. While they insisted on the importance of letting images set loose, the members of the SFG responded by trying to hold them back. I believe that this friction corresponds to a clash between what we can call centrifugal and centripetal forces. The SFG tried to centralize the practice, bringing the control back to themselves and hence to the role of the author. CAMP instead wanted to act centripetally, attempting to scatter the material to new unexpected directions. Addressing an aspect that in my view is central in the world of iDocs as well as of digital visuality at large, this tension amounts to a questioning of the politics of authorship.

The death of the author 2.0 The tensions I address above are essential, in my view, to all work that con­ nects documentary filmmaking to contemporary online sharing practices. Let me open a short auto-biographical parenthesis on this. I entered the terrain of digital visuality and documentary (and eventually of iDocs) in the mid-2000s

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because of a sheer sense of frustration. This happened as I was active in fin­ ishing and then distributing Flyoverdelhi, a documentary film I made in 2004 on young middle-class people in New Delhi. As the film was screened on tel­ evision and in festivals, I very much enjoyed listening to the questions, reflections and doubts that it generated amongst the viewers. I increasingly felt the desire to incorporate those viewer-generated ruptures in the narrative coherence of the film into the film itself. I saw the possibility of producing a document capable of progressively growing and changing through the inter­ actions with the viewers. This feeling added to my already present frustration for the leftovers of the film; those 44 hours of material that no one would ever see and that could instead have been key for achieving a sense of narrative openness. In 2004, however, interactive documentaries and similar platforms were really just beginning to emerge. On top of this I had neither the skills nor the budget needed for attempting to build some alternative display format for my work. However, I realized that this digital space was an interesting one, in which the above-mentioned results could possibly have been gener­ ated. I, therefore, tried to conceptualize an online platform on which to host such materials. I started designing a map of the city of Delhi in which I could ‘place’ the video materials so that they could be viewed on the basis of the location in which they had been shot. As I progressed into the development of this idea, I realized that such a platform could allow me to also host all those other materials that had been conducive to the creation of the film, such as photographs, field notes, newspaper clips, street sounds, etc. I could also progressively incorporate the insights I gathered through public screenings etc. Flyoverdelhi, I thought, could turn into an opera aperta. According to this model it would be finally up to the viewers to build a narrative around my materials. This project was never realized. Yet, it laid the ground for my continuing interest in digital visuality and documentary, for iDocs and for the challenges that these emerging visual forms entail. I held a first course on iDocs at the Lisbon University Institute IUL­ ISCTE in the 2011 experimenting with its insertion in the context of ethno­ graphic film and research. On that occasion, I decided to use an open-source software called Korsakow. Building on the principle that the construction of the narrative of the final visual form depends upon the choices of the viewers, Korsakow ‘forces’ the filmmakers to abandon the control of the narrative and hence of their material. The duty of the author is to divide the material in short snippets (the SNUS) and code each snippet with specific ‘in’ and ‘out’ words. The generative algorithm will do the rest, stitching SNUS together on the basis of the coding. Authors are no longer ‘directors’ in this context. Instead, they have to start identifying their role as that of ‘curators’ (see Favero 2017a and Theunissen and Favero 2020), of a generative archive of multimodal data (photographs, videos, sounds, texts). For most of my stu­ dents, and especially for those coming from an anthropological or journalistic background, this was a tough challenge. They had difficulties in letting go of the opportunity to offer their explanations. Often they also attempted to

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subjugate the software to their ‘linear’ needs, trying to use ways of coding which would allow them to construct one single narrative. This resistance was a mind-opener for me. It led me to realize that the true potential of this software was in training image-makers and researchers to rethink their assumptions about what it meant to build a narrative. It also allowed for the creation of new interpretations and new ethnographic evidence (created in dialogue with the viewers). I quickly abandoned the desire of using this kind of platform for communicating research results. iDocs, I envisioned, could help stimulate new insights in the act of editing and sharing images with the viewers rather than helping communicate pre-produced, ready-made inter­ pretations. The acknowledgment of this shift signalled the entry into the world of curation and a move away from more conventional ideas of direction and authorship. Rather than thinking about guiding viewers into a personal narration, this work taught them to carefully reflect on how to assemble the materials online and then to progressively let go of the control over the nar­ rative in a gesture that highlights the nature of knowledge as a matter of ‘assemblage’ (Latour 2005). In future work I pushed this further and exploi­ ted iDocs as tools for coordinating group-based ethnographic work with a larger team of researchers. Yet this is another story that I have already nar­ rated elsewhere (Favero 2017b). What I take away from this experience which may be of use for my analysis of the SFG is that this kind of online sharing of documentary materials poses an important challenge at the level of the author’s capacity to let go of the need for total control on the materials that are put online. The author’s duty here is to curate a space within which the viewers may be allowed to enact their explorations and generate new stories and interpretations (and in many cases, also add new materials). I suggest that the events and debates that characterize the collaboration between the SFG and CAMP have to be understood within a framework set up by the key questions that I just delineated. The tensions between these two groups actually have to do with the shift of documentary images away from the safety of established notions of filmmaking, linearity, authorship and spectatorship, to multimodality, multi-perspectivalism, participatoryness and collaboration. While the designers of pad.ma would be fine in sharing the responsibility of narration with the algorithm and architecture of the site and with the viewers, the SFG wanted (similarly some of the students in my courses) to retain that control. As I mentioned above, I believe that the fric­ tion between SFG and CAMP brings to the surface the core questions that emerge in the passage from pre- to post-digital visuality and to different views on the politics of image-making. Going back to the archive, these challenges translated into concrete ques­ tions. Who are, after all, the actual authors once the images were posted on the pad.ma site and left to the ongoing acts of de- and re-composition enac­ ted by the viewers? What story would they get out of it and whose story would that be at the end? And what are the ethics of this endeavour? These ques­ tions, I suggest, also lead to a set of reflections on the changing politics and

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ethics of image-making in the passage from pre- to post-digital visuality. They also raise larger questions relating to the changing meaning of politics in late capitalism. In the following section I want to further unpack this.

The political dilemmas of sharing – centripetal vs. centrifugal forces In February 2003 the SFG sends out the following announcement on online­ volunteers.com: ‘We would like several filmmakers/activists/ngos/agencies/concerned indi­ viduals to use this valuable material, and we will make it available to all, free of cost. We shall not sell this to people or be involved in any kind of trade off with any person or body. Our only concern is that it should not be used for counter propaganda. The power of the visual medium can be misused by fundamentalists of any religion, colour or group. (And of course we are anxious that someone, after taking the footage from us, does not try and pass it off as “their own” and sell it to others!). Since none of the people we know fall into either two categories, we hope that this footage will be well utilized and go a long way in stemming the tide of communalism.’35 In the original view of the SFG a total openness is foregrounded. The word­ ing they use is very clear; they speak of resistance to ‘trade’, of possible ‘misuses’, etc. This approach is reiterated in many other dispatches for exam­ ple in the one where they announce the launch of their name, the Shared Footage Group: ‘Our little group has come to be known by default, by this name. We never intended to institutionalise it … and indeed have not … but for convenience, it has to be called something! It is an unusual response to the tragedy in Gujarat early this year. An experiment which in a small way may help to try and counter the experiment of the Sangh Parivar in that state. I call it ‘unusual’, because I have not heard of anything of this sort before … and an ‘experiment’ because we don’t really know what the outcome will be … the ideas are still evolving as they go along.’36 As preannounced above, however, once the material (or better a part of it) was handed over to CAMP, this horizontal, bottom-up view was challenged. The diversity of views of the two collectives can be read in my view in the light of different ways of conceiving politics, especially in the context of image-making in a digital world. I contend that the debate on the publication of SFG’s materials expresses a kind of clash between two generations and their respective views on how to make politics through images. To address this topic I need to enlarge the theoretical scope of my reflections and address a broader scenario informed mainly by political theory.

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The notions of participation, sharing and co-creation that have become the motto of the ‘digital era’ (see among many Leadbeater 2009, Shirky 2008, Bishop 2012) build upon a set of broader transformations that have been addressed by a variety of different authors. Particularly useful in this context is, in my view, the world of scholars such as Antonio Negri (also in his col­ laboration with Michael Hardt) and Paolo Virno. Their theorizing may help us grasp the changing meaning of image-making today and hence the context within which SFG/CAMP operate. According to Paolo Virno (2001), Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2004), the present phase of (late) capitalism must be understood through the notion of the ‘multitude’. A term originally used in a negative sense by Machiavelli, Hobbes and Spinoza to identify those masses of individuals that had not been incorporated into the sovereign state, the ‘multitude’ has received a new popularity in the third millennium. A key to understand con­ temporary neoliberal production modes, the multitude is, according to the three authors mentioned above, the social class that truly represents late capitalism. Made up of neither citizens nor producers, this class occupies a space in-between the individual and the collective. It also blurs the distinction between the public and the private. Generating a new economy centred on ‘the common’ and a new non-vertical antagonistic mode of political organi­ zation, the ‘multitude’ is, according to Negri and Hardt, ‘the living alternative that grows within the Empire’ (Hardt and Negri 2004: xiii). As they suggest, ‘political action aimed at transformation and liberation today can only be conducted on the basis of the multitude’ (ibid.: 99). Digging a little deeper into the characteristics that define the multitude according to the authors mentioned above, we can find a number of principles that seem to inform the latest trends in digital visuality that in my opinion are key to our understanding of the diversity in views between the SFG and CAMP. The first of these characteristics resides in the principle of individua­ tion. A core feature of the multitude is, according to Virno, Hardt and Negri, that it does not build upon a coherent shared sense of collectivity. Instead it is made up of a collection of singularities. Building on the acknowledgment that large parts of the planet’s population today do not ‘feel at home’ (Virno 2001) in the world they inhabit (a possible natural consequence of the process of globalization, of mass migrations, environmental issues, etc.), the multitude marks a departure from conventional notions of community and identity (see Hardt and Negri 2004 and also Negri 2006). In the absence of a localized, community-based protection of the individual, the multitude scatters in a centripetal movement leading to a greater and greater process of self-indivi­ duation. The multitude stands, therefore, in evident opposition to conven­ tional notions of ‘people’ and ‘sovereignty’. I suggest that this centripetal movement towards greater individuation can be looked upon as a core ele­ ment in the way in which CAMP conceived of their contribution when they worked towards putting the SFG material online. For them, materials can and should travel (relatively freely) along the channels of digital

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communication. They should be left open to the multiplicity of interpretations that individual viewers may give them. The internet is the ideal space within which such centripetal forces can act. The members of the SFG instead, despite their radical anti-state, anti-communitarian and anti-NGO agenda address politics within a framework that is still conceptually organized on the basis of communities, group identity, political parties and organizations. It is centrifugal. In my work on iDocs I have been able to identify this passage to indivi­ duation in a number of recurrent techniques such as: the identification of the viewer upon entry (by means of log-in mechanisms via social media, mail addresses, etc.); the personalization of the journey in the materials; the pos­ sibility to re-edit or add online materials, etc. As I discuss in an early text on iDocs (see Favero 2013), a key logic in most of these projects is that they remand the viewers back to their lived experience, going against mainstream interpretations of the digital as a tool for the abstraction and detachment from the materiality of everyday life. In Chapter 2 and 3 I suggested that new forms of digital visuality speak of a return to the politics of everyday life. This is certified by the fact that the largest majority of early iDocs have been characterized by the intent to mobilize and ‘empower’ communities and citi­ zens. This is the case of 18 days in Egypt, High Rise etc. Today the world of iDocs is witnessing, however, a further development. As I discuss elsewhere (Favero 2018) what is at stake today is not only this entrance (through digital visuality) into everyday life, politics and the transposition of online relation­ ships onto the offline world (see Favero 2013 and 2014). Rather what is at stake is an evident attempt at transcending locality and community altogether in order to explore instead the very uniqueness (and universality) of every individual’s personal experience. This is a centripetal movement. A creative dialogue between the particular and the universal is at the centre of such new projects in what looks like a return to the sum total of singularities that make up the multitude. This is the tendency between a successful project such as Seances37 an iDocs on the relation between film and loss and In Limbo38 which explores the frictions and contact points between collective and indivi­ dual memory in ‘the digital era’, etc. Such works speak of two more aspects that according to both Negri and Virno exemplify the era of the ‘multitude’. These are ‘oneness’ and ‘potency’. The late-capitalist urge for self-individuation and personalization does not, according to Virno, Negri and Hardt necessarily lead to pure nihilism. Rather, it can be read as a search for a different kind of unity. An important aspect of the multitude (and hence of late capitalist production modes) is the transformation of the individual into a ‘social individual’. Building upon the work of Gilbert Simondon, Virno (2001) suggests that in this context the term ‘social’ stands for those characteristics that are generic to being human (p. 81). The ‘social’ should not be confused with the notion of ‘collectivity’, ‘community’ or ‘people’. Rather, it indicates the ‘pre-individual’, i.e. all those qualities that make us appear and feel like any other human being, beyond

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ethnicity, race, gender, etc. This quality is what today’s capitalists aim at acquiring. Capitalists look today for individuals’ ‘faculty to produce as such … the sum total of the physical and intellectual capacities that resides in corporality’ (Virno 2001: 81). It is along these lines that we must understand Gehl’s (2009) suggestion that YouTube users should be looked upon as the most unpaid labourers in today’s productive scenario. These core capacities are also, at the same time, what the multitude uses in order to construct its own sense of oneness. Although multiple, the multitude is not ‘fragmented, anarchical or inco­ herent’ (Hardt and Negri 2004: 99). Quite the opposite, it is united by the quest for a sense of oneness that is made up by what Virno calls ‘the life of the mind’ (2001: 25). Reacting against the absence of ‘special places’, that is of a stable, shared, situated sense of belonging to a particular community, language or set of codes, etc. the multitude finds unity in what, quoting Aristotle, Virno calls ‘common places’ (topoi koinoi, p. 23–29). The multitude is, in the words of Hardt and Negri, ‘an internally diversified, multiple social subject whose constitution and action is based not on identity or unity (or, much less, indifference) but on what it has in common’ (Hardt and Negri 2004: 100). It foregrounds common human ontological traits: the ‘living flesh’ (Hardt and Negri 2004) and pure potency (see Virno 2001 and Negri 2006). Here we are possibly entering the realm, to borrow from Agamben, of the ‘bare life’ (1998). And we are in a way also mirroring Bifo’s (Berardi 2011) claim to the return to the very simple act of ‘breathing’ as the central form of resistance in today’s world. Subverting old-fashioned class divisions, postFordist workers enter labour in their essential role as speaking-thinking-sen­ sing beings whose core resource is ‘the sharing of linguistic and cognitive attitudes’ (Virno 2001: 89). I suggest that this tendency is visible in the most recent iDocs as well as in most communication on social media, where the bare presence is in itself claiming a participation in a generalized economy of exchange. Such ontological traits are connected to another set of concepts that Virno individuates as key for understanding contemporary modes of production. In his further analysis of the principles that underpin labour in a post-Fordist context, Paolo Virno suggests that a number of those social practices pre­ viously considered synonymous of inactivity and loss of time and hence as the negation of labour (see Heidegger [1927] 2000) have suddenly found a new value. Chatting, voyeurism and curiosity have today become resources. In its celebration of pure potency, late capitalism celebrates chatting as the value of the capacity to talk. Going beyond the meaning of the utterance itself, chat­ ting is, to borrow from Saussure ([1922] 2013), a matter of ‘langue’ and not ‘parole’, of form above content. It foregrounds a sense of ‘autonomy from predefined goals, circumscribed usages, from the duty of truthfully reprodu­ cing reality’ (Virno 2001: 93). Tightly connected to the functioning of con­ temporary media at large, chatting stands as an evident characteristic of the modality of engagement with digital visuality and iDocs. Viewers do in fact

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engage in a number of dialogues with other viewers; their dialogues multiply indefinitely, creating what according to Virno is a ‘background buzz’ (2001: 94). Chatting finds its natural visual counterpart in voyeurism. Considered a deviant social practice, voyeurism was already brought back to dignity by Benjamin with his flaneur (1999). Today, there is little doubt that the world of online image-sharing and comments # and @ attached to photographs, the contemporary (digitally empowered) merger of chatting and voyeurism is much celebrated. In this scenario, communication (intended as the bare capacity to communicate) steps to the fore as a formal value that is in no need of further content. It is pure form, capacity, potency. The worlds of iDocs as well as of social media are an evident mirror of this logic. Building upon the logic of sharing textual comments, of images and sounds, they look like a giant factory of gossip and voyeurism. These are spaces where human beings come together celebrating their very capacity to communicate and to be present. And indeed, in certain cases, such capacity is also channelled into specific topics. This is the case for instance of the above mentioned 18 days in Egypt39 where the original material gathered from Tahrir Square multiplied well beyond the boundaries of Egypt, producing further commentaries and images in other squares in other parts of the world. Tightly connected to chatting and voyeurism is also curiosity, another activity/instinct/capacity with historically situated negative connotations. Curiosity is often connected to loss of time and backwardness (think of the saying ‘curiosity killed the cat’) and it was inserted into philosophy by Hei­ degger ([1927] 2000). Borrowing from St. Augustine, Heidegger looked upon curiosity as a kind of sensory trap, a sign of the desire for dwelling in the terrain of spectacle. In curiosity, the senses, rather than the intellect, take the fore. This is an activity that speaks about ‘looking’ rather than ‘under­ standing’. And it is exactly because of this supposed superficiality, Virno seems to suggest, that curiosity becomes a positive, productive resource in late capitalism. Curiosity celebrates that urge for sensory engagement, for dis­ covery and wonder that began finding its technical satisfaction in what Ben­ jamin (1999) called the ‘age of mechanical reproduction’. This urge reproduces itself today through the multiple tools available in social media, smartphones, wearable media, etc. and Virno points in the direction of Ben­ jamin’s suggestion that the reproducibility of media rather than a menace has become the best tool for satisfying the growing curiosity of human beings for the world. Curiosity and mechanical reproduction in fact, have in common, the desire to close gaps and distances. A form of expansion of our capacity to sense, curiosity is the driving force that leads to the creation of technological tools that help us to overcome, as Kittler (1999) would put it, the limitations of our senses. Virno states that ‘[t]he mobile vision of the curious, realized with the help of mass media, does not simply passively receive a given show on the contrary it decides every time what to see again’ (2001: 97). It is in this childish act of on-going repetitions; of viewing and re-viewing that we can identify a kernel to social actors’ contemporary engagement with iDocs and

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other forms of digital visuality. Constructed along a non-linear path, they ask us to look at the world with fresh eyes every time and offer us, every time, a new possible set of narratives. In its celebration of individuation, potency, chatting, voyeurism and curi­ osity the contemporary capitalist market seems to mirror the hierarchy of values that underpin communication in digital/visual spaces. It is interesting to point out that in his texts Paolo Virno (or Negri for that matter) make no reference whatsoever to the world of digital communication. I have myself drawn this link given the evident connection between the two. I believe, as I have suggested above and in other publications (see Favero 2013, 2014 and 2018), that when documentaries go online, they are exposed to a major set of transformations. They are faced with the necessity to mix and merge media, to abandon consolidated notions of authorship, foregrounding instead, notions of collaboration and participation. As a response to that, imagemakers need to lose the anchorage in the certainties of their single visual form (what is the difference between photography, film and graphic animation in the images that travel along digital channels today in the shape of GIFs and MOVs?). Contemporary digital visuality (and online documentaries as a part of that) seem to bring to fulfilment the Wagnerian dream of the Gesamt­ kunstwerk – the fusion of all the arts in one work (Horkheimer and Adorno [1944] 2016). In these spaces, the role of the viewers comes to the fore, at the expense of that of the author. It is in the very act of sharing, of forwarding information, of repeated and distracted acts of voyeurism, of chatting and curiosity, that viewership finds its new realm and constructs its meanings. Taking further Bourriaud’s (1998) intuition that the meaning of art today is to be found not in the work of art itself, but in the relations it generates, this (relational) principle has also been sanctified by grant givers and institutions (both national and international). Bishop (2012) argues that nowadays the artist is conceived less as an individual producer of discrete objects than as a collaborator and producer of situations: ‘the work of art as a finite, portable, commodifiable product is reconceived as an on-going or long-term project with an unclear beginning and end; while the audience, previously conceived as a “viewer” or “beholder”, is now repositioned as a co-producer or partici­ pant’. (Bishop 2012: 2) I suggest that the destinies of the SFG archive are to be grasped within the logic of these transformations. They belong in a world where viewers or spectators are no longer identified just as the receptors of messages created by engaged image-makers, curators etc. Rather they are, through their very capacity to communicate and to function as conveyers of information, the very producers of these works. Like other forms of digital visual commu­ nication online documentaries are today more and more dependent upon the viewers (with their interventions with cursors, hands on a pad, VR goggles, bodies in exhibitions etc.) in order to come to life. It is within such a context that CAMP’s attempt at turning the SFG material into a shared online archive has to be understood. This is a context no longer defined by the logic

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of filmmaking but rather by that of participatory media and of image-sharing. And here is indeed were the roads of CAMP and the SFG parted. A clash between centrifugal and centripetal forces. The question of ethics is probably the critical crossroads. In the context of digital visuality, ethics need to be tackled in significantly different ways from what is conventionally done in the context of linear documentaries. During one of my interviews Shaina attacked SFG’s ‘censorship’ referring to this as a ‘lost opportunity’ for using the footage. And in fact, she was also (in an empirical way at least) right. As I mentioned before, differently from other films such as Final Solution by Rakesh Sharma that was widely circulated on DVD and VCD even in many Mumbai slums during the electoral campaigns of 2014 and 2019, the SFG archive remained hidden. Many activists com­ plained, according to Shaina Anand, when offered to use the archive saying that ‘you have taken out what was important!’ (Shaina, personal interview). During this discussion Shaina also compared the approach of the SFG to the one of documentary filmmaker Sanjay Kak (see Chapter 3). According to her, he is a good example of someone who ‘takes his responsibility … Sanjay does things, throws his ethics … he takes it when people give him footage’ (Shaina Anand, personal interview). What destabilized Hassath and the others was, in a way, not really the functioning of the site per se but rather the logic and politics that underpin the process of putting such material online. At one point, they even con­ sidered taking a step back from it. ‘I don’t see myself making the effort if I can’t be sure about the platform,’ Hassath told me. Despite appreciating the structure of the site per se, she felt insecure about it. Yet, testifying to my interpretation, she also failed in offering alternative solutions as she did not have the tools for that. In my conversation with her, Hassath defended her view on the basis of what we could call established or orthodox positions among documentary filmmakers and journalists: ‘having gone through this for a year I think I have some right in the matter’ (Hassath personal inter­ view). Basically, she claimed the right of having her voice heard on the basis of the extent to which this material constitutes an evidence of the presence of the image-maker on the field. Her image-making politics indeed straddle against the politics that inform digital visuality with their claims to openness, sharing, participation, interactivity etc. Her position is similar to that of most established ethnographic filmmakers and to the generation that I myself belong to. Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaranv, on the other hand, felt that the material should simply be made available for broader audiences, even at the cost of renouncing those principles and authorship. They preached for the ‘letting go’ of control and for the centrifugal particularization of narra­ tives that make up the space of contemporary digital visualities. Echoing the mottos of this epoch, for them participation is a core aspect of interactivity ‘that is the starting point’ (Shaina said during an interview). Participation for them is (and must be) an ‘authorship experience’. And, indeed, in a controlled (or ‘censored’) form this could not really happen. ‘By removing audio and

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other signs she [Hassath] made the material un-receivable, useless,’ said Shaina suggesting that in this way ‘all agency is stripped’. For CAMP the collective ideal expresses itself also in the modality of work. According to Shaina, ‘the translation of such material into something new must be done collectively and this did not quite work out’. The members of CAMP looked for more organic forms of organization, supported by the sense of openness (and reflexivity) that make up today’s digital habitats: ‘we need to make our choices visible’ (Ashok, personal interview). Yet, doing this they failed in connecting with the solid (although perhaps old-fashioned) ethics and poli­ tical ambition that informed the work of the SFG.

Conclusions In this chapter I have looked at the SFG archive trying to address the possible reasons for its failure. I have suggested that the tensions between the views of the SFG and those of CAMP amount to a clash between two different visions of what documentary image-making is about and also offer two competitive views of politics, each rooted in a different historical moment. Regarding the former, we have on the one hand SFG’s anchoring in linear narrative and authorship (and hence in the certainties offered by the medium of film sup­ ported also by a sense of ownership to the material). For the SFG, the film­ maker goes to the field and gathers evidence that he or she will eventually be able to transfer to a viewer. In opposition to that the members of CAMP who were involved in this collaboration belong to a ‘younger’, more digitally inclined generation that foregrounds notions of multilinearity, participation, openness, co-curation and personalization. Regarding the politics, there is a friction between two different ways of conducting social intervention via images. On the one hand, we have the (perhaps more old-fashioned) politics of control supported by established ethical views and practices. On the other, are the politics of the multitude and of the commons. While the former in fact work within an older framework of top-down politics (the control and respon­ sibility of the image-maker) the latter accept the individuation, openness and dialogical nature that make up the politics of the multitude. As I mentioned above, this is eventually a clash between centripetal and centrifugal forces. As the SFG pulls towards the centre, CAMP pushes towards the outside. Both for what are regarded as matters of form as well as of content, the SFG is moving towards finding a centralized degree of control while CAMP cherishes the opening and scattering that make up contemporary forms of digital visuality and their politics. In the views of the latter, such materials may end up floating in the channels of the net, being reproduced endlessly through algorithmic logics that are beyond the grasp of the author, the image-maker. Accepting their role as one of the actants in the process of making and distributing images these cease to exercise control on the material they produce, signalling hence the entrance into the world of digital visuality. Yet, where would those images end up? And what are the risks of that journey?

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The key question is to establish which is the most suitable politics for con­ veying the message that the SFG so compassionately tried to share with the outer world. Despite being surely more in tune with the contemporary world, the politics of CAMP raise a doubt as to whether they can allow for a cri­ tique to take place from within the internet, a space controlled by multi­ nationals and governments and where materials travel in all directions under the invisible control of algorithms. This brings me back to one quote by Toni Negri where he speculates on the extent to which resistance can be enacted: ‘from within a world which admits of no other world other than the one which actually exists, and which knows that the “outside” to be con­ structed can only be the other within an absolute insideness.’ (Negri 2011: 108, italics in original)

Notes 1 https://www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/volunteers/dispatches/gurpal060602.htm 2 https://onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/volunteers/dispatches/sfg021903.htm 3 Along with many activists I object to the use of the term ‘riots’ in these contexts as it seems to lead to an understanding of the events as spontaneous and disorderly. Gurjarat 2002 was instead a fairly organized act of violence for which the terms ‘carnage’ or ‘pogrom’ are, as suggested nay many authors, better suited. 4 https://scroll.in/article/935818/babri-masjid-case-archaeological-evidence-rules-out­ present-day-ayodhya-as-city-of-sacred-texts?fbclid=IwAR1KOR3cDfzm40Sa3PpUc J2IiY5nE6fE8l_LP9qoXbcq71EBhoBh3NOZeWc 5 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/03/06/provocation-preceded­ indian-train-fire/3f4165e9-d76f-4e49-86db-1f2aa6619881/?utm_term=.4691a29f38f2

6 https://onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/volunteers/volunteers.htm

7 https://www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/donate/volunteers.htm

8 https://www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/volunteers/volunteers.htm

9 Shramdaan in Hindi means a voluntary contribution involving physical effort.

10 https://onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/volunteers/dispatches/neeraj072802.htm 11 https://www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/volunteers/dispatches/sfg120902.htm 12 https://www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/volunteers/dispatches/gurpal060602.htm 13 http://prisonvalley.arte.tv/?lang=en 14 https://nathanpenlington.com/ChooseYourOwnDocumentary 15 https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/PalestineRemix/ 16 http://insomnia.nfb.ca/#/insomnia 17 https://beyondthemap.withgoogle.com/en-us/ 18 https://artsandculture.withgoogle.com/en-us/national-parks-service/ 19 https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2016/apr/27/6x9-a-virtual-experience­ of-solitary-confinement 20 http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/projects/rider-spoke/ 21 Draw me Close is in a co-production between the National Theatre’s Immersive Storytelling Studio and the National Film Board of Canada, in collaboration with All Seeing Eye. The trailer can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zokAxgR NYs and a further analysis at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrpUvRSb2E0 22 https://docubase.mit.edu/project/priyas-shakti/ 23 https://www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/volunteers/dispatches/sfg021903.htm

146 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

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https://onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/volunteers/dispatches/sfg021903.htm https://www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/volunteers/dispatches/sfg021903.htm https://www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/volunteers/dispatches/neeraj072802.htm https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/Modi-kicks-off-Gujarat-Gaurav­ Yatra/articleshow/21590967.cms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_Bakery_case#cite_note-chronR-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_Bakery_case#cite_note-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_Bakery_case#cite_note-whyimportant-4 https://onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/volunteers/dispatches/sfg021903.htm https://www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/volunteers/dispatches/gurpal060602.htm https://www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/volunteers/dispatches/gurpal060602.htm According to Hassath Faiza was not as strongly against the public use of explicit references as she was. https://www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/volunteers/dispatches/sfg021903.htm https://www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/action/volunteers/dispatches/sfg120902.htm http://seances.nfb.ca/skipIntro https://inlimbo.tv/en/ http://beta.18daysinegypt.com/

6

Conclusions

‘There are no ends but new beginnings leading to newer beginnings ad infinitum’ Siddhartji Pachisia I am back in Delhi, conducting ethnographic research on ageing and dying. Years ago, it was here where I conducted my first fieldwork on adolescents’ experiences of mental health. My current research project brings me back to my old passion for medical anthropology and the world of care. And here, as I witness new uncompleted circles, spiral and swirls opening up and closing down all around me, I write the conclusions to this book. Just as each chapter in this book intersects with the others, so do the circles, spirals and swirls of my present work with my own past and future. In my present fieldwork, images play a central role, not as an object of analysis this time but as tools for exploring life stories. Despite having started with a focus on death and ageing, my fieldwork is quickly morphing into a celebration of life and love. My interlocutors (aged women and men in retirement homes and shelters) seem to be more engaged with light than darkness as in the quote with which I open this chapter and which comes from one conversation with Siddhartji Pachisia. Just like Siddhart, a 75 year old successful businessman who has sought and found his peace in a retire­ ment home in South Delhi, many of the people I am presently meeting have found a solid place in the present. They have left both the past and the future ‘behind’. This entails that they no longer make plans for their coming life and have also stopped analyzing their past deeds. They live in full acceptance of things as they are. To my surprise they are also very willing to accept the presence of a visual anthropologist asking questions and making pictures. Surrounding my new field sites is, however, a hardening social (and envir­ onmental) climate. The air in Delhi has reached a permanent state of health hazard and the capital of India is today officially the most polluted city in the world. And vital oxygen seems to be missing at the social level too. In a choreography of pollution and protests the streets of Delhi are grasping for air. Like never before have I witnessed such a state of tension in Delhi and in India at large. And I see a growing amount of people trying to simultaneously

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redefine their relation to the state and the country as a living organism. 2019 ended with the eruption of a wave of protests (that is not yet over at the time in which these lines are being written) in most Indian cities as a response to the controversial (or better, openly discriminatory) CAA, the Citizenship Amendment Act that discriminated against Muslim refugees from neigh­ bouring countries. Attached to this law is also the proposal to create a nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC), a project that, given the formulation of the CAA, generates a widespread wave of concern and dis­ content. The protests managed to gather people from the most varied strands of life and were characterized, especially when it comes to the students, by an impressive degree of creativity (memorable are the satirical posters used by them) as well as by a quest for peaceful resistance. While political forces try to divide India along religious lines, the country is witnessing new forms of unity among those who hold its secular identity as the country’s greatest strength. In Shaheen Bagh as well as at Jamia Milia students protests on some occa­ sions under the banner ‘Love in exchange for hatred’. These events were just the latest in a long series of events that have unfol­ ded during the recent years. With the BJP having won the latest national elections the Hindutva agenda has gained momentum and a number of com­ munities and social groups have progressively felt more and more under threat. To mention but a few key events that preceded the anti-CAA protests, on the 9th of November 2019 the Supreme Court of India pronounced its final judgement on the Ayodhya dispute (whose follow-up events I address in Chapter 5). While defining the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid an ‘ille­ gal’ act the verdict nevertheless decreed that the disputed land on which the Babri Masjid had been built has to be handed over to a trust (managed by the Central Government) whose duty will be the construction of a temple devoted to the God Ram. In exchange, the Muslim community (the Sunni Waqf Board) has been given another slice of land for the purpose of building a mosque. The verdict basically responded to the decades-long requests made by the forces of Hindutva (the BJP, RSS and allied organizations) and has been perceived by many activists and artists as a profoundly unfair and con­ tradictory statement. Online independent magazine Scroll writes that ‘Such an outcome further entrenches the sense that India is a majoritarian state where mob rule by the majority can be given the imprimatur of state authority’. And in Kashmir a whole state has been under lockdown for months. Internet has been blocked and political assemblies and gatherings banned in a move that has been criticized by many human rights organiza­ tions. The secular future of the republic of India is more than ever at stake these days and so also are the rights of a lot of marginalized social groups and individuals. My book has moved in the backwaters of these debates and tensions, that have built up over the years, decades and centuries. When I began my writing, I could barely envision that each central piece of work explored in this book would in one way or another address matters of conflict, death and loss. This was

Conclusions

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not my conscious intention as I was conducting fieldwork for the present book. But indeed, this can be easily read as the uncanny encounter of uncompleted cir­ cles, swirls and spirals. And the direction that this book has taken is probably also a response not only to the events that are unfolding in India but also to those that have characterized my life. But just as in my present work, the experiences I address in this book also contain much life and light. They speak of the desire, expressed by the works of the image-makers, artists and activists that I have engaged with, to emerge from this slumber, to bring the rights of the marginalized into the light and to conduct active resistance. They all put the use of images at the service of a broader cause. Again, images are beacons to the future and not only mirrors of the past. This can be traced in the work of Sanjay Kak and many other (young) documentarians also, whose devotion to social causes and to mar­ ginalized people I have addressed in Chapter 3. It is also at the centre of Zuleikha Chaudhari’s and RAQ’s engagement with colonial memory and photography and especially with that painful 1858 photograph by Felice Beato that, despite its ‘ghostly’ character, still very much constitutes a ‘presence’ in postcolonial India. Chapter 5 takes us a step further into the world of digital practices and archiving and looks at the experiences of a group of young activists devoting their skills, lives and energies to the defence of the rights of those local populations that were exposed to the 2002 ‘Gujarat Carnage’. These experiences testify to how images can be an ephemeral, yet also very solid, act of love. What they have in common is a desire to use the images as tools for social intervention, or to paraphrase John Grierson, as hammers for denouncing injustices and instigating change. Explor­ ing the use of images made by these various actors I hope to have been able to offer a window (albeit narrow and specific) into a number of key political and social debates in contemporary India. But in parallel to this I wish, however, to have been able to also create a platform for rethinking the various ways in which images, in a different situated contexts, can be dealt with, understood, and used. I believe that the experiences I have looked into here speak of images’ simulta­ neous capacity to narrate and represent and to be, do and affect. They respond to Didi-Huberman’s (2003) call to ask more from images (see Chapter 4). This is why I believe that studies of visualities and digital visualities in postcolonial contexts can be useful and instructive. The main goal of this book has been, on the basis of the material I have gathered over the years in India, to decentre conventional assumptions regarding images, visuality and digital visuality. Yet, as I also stressed in the introduction to this book, I believe that when doing this we should be careful in not idealizing such localized experiences looking for elements of cultural authenticity. The works and practitioners that I describe in this book are, in fact, the result of an ongoing dialectic between Indian matters and transnational flows in the world of art, filmmaking, photography and digital practices. As I wrote in the introduction this is not a book on India but a book in India. This is a collec­ tion of uncompleted and ever-changing circles, swirls and spirals.

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures, those followed by n refer to a note with its number. absence 35, 101–3 action cameras 25 Advani, L. K. 117 Agamben, G. 14n5, 108, 140 Alberti, Leon Battista 26 Alhazen 26 Alkazi, Ebrahim 82–3 Allana, Amal 82 Allana, Rahaab 20, 94 allographic arts 17 Ambedkar, Dr. 55 analogue technology 11, 17–18, 21, 96 Anand, Shaina 47, 129–30, 132, 133, 143 animations 19, 142 AR (augmented reality) 21, 24, 32, 33–4, 73, 124 archives 18–19, 124, 135–6; Gujarat carnage (2002) 112, 126–31, 131–4; Traditional Knowledge Digital Library 72 Aristotle 108, 109n10 art galleries 59, 71, 84 artworks 19–20, 28–9, 142 Asoka (2001) 7, 14n8 audiences see viewers Australian Aboriginal people 31 authorship 134–7, 142, 143–4 automation 19, 21 Ayodhya 112, 115, 116–17, 119, 148 Azad, Chandra Shekar 54, 58 Babloo Happy Hai (2014) 70 Babri Masjid mosque 47, 116–17, 119, 148 banal nationalism 6, 7 Barthes, Roland 96, 98, 99, 106

Beato, Felice 80–1, 92, 94; Sikandar Bagh photograph 77–8, 79, 80, 93–4, 95, 108–9 Bell Bajao project (2008) 72–3 Belting, H. 13, 101 Benjamin, W. 105, 107, 108, 141 Berger, John 13, 96–7, 98 Best Bakery Case (2002) 130 Beyond the Map 124 BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) 6, 7, 117, 118, 119, 130, 148 Black Ticket Films (BTF) 69–70 Bollywood see Indian cinema boundaries 36; blurring 14n5, 17, 19–21, 83, 108–9; crossing 77, 98, 102, 107; of reality 125; self and other 26, 32–3 Buddhism 34, 55 Bunsha, Dionne 115, 119 Bush, Vannevar 23 Byzantium icons 28, 31–2, 34 camera equipment 18, 19–20, 22–5, 100 CAMP (Critical Art and Media Prac­ tices) 112; Gulf to Gulf 74; and SFG 47, 129, 132–4, 136–8, 142–5 Campaign Against Censorship (CAC) 64 Campbell, Sir George 94 capitalism 36, 60, 138, 139–40, 141–2 censorship 45–6, 60, 64, 133–4 Centre for Development and Instruc­ tional Technology (CENDIT) 46 centrifugal forces 134, 138–9, 143, 144 centripetal forces 67, 133, 134, 139, 143, 144 chatting 140–2 Chaudhari, Zuleikha 78, 82–6, 89, 90–1, 104–5, 149

Index children 70, 129 Choose Your Own Documentary 124 cinema halls 43 Cinema of Resistance (CoR) 64–5, 66–7 Citizenship Amendment Act (2019) 148 Climate’s First Orphans (2006) 70 collaboration 36, 142 colonialism: Bhagat Singh 54–5; East India Company 92–3; Indian cinema 39, 41, 43–4, 66; Sikandar Bagh pho­ tograph (Beato) 80–1, 94–5, 99, 105–6 Commonwealth Games (2010) 47, 69 communism 53, 60 confidentiality 133–4 Congress Party 130 control 27, 28–9; of citizens 10; of nar­ rative 133–4, 136–7, 143, 144 convergence 10, 15–17 copies 20–1 creation 17; audience co-creation 61–3; of digital images 17–18, 19–20 Critical Art and Media Practices see CAMP (Critical Art and Media Practices) crowdsourcing 66, 71–2 curatorial practice see archives curiosity 141–2 Cybermohalla project 71–2 Dalits 55, 68, 76n14, 115 death 97–8, 106, 109, 147 decolonization 16, 29, 32, 35, 67 Delhi 1, 2, 3–4, 6, 82, 89, 147 Descartes, René 26, 36n1 Devineni, Ram 73 Dhanraj, Deepa 48 Didi-Huberman, Georges 12, 77, 79, 104, 106–8, 109, 149 Digital Green project (2013) 72 digital images 11–12; creation 17–18, 19– 20; digitization of artworks 19; ephe­ merality 22; travel of 16, 21–2, 36; see also photography digital technologies 8, 10, 35–6, 47, 86, 149; access to 36; convergence with visual technologies 15–17; decentring 35–6; digital habitats 16 digital visuality 19–21, 32–3, 140–2 Dilli (2011) 69 documentary films 48–50, 67–8, 75; and art galleries 71; colonial era 43–4; and fiction cinema 70–1; iDocs 71–5, 122–6, 134–6; independent doc­ umentary films 39, 45–8, 50–1,

161

63–7; state sponsored 44–5; see also Indian cinema Doordarshan 45 Draw Me Close (Tannahill) 125 Dutt, BK 55 Dutta, Madhushree 46 East India Company 92–3 economic crisis (2008) 66 economic liberalization 42 Edwards, Elisabeth 31 18 days in Egypt project 139, 141 Eitzen, Bill 49–50 ekphrasis 101, 102 Emergency (1975-6) 45, 47, 59 Engineer, Asghar Ali 116, 118 ephemerality 22, 105, 149 ethics 136–7, 143, 144 ethnography 76n5; validity and authority 50 Etruscans 97 Facebook 21, 36, 64 Fenton, Roger 92 Film Advisory Board (FAB) 44 film industry see Indian cinema film-making see documentary films Films Division (FD) 44, 47 Final Solution (2004) 47, 115, 116, 119, 143 Flickr 21, 22 Florensky, Pavel 12, 27–8, 35, 37n4, 102 Flusser, V. 104–5 Flyoverdelhi (2004) 1, 135 Frazer, James 79, 97, 103, 105 Freud, Sigmund 35, 81, 107, 108, 112 funding 66; and NGOs 47, 64–5, 66, 110, 126 Gandhi, Indira 45, 59 Gandhi, Mahatma 6, 42, 51–2, 53, 57 Gandhi, Rajiv 42 Gandhi, Rikin 72 Gandhi, Sonia 130 geometrical perspective 26–8 Ghosh, Ashim 74–5 Ghosh, Sushmit 69–70 ghosts 2, 79, 91–2, 97–8, 107–9 globalization 4, 6, 47, 138 Godhra 115, 118, 119 Goodman, Nelson 17 Gopal, Jai 54 ‘Great Mutiny’ photograph see Sikander Bagh photograph (Beato)

162

Index

Grierson, John 48–9, 50–1, 75 Gujarat carnage (2002) 47, 112, 115–19, 130; see also SFG (Shared Footage Group) Halkaa (2018) 70 Hardt, Michael 138, 139–40 Hassath, Hassath 120, 126–7, 130, 133–4, 143–4 HDR (High Dynamic Range) 19–20 Heidegger, Martin 140, 141 Hidden World of the National Parks 124 Hindu culture 73, 106; imagery 29–30, 31–2, 34; Indianness 5, 7; masala style 42, 70; mythology 5, 14n3, 40–1; pil­ grims 110, 115, 117 Hindu nationalists 5–6, 52, 117, 118; Hindutva 6, 14n7, 47, 117, 119, 121, 148; use of video technology 46 Hindus, attacks on 115 Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HRSA) 54 Hyderabad Blues (1998) 43 I am Kalam (2010) 70 icons 27, 35; Bhagat Singh 55–7; Byzantium 28, 31–2, 34; Hindu 31, 34 iDocs 10, 25, 71–5, 122–6, 134–6, 139–40; SFG 110, 122; typologies of 123–4 image-making 10, 18–19; analogue tech­ nology 17; digital technology 9, 11–12, 17–18, 19–20; ethics of 136–7; iDocs 125–6; meaning 138; political issues 132–3, 137 images: changing functions 21, 25–6, 28; digital travel 16, 21, 25–6 35–36; and Hinduism 29–31; immersive 16, 33, 124– 5; meaning 29, 99, 112; nature of 12, 15, 86–8, 90, 97, 100–4, 106–8, 149; perfor­ mativity 11, 13, 17, 21, 26, 88, 98, 102, 108; present images 12–13, 88, 95; and separation 2–3; stereoscopic images 28 imagination 11, 101–2, 108 immateriality 13, 18, 22 In Limbo 139 India: colonial rule 40–1; independence 42, 51–3; Indianness 5–7, 9, 51–2; post-independence 44; Tiger India 2, 4, 9, 37, 42 Indian cinema 7, 39–43; Bollywood 41, 43, 76n2; censorship 45–6, 64; coloni­ alism 39, 41, 66, 76n2; unifying influ­ ence 41–2, 66; see also documentary films

Indian Film Society Movement 66 individuation 138–9, 142, 144 infrastructure 10, 19, 23 Instagram 21, 55 interactive documentaries see iDocs International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA) 69 Internet 9–10, 64, 65, 145, 148 Jallianwalla Bagh massacre 53 Jashn-e-Azadi - How We Celebrate Free­ dom (2007) 59, 60 Jenkins, Henry 36 Joshi, Sanjay 65, 66, 67 A Journal of Insomnia 124 jugaad 10 Kak, Sanjay: career 39, 45, 48, 51, 59–60, 65, 67, 143, 149; on doc­ umentary films scene 46–7, 62, 63–4, 75, 120; Films Division (FD) 44; Red Ant Dream (RAD) (2013) 38, 55, 58–9, 60–3 Kant, Immanuel 37n2, 93 Kanwar, Amar 71 Kashmir 59, 148 Khan, Faiza Ahmad 127, 133–4 Khan, Shah Rukh 7 Kukonoor, Nagesh 43 Lagaan (2001) 7 Lal, Jessica 6 looking, act of 26, 30–2 Lucknow see Sikandar Bagh photograph (Beato) Lumière brothers 40 magic 97, 98 Magic Lantern 46 marginality 63–4, 65, 67, 69 martyrdom 39, 53, 54 masala style 42, 70 massacres 53, 77; Sikandar Bagh 77–8, 81, 92–5, 108–9 materiality 13, 23 mathematics 27 McLuhan, M. 17–18 meaning 13; making 62–3, 83, 91–2, 104–5, 107, 109; multiple 87–8 Mehra, Rakeysh Omprakash 58 memory 23–4, 139; capture of 22; Memex 23 methodology 13 mimesis 97, 103, 109n7

Index mirrors 31 Mitchell, W.J.T. 100–1 modernity 4, 27, 51–2, 64 Modi, Narendra 9, 117–18, 119, 130 Monsanto 68 MR (mixed reality) 21, 32, 33–4, 73, 124, 125 multidimensionality 100 multiplex cinemas 43 multitude 138, 139–40, 144 Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) 46, 119 Murray, S. 22 music 17 Muslims: attacks on 115, 117, 118, 119; refugees 148 Nancy, Jean-Luc 79, 86, 93, 101–2, 103–4, 109n7 Nandan, Srijan 68–9 narrative 28, 90, 98; control of 133–4, 136–7, 143, 144; iDocs 125; linear 68–9, 136, 144; non-linear 60, 122, 133, 142; responsibility for 133–4, 136; storytelling 70, 105, 107 Negri, Antonio 138, 139–40, 145 Nehru, Jawaharlal 42, 51–2 New Delhi Belly (2009) 75 New Delhi Television (NDTV) 9 new images 12–13 NGOs (Non-governmental Organiza­ tions) 68, 70; influence of 47, 64–5, 66, 110, 126; onlinevolunteers.org 120; and video technology 46 Nichols, B. 49, 61–2 Nirbaya Case 73 onlinevolunteers.org 110, 111, 120–2, 128 organized crime 42 other 32–3 pad.ma 112, 113, 114, 128, 131, 132; and confidentiality 133–4 painting 19–20, 28 Palestine Remix 124 Panda, Nila Madhab 70 Pande, Gorakh 65 parallel cinema 43, 76n4 participation 143–4; performance 83; projects 71–5, 123–5 Patwardhan, Anand 45, 48, 51, 59 People’s Culture Forum 65 performativity 35; Bhagat Singh 57; documentaries 43; icons 32; images 11,

163

13, 17, 21, 26, 88, 98–9, 102; story­ telling 105, 107; theatre 83; The Transparent Performer (TPP) 79, 90 personal safety 127 perspective 26–8 Peters, Jan-Marie 99, 100, 104, 105 Phalke, Dadasaheb 40–1 phantasms 5, 14n5, 107–8, 109n10 photographers 18–19, 25; see also Beato, Felice photography 19, 77, 86; absence and presence 99–103; analogue technology 17–18, 96; and death 97–8; death of 12; digital 21–2; old photographs 108; paradoxical nature 95–8; scanning 104–5; as symptom 107–8; truth 87–8, 105; see also digital images pictures 87–8, 100 Pinney, C. 29, 32, 53, 55, 57 piracy 64, 65 political issues 10, 23; authorship 134, 144; democratization 36; digital access 36; in documentary films 46, 48, 60, 62–6, 70–1; Gujarat carnage (2002) 117, 118–19; image-making 132–3, 137; SFG 132–4 portals 28, 102 portraits, Bhagat Singh 55–7 postcolonialism 15, 29, 44, 149; con­ tinuity with colonial era 46; and Indian cinema 39, 40 post-globalization 3 Pradakshina (1987) 59 Praxis 68 presence 28, 93; vs absence 35, 101–3; and performance 88, 98–9, 104; and visibility 106 present images 12–13, 88, 95 Prison Valley 124 Prisoners of Conscience (1978) 45 Priya Shakti project 33, 73, 125 Project Kalki 72–3 projection 33 PSBT (Public Service Broadcasting Trust) 47, 66, 68, 69 Public Access Digital Media Archive see pad.ma Punjab: Doosra Adhay (1986) 59 racism 68 Rai, Lala Lajpat 54 Raja Harishchandra (1913) 40–1 Rajguru, Shaheed 54, 55 Rancière, Jacques 11, 100, 101

164

Index

Rang de Basanti (2006) 58 RAQS Media Collective 74, 78, 149 reality: boundaries of 125; connotation 99; and digital images 20–1, 22, 23, 32; in photographs 12, 20, 96–7; sta­ ging 93–4; and the theatre 85; and unreality 16, 50–1, 108; see also repre­ sentation; truth Red Ant Dream (RAD) (2013) 38–9, 55, 57–8, 60–3 Rehearsing the Witness: The Bhawal Court Case (Chaudhari) 83–4 Remembering 1992 platform (2012) 74 Renaissance 26–8 representation 13, 28, 88, 98, 102; see also reality revolution 39, 53, 54, 60; scientific 104 Rider Spoke 124–5 RSS (Rashtrya Swamyasewak Sangh) 6, 117, 148 rural India 9, 29, 51–2, 66, 71, 72 sacredness 102, 104 Sahay, Neeraj 120, 126–7, 129, 130–1, 132 Sahopedia (2016) 72 St. Augustine 37n2, 141 Sangh Parivar 117, 118, 137 SARAI 71–2 Satyarthi, Kalash 70 Saunders, John 54 Saussure, F. 32, 140 Scott, James 54 Seances 139 Seen at Secundarbagh 79, 80, 89–92; see also The Transparent Performer (TPP) self: and other 32–3, 108; self-showing 103 separation 2–3, 34; observer and observed 27, 28–9, 33 SFG (Shared Footage Group) 47, 51, 110–12, 120–2, 126–31; and CAMP 112, 127, 129, 132, 133–4, 136–8, 142–5; confidentiality 133–4; political agenda 132–4, 139; responsibility 132–3; see also Gujarat carnage (2002) Shadows on the Road (2016) 69 sharing 21, 22, 87, 131, 136, 141 Sharma, Rakesh 47, 48, 51, 115, 119, 143 Sikandar Bagh photograph (Beato) 77–8, 79, 104, 105–6, 108–9; purpose 94–5, 99; staging 81, 93–4; uncanny nature 81, 106, 108; see also The Transparent Performer (TPP)

silent films 40–1 Singh, Bhagat 39, 53–8, 60, 62–3 Singh, Gurpal 110, 120, 126, 132 Singh, Rajnath 130 6X9 124 smartphones 9, 19, 73, 115 social media 64, 73, 140; sharing/viewing 21 soldiers 90; sepoys 81, 92–3 Sontag, Susan 96, 97 The Sovereign Forest (2016) 71 stereoscopic images 28 Subramaniam, Kalki 72 Sukhdev, Shaheed 54, 55 Sukumaran, Ashok 47, 129–30, 132, 133, 143 symptoms 79, 104, 107–8 Tannahill, Jordan 125 Tasveer: Confronting Rape Culture project 73 TasveerGhar 72 Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai 74 telephone calls 74–5 television 45, 73 testimonies 94, 105, 106, 121 textualization 50 theatre 78, 81, 84, 88; see also The Transparent Performer (TPP) Thomas, Rintu 69–70 3D cinema 28 3D printers 24 Traditional Knowledge Digital Library 72 transformation 142; Sikandar Bagh pho­ tograph 78, 81, 89–90, 91, 100 transgender community 72–3 transience see ephemerality The Transparent Performer (TPP) 78–84, 85, 88–91, 96, 100–1, 104–7; Seen at Secundarbagh 79, 89–92 trauma 127–8 truth 12, 49, 62, 87–8, 98; and violence 78–9, 95, 103, 105; see also reality Tulsi Bakery case (2002) 130 Twitter 21 uncanny nature 20, 35, 112, 149; Sikandar Bagh photograph (Beato) 81, 108 Utorrent 65

Index Vajpayee, Atal Bihari 117

verbal dimensions 100–1 VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad) 117, 118

video technology 45, 46

viewers 66–7; as co-creators 61–3; con­ struction of meaning 89, 104–5, 107;

critical reflection 51, 79; engagement

16, 80, 86–8; immersive environment

34–5; participation 71–2, 75; trust 49;

voyeurism 140–2

Vikalp 46, 119

violence 86, 93, 105–6; and truth 78–9,

95, 103–4, 105; see also Gujarat car­ nage (2002); massacres; Sikandar

Bagh photograph (Beato)

Virno, Paolo 138, 139–41, 142

virtuality 22, 87

Vishu festival 31

vision, nature of 11, 26

165

visual technologies: consumer 24–5; convergence with digital technologies 15–17 voyeurism 140–2

VR (virtual reality) 16, 21, 32, 33–4, 124

wearable equipment 24–6, 141

Western culture 6, 32, 42, 66, 109n6

Words on Water (2002) 47, 59, 60

World War I 90

XR (expanded reality) 21, 32, 124

Yesterday’s Past (2019) 70–1

YouTube 18, 65, 140