Khirkeeyaan, 2006

Neighbourhood TV repurposed as conversation systems in a mashup of cable TV and early CCTV systems, in an "urban village" in Delhi.

TV sets, CCTV cameras, microphones, video splitter, Rf modulator, XLR and COAX Cables. 7 episodes, Runtime various.

The seven “episodes” of this work were born out of seven sets of installations of security cameras and cable TV wiring in Khirkee Extension, an urban village in Delhi. Video became the ‘site’ for these interactions and conversations.

In 2006, when Khirkeeyaan took place, the predominant landscape of images was still (as had been for the past couple of decades) television. The security-camera quad produces a set of four “holes” in the surface of television. The fact that people who face the camera also face each other, while also facing their familiar TV sets, produces a tension in the TV image: a redistribution of the gaze, a grid of speaking and listening, and a sense of liveness that is also physically nearby.

Khirkee and Khirkee Extension are fractured by all sorts of lines: caste, religion, money, new and old settlers from different regions. Khirkee was once a feudal village, whose ‘Extension’ has been claimed and been settled in cycles since partition..

Khirkeeyaan's older traversals of this terrain, its conversations, its double logic of safety (in ones own home) and self-exposure, entered directly into a space produced by the non- overlap of land-based politics, and global communication networks.

Khirkeeyaan was realised by Shaina Anand with Aastha Chauhan and Gaurav Chandelya during "Public Art Intervention", a residency at Khoj, New Delhi in April 2006.
Thanks to Anita Dube, Tanmoy Sarkar, Manoj VP, Hemant Sreekumar

Exbhibition History

2022
Passages through Passages , Sharjah Art Foundation

2019
CAMP Beginnings Argos Centre for Art and Media, Brussels

2015
As If – I Rock, Paper, Scissors , Experimenter, Kolkata
As If – II Flight of the Black Boxes , 24 Jorbagh, New Delhi

2014
The Cinema of CAMP: Tales from the Networked Neighbourhood , Filmmaker festival, Palestrina Cinema and DOCVA, Milan

2011
Appeal for Alternatives , Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Schmela Haus, Dusseldorf

2008
Reality Effects , Henie Onstad Art Centre, Oslo
‘If we can’t get it Together’ Artists rethinking the (mal)function of Communities ,
The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto
Broadcast Yourself, Artists interventions into Self-Broadcasting from the 1970’s ,
Cornerhouse, Manchester
Broadcast Yourself, Artists interventions into Self-Broadcasting from the 1970’s ,
AV Festival, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle

2006
Impossible India, Frankfurter Kunstverein
Sensor-Census-Censor, Sarai, New Delhi
Honorary Mention, Interactive Art , Ars Electronica, Linz
Public, Art , Intervention, Khoj, New Delhi

Gallery: Khirkeeyaan
As If - I Rock, Paper, Scissors

EXPERIMENTER, Kolkata
January 7 - February 10 2015

An old game of hand-commanded powers:

Jan, Ken, Pon
Mushti, Pataka, Kartarimukha

An interplay of forces in which the roles of Subject, Medium and Author can be exchanged, and also changed.

Three Early Works

As If - II Flight of the Black Boxes

24 JORBAGH, New Delhi
January 27 - February 24 2015

Born in experimentation and uncertainty, black boxes of machines and institutions surround us with seemingly smooth and impenetrable functions. But reintroduce the uncertainty, reopen the conflicts, and the box appears stable in neither form nor function.

Twelve works by CAMP look out through the interior worlds of cameras, memory devices, surveillance systems and more, developing feelings and strategies along with them.

CAMP: Beginnings

Beginnings is an exhibition tracing some of the conceptual and artistic origins of CAMP. At ARGOS, Brussels as part of new beginnings at ARGOS itself.

Tales from the Networked Neighbourhood: The Cinema of CAMP

Five films by CAMP curated by Vassily Bourikas and Filmmaker Festival

21st march
6:00 pm Khirkeeyaan (2006) 17 mins
and Hum Logos (2012) 45 mins
at Careof DOCVA, Milan

22nd March
Cinema Palestrina, Milan
5:30 pm
The Neighbour before the House (2011) 60 mins
7:30 pm
From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf (2013), 83 mins
22:00 pm
The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories (2011), 60 mins

Passages through Passages الرفيق قبل الطريق

A survey exhibition of the spatial, technical and cultural imaginations cultivated by CAMP.
Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi



Bombay Tilts Down, 2022

13m 14s looped, seven channel environment with music
2022
Filmed by CCTV camera from a single-point location in South-Central Mumbai.

In Cameras Res, 2019

De Appel, Amsterdam

On three screens, a city-symphony filmed by automated CCTV cameras in Amsterdam. The optical and motor capacities of these cameras are pushed to an extreme. Certain human subjects reappear near or far in the images, suggesting a form of reciprocal knowledge or intent, a secret pact between cameras and people.

A Photogenetic Line, 2019

A 100-foot long sequence of photo-cutouts, first shown at the Chennai Photo Biennale, March 2019

Matrix : Skulptur Projekt Münster, 2017

MATRIX
Of mother, womb, array, environment in which more specialised structures can grow.

Theater Münster
Neubrückenstraße 63
10 Jun - 1 Oct, 2017
Site-specific installation with Electric cable, switches, speakers, monitors, custom electronics.

Men-At-Work with Boxes in Stereo

20 mins, HD. 2 - channel installation
Cantonese, Mandarin
Filmed in Guangzhou at the Zhuhai International Container Terminal

The Country of the Sea

Single exposure solar cyanotype print on cotton fabric
CAMP with Shunya collective and Clark House Initiative 22 x 5 feet
An image of the sea as its own “country”, with frontier towns at its edges disorients an easy reading of this territory

Descendants, 2014

A three-channel installation from 8mm film From the Clark House family archives, sequenced in a timeline as above. Each screen is a different part of the same 8mm frame, usually a face.

From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf, 2013

Feature-length film by sea between western India, eastern Africa and the Persian gulf. First shown at a purpose built outdoor cinema on the creekside in Sharjah in 2013, where many of the sailors gather. Shown in Documenta 13 in an abridged form, as part of the installation The Boat Modes.

83 mins. Original format(s): HDV, SDV, VHS, Cellphone videos (variable). Stereo audio and in-cameraphone music.

Destuffing Matrix

4 channel HDV, 8 minutes

All Works