Bombay Tilts Down, 2022
13m 14s looped, seven channel environment with alternating soundtracks
2022
Filmed by CCTV camera from a single-point location in South-Central Mumbai.
Wall text:
Six camera moves that begin in unstable skies and at sea, and descend “into the ordinary” via a vertical landscape filled with unfinished city landmarks, persistent settlements, details without end. A landscape movie in facets, filmed by remotely controlled CCTV camera from atop a 35-floor building in South-Central Mumbai.
Each tilt downwards is composed of dozens of repeated shots that show and hide themselves. They become a fluid movement across categories, structures and lines made on land, an interest of CAMP for many years. The stacked and layered city in Parel and Worli (old Bombay tidal islands, and later forming the working-class heart of the city) is suggestive of new subject and object formations.
When people appear in the images, many seem to be aware of this eye in the sky. Everyone is or can be an actor, in diagonal pacts between people and camera. The potential of such new relations drives this work, part of long-term investigations at CAMP that include histories and futures of documentary and moving images, housing, infrastructure, and pleasure.
The work has music, haunted by sirens and poets, by BamBoy (Tushar Adhav) who grew up in Lalbaug, Parel.
A Film by CAMP
Ashok Sukumaran
Jan Gerber
Rohan Chavan
Shaina Anand
Simpreet Singh
Zinnia Ambapardiwala
With residents of Achanak Nagar, Maya Nagar, Siddharth Nagar, Jijamata Nagar, Mariamma Nagar, Ambedkar Wadi, Shreeram Mills, Lotus Colony, Madraswadi, Markandeshwar Nagar and BDD Chawls, Worli.
And Babita Shettigar, DJ Mith, Farooq Shaikh, Haneefabi, Ibarat Shaikh, Kerabai Patil, Manisha Jadhav, Mohamadali Chaudhary, Mumtaz Ali, Nirupa Bhangar, Prabhakar Parab, Praveen Yerunkar, Shahida Shaikh, Rajendar Padave, Rajesh Singh, Salman Shaikh, Sangeeta Shetye, Savita Bansude, Sunaina Mane, Sunil Bhosale, Sunny Nair, Tarabai Chalke, Tejesh Sharma, Tukaram Sawant.
Soundtrack by Tushar Adhav
With K.A Abbas, Amar Shaikh Kala Pathak, Anna Bhau Sathe, Avahan Natya Manch, Begum Akhtar, Dhondutai Kulkarni, Narayan Surve, Neela Bhagwat, Sambhaji Bhagat, Vilas Ghogre
Mastered by Venkatesh Iyer.
Full music credits here.
With thanks to
Shireen Gandhy, Adarsh Jatia
Neela Bhagwat, Sambhaji Bhagat
Anand Patwardhan, Monteiro-Jayasankar
Shiva Thorat, Pravin Nerunkar
Vasudev Harekar, Swapnil Kamble
Natasha Ginwala, Rattanamol Johal
Foundation for Arts Initiatives
Experimenter Gallery
Commissioned by
The Nam June Paik Art Center and Kochi Muziris Biennale
Bombay Tilts Down at the Kochi Biennale, Aspinwall House. 13mins loop, 6+1 screen environment from single-point CCTV video 2022. Music by Tushar Adhav/ BamBoy.
Exhibition History
2025
Choreographies of the Everyday, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT), Tokyo
Video After Video: The Critical Media of CAMP, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
2024
The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT11), QAGOMA, Brisbane
To See is to Change, Photo 24, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne
2023
Reading | Listening | Seeing — Bombay Tilts Down, Sassoon Docks, Mumbai
2022
Kochi Muziris Biennale, Kochi Muziris Biennale, Kochi