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.
A boat has many powers: to gather a society in its making, to distribute goods, to carry people and ideas across places that, it seems to us, are more different than ever before.
The widely travelled feature-length film From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf; a vast, undulating, and musical spatio-temporal journey through the Western Indian Ocean, is a result of four years of dialogue, friendship and exchange between CAMP and a group of sailors from the Gulf of Kutch. Their travels, and those of co-seafarers from Pakistan and Southern Iran, through the Persian and Aden Gulfs show us a world cut into many pieces, not easily bridged by nostalgics or nationalists. Instead, we follow the physical crossings made by these groups of people who make and sail boats. And who also make videos, sometimes with songs married to them.
From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf was awarded the Jury mention at Festival International de Cinema, Marseille and the New Views Prize, Olhar de CInema, Curutiba. It was the opening film at Images Festival Toronto, and has been screened at BFI London Film Festival, the Viennale, MoMA, Flaherty Seminar, Shanghai Biennale among other venues. It showed in Bombay and Sharjah in purpose-built cinemas; one inside a public museum and one on the waterfront and was on display at the Tate Modern 2019 - 2021.
This film is part of a broader multi-year Indian Ocean project, see Wharfage.
2024
From the Land to the Sea, Art Jameel, Dubai
Heavy Metal Containers, Spectacle Cinema, Brooklyn
What the Cameras Saw and Remembered, Two films by CAMP, Capitol Cinema, Melbourne
2023
Afterimage: M+ Collections
2022
In The Heart Of Another Country: The Diasporic Imagination In The Sharjah Art Foundation Collection
Scoring The Words, SEOUL MUSEUM OF ART (SEMA)
MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai
Collections display: Media Networks, Tate Modern
Passages Through Passages, Sharjah Art Foundation, solo
2021
Collections display: Media Networks, Tate Modern
Museum of Contemporary Art & Design, Manila
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
Watch and Chill, M+ Hongkong
South Asia Foreground - Labocine
2020
Collections display: Media Networks, Tate Modern
Punto De Vista International Documentary Festival of Navarra, Pamplona
2019
Body Building, Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai
40 Films: An inventory of Contemporary Cinema, Festival des Trois Continents, Nantes
2018
An Oceanic Feeling, Len Lye Center Cinema, New Plymouth
Lahore Biennale 01, Alhamra Art Center, Lahore
The Ocean After Nature, The Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, New York
Face Value, Transmediale, HKW Berlin
2017
Sekula beyond Sekula – Okeanos, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, TBA21, Vienna
Keimena, Documenta 14
Water in Indian Cinema, King’s College, London
The Ocean After Nature, Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide
Grossman Gallery, Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University, London
Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane
2016
Transactions, Manifesta Parallel Exhibition, University of Zurich
The Ocean After Nature, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco
Mosaic Rooms, London
2015
After Midnight: Indian Modernism to Contemporary India 1947/1997, Queens Museum, New York
As If – III Country of the Sea, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum (solo)
Mobile M+ Moving images, M+ Hongkong
2014
Shanghai Biennale
Rupert, Vilnius
Porto Post Doc
Musée de la Chasse et de la
Flaherty Seminar, New York
Olhar de Cinema, Curutiba
Opening Films, Images Festival Toronto
Ann Arbor Film Festival
Tales from the Networked Neighbourhood: The Cinema of CAMP, Palestrina Cinema, Milan
FICUNAM Mexico
Mirage Cinema, March Meeting, Sharjah
Dhaka Art Summit
2013
Migrating Forms Film Festival, New York
Cork Film Festival, Ireland
Viennale, Vienna International Film Festival Doc Lisboa, Lisbon
Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival
Underdox, Munich
BFI London Film Festival_
Festival Internationale de Cinema (FID), Marseille
Le Pont, Museum of Contemporary Art, Marseille
Sharjah Biennale XI, Sharjah
2012
Documenta (13) as 'The Boat-Modes'
Direction: Shaina Anand, Ashok Sukumaran.
CAMP,
Siddik Umar Sanghar
and Junas Salemamad Bhagad
present:
Kutchi Vahan Pani Wala (From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf)
Camera: Siddik Umar Sanghar, Mrinal Desai, Junas Salemamad Bhagad, Ashok Sukumaran, Shaina Anand, Sulaiman Haroon Raja urf Dada, Jabbar Hassan Chingda, Ismail Haroon Ghandhar, Mohammed Rafik, Sulaiman Wahab Sumbhania, Abdul Majid Chauhan, Mehboob Abbas Sanghar, Hakimuddin Lilyawala, Anonymous.
Editor: Sreya Chatterjee.
More at: Indiancine.ma
Recent venues:
Tate Modern, London (on show through 2021)
Opening film, Documenta14 Kiemena program (on Greek Television) 2017
Two films by CAMP
Al Jaar Qabla Al Daar (The Neighbour before the House)
From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf
Featuring From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf
Organised by Deichtorhallen, Hamburg and Sharjah Art Foundation, curated by Omar Kholeif.
From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf
&
Wharfage
South Asia Foreground
Labocine, June 2021 issue
"Watch and Chill"
83 mins
2013
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, and online.
For All Vahanvatti is designed to help a group think from the sea, rather than from the land. CAMP with Reliable Copy Propositions.
A survey exhibition of the spatial, technical and cultural imaginations cultivated by CAMP.
Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi
Watch and Chill
M+
West Kowloon Cultural District
Watch and Chill
MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum
On Display at Tate Modern, Media Networks, till November 2022
At first, a project on the creek in Sharjah in 2008-2009, from where a large number of ships leave for Somali ports.
Celebrates its 40th year with an inventory of 40 films and a publication. CAMPs From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf along with films of Wang Bing, Edward Yang, Tsai Ming-Liang, Lav Diaz, Akram Zaatari, Lucrecia Martel, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Abbas Kiarostami...
From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf
at Viennale
Opening Film
From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf
10th April 2014 7:00 pm
The Royal, Toronto
From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf
From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf
2009-2013
Sharjah Biennial 11
March 13- May 13 2013
Film screening every evening 8 30 pm
at an open-air cinema on the corner of Bank Street and Corniche Road, Sharjah
Run-time 80 mins
From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf
at
Museum for Modern Art in Warsaw
Sunday, March 23 2014
7:00 pm
From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf
is showing at FID Marseille
Double Bill: Two films by CAMP
From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf
Friday, March 28th 2014
3:00 pm
Helmut Stern Auditorium
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor
At
Body Building
Ishara Art Foundation
Punto De Vista
International Documentary Festival of Navarra
Retrospective: Oceanic Feeling
From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf
83 mins
At Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival
Greek Film Archive Screening Room B
20:30 pm, 22nd October, 2013
Screenings of three CAMP films
CAMP at Sheher o Funn, the inaugural biennale of the city of Lahore with From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf.
A journey with CAMP’s five-year Wharfage project and related maritime explorations.
From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf
Film Program
Allan Sekula - Okeanos
Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary
TBA21, Vienna
Artists lecture
31st March, 2017
A non-imperial view from the 'Other Boat', counter to images of the 'distressed seas'. With a presentation and screening of From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf at Transmediale 2018.
CAMP’s From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf (2013) at the Len Lye Center Cinema, New Plymouth
CAMP at Transmediale 2018, Berlin with reprinted Wharfage, The Annotated "Gujarat and the Sea" Exhibition and The Country of the Sea cyanotype.
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
A journey with CAMP’s five-year Wharfage project and related maritime explorations.
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
From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf
at
Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival
Outlook Magazine: A group of artists, filmmakers and technologists from Mumbai works together with a group of sailors to produce a feature-length experimental film.
CAMP was awarded the main Jury prize at the 9th Sharjah Biennial for Wharfage, a two-part project including a book and a radio transmission.
Turning The Inside Out
The 60th Robert Flaherty Seminar
13m 14s looped, seven channel environment with music
2022
Filmed by CCTV camera from a single-point location in South-Central Mumbai.
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 100-foot long sequence of photo-cutouts, first shown at the Chennai Photo Biennale, March 2019
20 mins, HD. 2 - channel installation
Cantonese, Mandarin
Filmed in Guangzhou at the Zhuhai International Container Terminal
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.
A screenplay in Courier 12pt melodramatic format, spanning the first three days of lobbying for cabinet spots, in the wake of the Indian general elections of 2009. The dialogue is entirely from phone taps made by the government. The screenplay slows them down and asks: what kinds of environments and scenes may lie behind them, and how are they connected?
Printed screenplay and IVR-based phone line, audience can type in scene numbers to hear dialogue in the original voices. Also performed as a reading.
Act II (Hum Logos) is a 45-minute audio film spliced from the Pad.ma collection of the Radia Tapes. It covers two months after the Indian general elections of 2009, with the new cabinet in power. The film asks: if debate around these tapes was about whether they are edited or not, or as Justice Mukhopadhay put it, "splice has been added", then what can further editing do?