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 crane operator and longshoreman seem to have disappeared.

In this "forgotten space" of the ocean (that channels 90% of global trade), their absence, along with the grime and buzz of the port city has been mourned, there have been requiems. But they exist, countless of them, their hand-eye and body workings, rendered tiny and near-invisible against the backdrop of the lego-land image of the container port. CAMP's work here, filmed on location at the Zhuhai International Container Terminal, Gaolan on the Pearl River Delta offers "a day in the life of" look at what can be seen; of both the systems-view and workers-view of that seemingly automated movement of boxes.

With the participation of Jingbin Liu, Zhiyu Fang, Jiefeng Zhao, Wuyi Lin, Zedong Wang, Guoming Liang and others. Many thanks to Xiaofei Mo and Jianmin Chen.

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Related

The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories, 2011

A film that compiles observations made by volunteer guards watching the English Channel, over one year. Filmed by small cameras connected to the eyepiece of telescopes. Produced with the National Coastwatch Institution, Folkestone, Kent, UK.

60 minutes, 5.1 surround sound.

Men-at-Work with Boxes in Stereo
Dec. 12, 2015 - Feb. 1, 2016

13 December 2015 – 31 January 2016
Times Museum, Guangzhou

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

Destuffing Matrix

4 channel HDV, 8 minutes

at the Kochi Muziris Biennale
Dec. 12, 2012 - March 18, 2013

CAMP presents
Destuffing Matrix
2012
4 x 3 channel HDV, 8 minutes.

2nd floor, Pepper House, Fort Kochi
12/12/12 to 13/03/13

Show extended till 17/03/13

Wharfage
Oct. 15, 2008 - May 16, 2009

At first, a project on the creek in Sharjah in 2008-2009, from where a large number of ships leave for Somali ports.

As If - III Country of the Sea
Feb. 21, 2015 - April 9, 2015
DR. BHAU DHAJI LAD MUSEUM, Mumbai

A journey with CAMP’s five-year Wharfage project and related maritime explorations.

After Midnight: Indian Modernism To Contemporary India 1947/1997
March 8, 2015 - June 30, 2015

Queens Museum, NY
Mar 8 2015m - Jun 28 2015

From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf (83 mins)
and Stuffing and Destuffing (4 channel looped video 9 mins)



Works

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.

Wharfage 2022 edition

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.

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.

Swearing-In-Whispers, 2011

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.

Hum Logos

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?

All Works