Shoonya Ghar (Empty is this house), 2015

Basel 2018
Shoonya Ghar (Empty is this house)

Galerie Krinzinger

Video/Film
Sculpture: recycled teak wood; digital video
Who is asleep and who is awake in this city, this home, this settlement, this fortress of nothingness? What is the relation between building and consciousness? The film Shoonya Ghar follows the construction of a set in an abandoned stone quarry, involving dramatic action that mobilizes the conventions of birth, death, dance, play, music, and violence in local traditions of storytelling. Performers enacting a set of disparate scenes carry the thrust of the cinematic action alongside the concurrent erection of the set. The film reflects on the construction of the set, the musical score, and performance as three distinct processes that are fundamental to cinematic narrative and time. These three independent streams remain parallel, never converging to create an authori-tative narrative. The work draws on a poetic work by the 12th-century yogi Gorakhnath.