Passing through brief illusions

At the ongoing Mumbai Gallery Weekend, if you are so inclined to give experimental films a shot, then look up a program of five shorts by Indian and international artists. The moving image program approaches human desire and longing, through psychology and mythology, material culture and melting glaciers. It is why curator Sarah Schipschack has aptly titled it Illusions.

Schipschack is a Norwegian-German producer and curator with a focus on art house cinema and experimental films. Her most recent curatorial venture, The Poet’s Antidote, where she has brought together works by visual artist Tanya Busse, is on display at Mumbai Art Room, an exhibition space and curatorial lab. This week, Mumbai Art Room has doubled up as a screening venue for Illusions, allowing people to see the connections between Busse’s works and the films.

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“Artists working with moving images have a great variety in the way they approach the image in their practice. The program mirrors their versatility," says Schipschack, adding, “Illusions is a term about our imagination and has a wide range of interpretations." Each film is about 10 minutes long and the two-hour-long screening includes Pallavi Paul’s Nayi Kheti (2013) and Kristin Tårnes’ The Shortcut To Asia (2014). Paul, a Delhi-based artist, uses the poems of Vidrohi, as the late social activist and poet Ramashankar Yadav was known. Paul uses his verse of resistance alongside a series of conversations between poets Jack Spicer and Federico García Lorca. In The Shortcut To Asia, Tårnes presents climate change and the melting Arctic. Here, where some see a catastrophe, there are others who might benefit from climate change economically, suggesting that “truth" could be just another illusion.

Catch the screenings on 19 January from 5-7pm at Mumbai Art Room.