To the Borewell Taal
(*taal means rhythm in Hindi)
2020
4k/HD/SD video, 11:49 minutes
Short story
Credits: Poornima Karthik (dance), Piyush Kashyap (camera), Pratik Biswas (sound design)
2020
4k/HD/SD video, 11:49 minutes
Short story
Credits: Poornima Karthik (dance), Piyush Kashyap (camera), Pratik Biswas (sound design)
Downstream of Bellandur ‘lake’, on the banks of Varthur ‘lake’, in the farmlands of Idgha Road, Bangalore: there, rising to the surface through PVC pipes is the mechanical beating sound of an immersed borewell pump gasping for water, since the water level below the ground has fallen considerably. As a dancer moves to the beat of the borewell, she pays attention to the anxious sound that is yet another symptom of unthinkable climate change/environmental exploitation in a city that is slowly becoming arid.
To the Borewell Taal (short story) |
Behind the Image
Attracted by the spectacular toxic foam floating on Bellandur and Varthur tank in Bangalore, I started working around the tank system and on this film in 2017. Image, sound and text are treated equally, in different rhythms and patterns, in the construction of my films. I also approach filmmaking in a performative way, as a container of actions: mapping, walking, dancing, listening, studying, in this way, the process of creating the narrative becomes as important as the final, linear film experience. This is an approach, a method, that I am still experimenting with. I learn from the traditions of essay films, the performativity in the films of Peter Watkins, Chantal Akerman, Straub-Huillet, Sidney Sokhona and artist studio, CAMP, among others.
‘To the Borewell Taal’ is an experiment. Shot over two winters and one monsoon, the film exposed the challenges of crafting a narrative of ecological anxiety through (documentary) images: How is there running water on the surface at the same time as an ominous sound that indicates that the groundwater levels have fallen? How is the grass green when the narrative is about aridity? What does it mean to stage the sound of depleting groundwater in a scene that is clearly set in a landscape that indicates monsoon season? It is these contradictions, not addressed in the film, but that became very evident as I re-watched the footage during the editing process, that makes this film a sequence of starting points.
The film re-stages an experience I had in the farmlands around Idgha road while field recording. I had stumbled upon a sound coming from an immersed borewell pump. After speaking to some experts, I understood that that particular sound could indicate that the pump was working relentlessly to draw water, while there wasn’t any. This sounded (like) an alarm and I was interested in paying attention to it, acknowledging it, being affected and moved by it. One of the experiments I embarked on through this film was based on the premise that dancers, by virtue of their practice and their discipline, sense sound viscerally and can understand the ‘bhav’ (mood) of a sound. Taking this idea both seriously and literally, I decided to work with Odisi dancer, Poornima Karthik, whose guru, Jhelum Paranjape, is known for choreographing a dance on the river Narmada, echoing the struggles of the Narmada Bachao Andolan. I set out to film one single shot of Poornima listening to this sound in the fields. And in preparation for that single shot we did a 3-day workshop of close listening and improvised movements – which is what you see in the film. Alas, the edit followed a logic different from the strict plans of the film that I had started with. Inadvertently, this process has opened up new methods to approach ecological anxiety, paying attention to symptoms of climate change and how we can be affected or care for a resource we cannot see – is there a co-relation between visuality and environmental affection? Today, I am continuing my work on groundwater systems and trying to write a new script.