The Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema, a rickshaw-powered projector, beams out a film artist Naiza Khan shot of the sea on to a wall in Golimar’s Peetal Galli on Saturday evening. PHOTO: MAHIM MAHER/EXPRESS (LEFT) COURTESY: MOMIN ZAFAR (RIGHT)
KARACHI: It took 15 minutes to transform Golimar's Peetal Galli on Saturday evening when Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema's rickshaw, fitted with a projector, beamed out a short film shot at Manora on to a wall.
The experience, which drew a delighted and curious crowd, was part of a Tentative Collective collaboration called 'Projections' to bring art to urban spaces. This weekend, artist Naiza Khan shared her 2:55 minute video 'Near and far sights/sites converge' of people in the water. She shot the footage on a monsoon afternoon last year through a homemade telescope or doorbeen. There is no story, just people in the water in the video that plays on a loop. "[It had] a sense of intimacy which you don't see in the public space in Karachi anywhere," she said. "Suddenly I could see men and women, abandonment and a sense of the way the body moves and gestures without being self-conscious."
Naiza has been working in Manora and Golimar for several years but it was with this video that two completely different places "stitched" together. "I was anxious about it," she told The Express Tribune about the projection. "I wanted people to stop and hold their gaze." She asked some of the children and women if they had been to Manora. "I hoped that seeing something like this would give them a small physical experience." At the end, one woman asked her how she could get to Manora because she had never been and wanted to go there. Scores of children, their fathers, the shopkeepers, men passing on motorcycles, stood transfixed, watching the video that played on loop.
The Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema, a rickshaw-powered projector, beams out a film artist Naiza Khan shot of the sea on to a wall in Golimar’s Peetal Galli on Saturday evening. PHOTO: MAHIM MAHER/EXPRESS (LEFT) COURTESY: MOMIN ZAFAR (RIGHT)
'Projections' would not have been possible without Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema led by Yaminay Chaudhri, which started in 2012. This collaborative mobile cinema has set up free screenings in various parts of Karachi, using homemade cellphone films and a rickshaw-powered projector. It works with residents of ethnically and economically diverse residential colonies across the city to gather short cell phone videos about everyday life in the city. The videos are then screened free in the neighborhoods where they were made.
Tentative Collective's 'Projections' events have been running since January 10 and will continue till March 7 with artists Bani Abidi, Shaheen Jaffrani, Shahana Rajani, Yaminay Chaudhri, Fazal Rizvi, Zambeel Dramatic Readings, Mehreen Murtaza and Naiza Khan. On January 31, Rajani showed 'In the Ruins of Memory' in Ratan Talao. Jaffrani's 'Whose Mark is it Anyway? 2014' showed on January 17 at Deen Muhammad Wafai Road. The next event is today, Monday, at Sea View where Zambeel will perform Asif Farrukhi's "Samundar Ki Chori". For more details: <http://tentativecollective.com/> and Facebook.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 9th, 2015.
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