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Every city is made up of stories that are etched into its very architecture, culture, and community. Each city speaks its own language, a dialect composed of visual elements that dance across its skyline and weave through its streets. It is a language that tells tales of resilience, change, and the pulse of its people. Mumbai, a city of contrasts, harbours narratives of towering skyscrapers and humble settlements, creating a unique cadence in its cityscape.
Capturing the same, Bombay Tilts Down is a monumental seven-channel installation brought to life by the collaboration between Experimenter and St+art India for the Mumbai Gallery Weekend 2024, showcasing CAMP's visionary work. Filmed during the pandemic, this landscape movie unfolds like a poetic saga, capturing the essence of South-Central Mumbai from the vantage point of a 35-floor building. Six mesmerizing camera moves take the viewer on a journey from the unsettled skies and open seas, descending "into the ordinary" through vertical landscapes adorned with incomplete city landmarks and enduring settlements. The city unfolds in facets, a new narrative woven through the lens of a remotely controlled CCTV camera.
The work, a visual symphony orchestrated by CAMP, explores the dynamic relationship between people, the camera, and city. Each downward tilt is a composition of repeated shots, revealing and concealing themselves in a fluid dance across categories, structures, and lines etched on the land. Parel and Worli, the historic tidal islands of Bombay, emerge as stacked and layered canvases, suggesting the birth of new subject-object formations.
As the lens captures glimpses of the city's inhabitants, a profound awareness of the omnipresent eye in the sky prevails. Every individual becomes a potential actor in diagonal pacts between people and camera, forging new connections in the city's ever-evolving narrative. The haunting music, crafted by BamBoy (Tushar Adhav) with roots in Lalbaug, Parel, adds an auditory layer to the visual masterpiece, echoing with the sirens and poetry of Mumbai's heartbeat.
Bombay Tilts Down is not merely an installation; it is a poetic exploration, a manifestation of CAMP's long-term investigations into the past, present, and future of documentary and moving images, housing, infrastructure, and pleasure. It is a reverie in visual and auditory form, inviting the audience to immerse themselves in the shifting landscapes and resonating stories of Mumbai's soul.
Bombay Tilts Down will be on view from January 12 until January 21 at Sassoon Docks, Colaba. Book your seat here.
