Reflections from the project

Inputs of the project

When the pairs were made for project, I was really happy and looking forward to work for a project that dealt with time. The project started with us clicking photographs of ourselves in the frame. Understanding time as a crucial aspect, I thought of clicking photographs of my journey from home to college with a train ticket in hand. I understood time as how it travels relating to how I travel.

With the next step we had to merge the photographs of both the partners in such a way that it conveys a story as well as how we perceive time as. Since my pictures had the hand and the other partner had her legs in the frames, we chose to work with my hand and her leg in form of animal and a bird. We painted each others hand in form of Zebra’s legs and a bird’s beak. We showed the journey of these two little creatures coming out of their egg and nest, and exploring the city. Basically, we wanted to show how would their journey be like if they live a humans life. We portrayed time as a journey from day to night. It is also interesting as we learned the concept of time through our process in making the project. For example, as we showed a strip of multiple pictures rolling inside the bioscope, we came across the fact that time plays an important role in our bioscope. We had to set a particular time, the duration of the narration and the speed of the film that rolls. Time is an important factor as synchronizing the speed, narration and the music is very crucial.

Talking about the concept we chose, we had a theme of Rajasthan. The bioscope we made was painted in a traditional way. It took me back to time when I had seen live puppet shows in Rajasthan. I could relate my project with it and that also made me think more and more on time and the bioscope. The story of Zebra and the bird is about their experience when they live the life of a human going into the mall, having french fries, playing in the time zone, playing in the garden, going in the gym, talking with people, etc. It all shows that how they live each moment they have and fulfill theirs desires of being human. However, at the end of the day, they realise that although they lived their desires, enjoyed to fullest, the real happiness will always be felt when they live with their people i.e. the animals and the bird in their homeland which is the forest from where they were born. As Italo Calvino said in one of his writings, “Desires are already memories”, it can be implied in this as well. The desires of the animals and the birds are fulfilled and now are their memories as they chose to live the life God has given and not being humans. To support this I have written 4 lines which goes as,

“At the forest we were born, hearing the roads horn; desires blooming as the journey starts, to explore and live the city of hearts.”