Reservoir

Sahej Rajal & Pallavi Paul, India

Description

Title: Reservoir
Artists: Sahej Rahal (b. 1988, India) and Pallavi Paul (b. 1987, India)
Medium: Single-channel 13’28” video
Dimensions: Not applicable 
Weight:
Not applicable
Location: Screened at the Adventure Centre in the District of Squamish, British Columbia

For their Vancouver Biennale 2014 Residency, Sahej Rahal and Pallavi Paul worked collaboratively on their project in Squamish, British Columbia. Reservoir is a film inspired by the physical beauty of this community. The protagonist of this film, time itself, is embodied as the “last piece of data” and roams an imagined post-apocalyptic Squamish. A reflection on change, technology, infinity, history, and life itself, this film is a proposition toward new ways of seeing, inviting the viewer not only to watch what follows but also to bring to mind what does not.

“We stand at a time when even the idea of the ‘human’ body is fast changing. With leaps in technology and newer ways of imaging the world,  the notion of national borders seems both a pressing reality but also an imaginary abstraction.” In exploring the Biennale’s 2014 – 2016 theme of Open Borders/Crossroads, Sahej and Pallavi not only tried to evoke a futuristic vision of a post-apocalyptic world, where borders would seem absurd, but also tried to go beyond confines of form to include performance, video games, cinema, and sound. In proposing a world far in the future, they hope to be able to evoke a sense of urgency in our contemporary world.

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