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Industrial Landscapes
The Lab has undertaken a major visual archiving project around the National Instruments Limited (NIL).
This is its first chapter in the exploration of the industrial ruins of Calcutta. The intention is to
explore the relationship between abandoned industrial landscapes, the experience of an urban space in
transition and the practice of everyday archiving.
The
Lab has commissioned a dozen young filmmakers to shoot on the NIL
campus for 3 to 4 months at a stretch. An archive of about 100 hours of
video footage and 2000 stills is being created. This will be a common
pool from which filmmakers and artists will create documentaries,
fictions, stills montage, video installations, etc.
The
factory has been taken over by Jadavpur University, and will soon turn
into a new campus. It wears the look of a teeming place abandoned in
haste. Machines, furniture, personal effects, files, telephone sets,
workers’ overalls lie in a vast graveyard of what was a once remarkable
site of industry and innovation. Elegant pieces of half-finished
products lie scattered on desks and floors. All of this is being
captured in detail. Alongside, testimonies of ex-workers are being
recorded at length.
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