Merchandise
Objects always have had a close relation with the moving images. The transiency of cinema has been complimented with memorabilia, souvenirs and replicas. Such is the collective wish to hold on to some kind of materiality for the ever moving screen images, that, movie memorabilia production and selling outlets make for an exciting niche industry all over the world. The objects range from printed material (song books, lobby cards, posters, post cards etc.) to consumers goods (jewelry, apparel, mementos, house decors etc.) to pieces of celluloid-related gadgets (spools, film stirps, bobbins, camera replicas etc.). The sprawling market of Chor Bazar in Bombay is a treasure trove of such miscellaneous articles.
Following the popular cine culture, in Cinema City project too we produced some ‘new’ memorabilia.
Coasters
6 pieces, print on acrylic, 4 x 4 inch
Out of stock
Weekly film announcements for the early decades of cinema relied on interesting texts, rather than on images, to attract audience. The advertisements tantalized the audience through descriptions of the plots, moral ambiguity of the characters, facilities in the theatres where the films were being screened etc. Cinema as an endeavour (adventure, pleasure, blasphemy, magic and escape) was still being explained to the public through these announcements.
You may choose to have your drink with Bombaiwali or Brandichi Botli.
Cinema city by the Foot
Laser curving on soft wood, 112 x 3/4 inch
Out of stock
Notwithstanding with the consensus for standard epoch calculation by BC and AD,
there have always been attempts to make scales and calendars measure the local
priorities – Expressionism, Dadaism, Industrialisation, Colonialisation,
Feminism…
Whichever histories were thought needed to be prioritised by the Western
scholars and museums were converted into easily accessible scales.
We made a new measuring scale for Cinema City by Foot. It measures, inch by inch, the 100 years of the urban development and indigenous film culture of Bombay.
Calendar Portfolios
Set of 6 calendars x 3, digital prints
Multiple artists
Available at NGMA Delhi
A few works from The Calendar Project had been mass produced and made available for public consumption. These vintage-looking-works are actually contemporary takes on the previous century, and conceived and produced only in 2009-2012. The idea has been to problematise the notion of past, nostalgia, heritage and assets by inducing newly produced critical works into the fluid market of ‘manufacturing memories’.
This was also a strategy to insert a part of the project into the anonymous public culture of the city. Though, in real time, it might take decades for these objects to get seamlessly incorporated in the milieu of Chor Bazar and the likes.
We shall wait to see!
