Khirkeeyaan, 2006
Video documentation

Courtesy of the artist

see: http://www.chitrakarkhana.net/khirkeeyaan.htm

For the project KhirkeeYaan, artist Shaina Anand created an open-circuit TV system to enable local area network communication and to allow users to generate micro-media and feedback. Seven television episodes were generated through seven installations in different neighbourhoods in and around Khirkee Extension, New Delhi over 3 weeks in April, 2006 while the artist was undertaking a residency at Khoj studios.

Television sets and cheap surveillance security equipment were coupled with an RF modulator, microphones, audio mixer and metres of coax cable, to form collaborative conversation systems for the ‘use’ of the community-at-large. The televisions, electricity, and peoples’ consent and participation were sourced on-site. Four sets of cameras, TVs and microphones were planted within a 200 metre radius of each other, and the audio-video from the four views were connected to a quad processor and audio mixer. This quadrant comprising of sound and image from all four locations was fed back to the TVs, allowing the participants to interact with others in the frame. Video became the ‘site’ for these interactions and conversations. Here the ‘filmmaking’ is automatic, made possible through eye-level communication, real-time feedback and the absence of cameraman and editor. The technology is even cheaper; no computers and DV technology, but commercially applied CCTV and CATV equipment. The ‘televisation’ produced conversations, performance, and rapidly-evolving subjectivities, all happening in ‘local’ time.

Shania Anand is a video and film producer. Her alternative media project, called Tellavision Project and the allied ChitraKarKhana.net website aims to document social and political processes in Bombay. Her projects often employ cheap and accessible DIY video and editing software, hardware and skills to produce on-site ‘televised’ media.