Installation Still, In Memory Of
Installation Still, The Seed Book
Installation Still, Photo Album 2: Kalinganagar
Installation Still, In Memory Of
Six Digitally Printed Books (2012-2014)
The Seed Book; In Memory Of; Photo Album 1: The Lying Down Protest; Photo Album 2: Kalinganagar;
Time and The Referendum
The Seed Book presents a selection of images that show Natabar Sarangi in his rice fields growing and experimenting with seed varieties and an indexed archive listing each seed and its specific properties and uses. In Memory Of seeks to preserve the memory of farmers who have committed suicide in recent years in Odisha due to debt and bondage. The book is an unfinished memorial to the farmers who took their own lives as they were unable to resist the strategic violence of multinational agricultural corporations, the trap of high-yielding and high-investment agriculture, market fluctuations, real estate mafias, and moneylenders. Photo Album 1: The Lying Down Protest reveals a collection of images about a remarkable protest on June 11, 2001, by the villagers of Dhinkia, Gadkujang, Govindpur, and Nuagaon in Odisha, against the forcible acquisition of their land by local police on behalf of the Korean steel company POSCO and the government of Odisha. Many events have occurred during local resistances in villages that have been forgotten as time passes. In the last few years local news networks and amateur photographers, using a variety of small cameras, have documented evidence of a crime or the resistance to it even as it unfolds. The third small book acknowledges the work of local photographers in preserving the memory of important historical events. Photo Album 2: Kalinganagar (2012) is the fourth small book in The Sovereign Forest. It bears witness to the killing of fourteen tribals by the police in Kalinganagar Industrial Area, Odisha, while they were protesting the forcible acquisition of their lands by the Tata Iron and Steel Company. The album is presented along with eight contributed and collected images of the funeral. Framed and displayed, these images continue to tell the story begun in the album even as they resonate with the memorial stones in the film The Scene of Crime. Time, collates the unseen details of everyday events in an epic resistance. A timeline of an ongoing struggle from 2005 to 2013, the book, researched by Samadrusti, offers detailed insight into the moves and countermoves of the local resistance against the Korean steel company POSCO and the government of Odisha. Juxtaposed with a photograph of an old land record from the same area, a preserved and hidden document proving the duration of landownership, the book completes an ensemble of evidence that opens many ways of comprehending the multiple dimensions of loss, resistance, and unfolding violence. Referendum tells the story of the historical referendum in 2013, when 12 tribal village councils voted against mining in their Niyamgiri hill ranges.