KANTUTA QUIROS & ALIOCHA IMHOff - Overlapping Biennial

C O L L E C T I V E
(SONAL jAIN AND MRIGANKA MADHUKAILLyA)
”Daily Checkup” (2005)
video installation, 8’
courtesy of the artists
The collaboration between Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya,
who together form the Desire Machine Collective,
explores the fissures of globalization. This “third space” as
described by Homi Bhabha is where we find a “challenge
to the limits of the self in the act of reaching out to what is
liminal in the historic experience.” “Daily Checkup” is set in
Northeast India, a place governed by special regulations and
deemed “disturbed area.” The area is subject to the Armed
Force Special Power Act a law, first imposed by the colonial
British powers on the Indian freedom fighters, which confers
special powers upon the armed forces to search arrest or even
kill anyone suspected of being a terrorist. This draconian measure
has expanded the range of power resulting in widespread
incidents of extrajudicial killings termed “encounters,” as well
as sexual assaults by the armed forces and other “collateral
damage.” The video is mainly comprised of found footage
from the state of Manipur, where at the time, there was a
huge outcry against the rape and killing of a young woman,
Manorama Devi, by the Indian army. This sparked public protests
and reprisals by the apparatus of the state. The images
are overlaid with the seal of the security check at the Guwahati
airport, the transition point that acts as a gateway to this
region. Hence the introduction to the place is one of paranoia,
the security check being more stringent than other areas in
India. It is the intimate action of the search, the focusing of
the gaze of the state directly onto the body as an exemplar of
Foucault’s biopower. More over these conditions produce the
sensation that everyone is a potential terrorist, the exposition
of the state’s own deep seeded fear of its citizens.
“The video looks at the politics of remembering without
excluding the space for forgetting. The hierarchy between
memories and real events is dissolved. The collective memory
of people is seen as a reflection that runs from the personal to
the political.” Jason Waite
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