Prajakta Potnis, Zone series, Photographs in light boxes, 12 x 9 inches each, 2020
Supported by Umrao Singh Sher-Gil Grant for Photography 2017, SSAF.
“Place” is a geographical entity, that can be reflected upon through imagination, envisioned either within this world or located somewhere in outer space, or as a site within a psychological map of one’s mind, it can be drawn through references and cues from history, mythology or memories. When laced with nostalgia, it can denote longing , yearning implies distance, it suggests dislocation , displacement either by choice or by force, alienation is often a result of such kind of a movement. But then what is homelessness, is it a condition of our times? Where we all are refugees or even tourists, in transit, in an in-between place.
The current global standstill, given the pandemic has resulted in an exodus of workforce returning to their homelands. This retrograde movement which saw people walking on the streets for thousands of miles, reveal the utter helplessness they feel with their situations. Is there a home to offer comparable security, does therefore the place of return, of retirement, of rest finally denote home?
In an attempt to transform the site of the freezer into a space that could resonate a corporeal site of a memory bank. I keep going back to a Boris Groys interview where he states “memory functions as a freezer”. Is it possible then to actually sculpt or carve a physiological scape? By appropriating found film slides from the personal archives of an unknown tourist that I unearthed in a quaint market in Berlin in 2014, I am hoping to go back in time to the various sites visited by this reluctant tourist, and in a naive attempt hold it back from aging. By projecting these found landscapes onto the walls of the freezer, my endeavour was to open up the walled space to create a space within a space, and in some instances carve a window within this enclosed environment, a shift from my earlier photographic works where the site itself was a stationary proscenium. In the series titled “zone”(2018-2019) the enclosed capsuled site goes through various metamorphoses due to the extreme temperatures sometimes manipulated, while at times naturally occurring. Groys further states “to be under the snow to be frozen is a kind of natural museification”.
As time gets delayed, a kind of frozen decay envelops this stationary yet volatile space. Making for that perfect location and time to place that tripod.
