As it rises into the air: listening in practice

At Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai 

Many kilometres, several words

Amol Patil’s sound and video installations reinterpret his father Kisan Patil’s play, Saata Patrachi Kahani

(Postcard), written in Marathi in 1982 for a working-class audience. The play presents correspondence between

a migrant mill worker in the city of Bombay and his wife living in a village in Mahrashtra. Written at a time of

widespread strikes to protest poor wages and labour conditions in the textile industry, the play captures the

aspirations and grievances of an individual working within an environment where the sound of machines

assaults the body only to become a part of its function through habituation. Patil presents stills and excerpts

from the original play, and a video that creates a gestural lexicon of sounds and actions that suggest life in the

mill and its cramped quarters. A four-