Aarti Sunder
From Infra Earth to Extra Sky (2024)
installation with film, acrylic and ink on paper

Concept, execution: Aarti Sunder
Sound: Yashaswini Raghunandan
Cinematographer: Amith Surendhran

 

Why do ideas and objects leave the planet? Why do they return to us, and upon their return, how do they alter the way we relate to each other? How do they sound? From Infra Earth to Extra Sky is led by three stories—of an elephant, a snail, and a coconut.

Every exit carries the possibility of return. Some ideas and objects return with the full gust of reason, affect, and intent; if a return is not straightforward or easy to decipher, it may still be insistent and full of promise. It is at this messy location of shapeshifting potential that these organisms tell stories of how to confront scale, minimise implosions, resist being overwhelmed, and wade through inundation.

The public electrocution of a circus elephant in the US shows us that the elephant is not always in the room but in the cloud of smoke that fills and short circuits easy techno-social histories. A snail eats away at the city of Chennai during the monsoon despite large-scale efforts to cull it. And a coconut on the Thiruvanmiyur beach inscribed with suspect incantations returns from the sea to create havoc and excitement. The three organisms reveal ways to trespass from undersea into extrasky. Moving in between layers, they communicate, plot, form alliances, and play roles in histories of technology, movement, and desire. In being forcibly ungrounded, all three have found ingenious ways to relate not just to us but to each other.