Memory: Record/Erase
Animation Video, 10 minutes, looped, sound, 1996

The Job / Naukari : Installation >
Theatre > Video >
   
   
 

Accident in factory reveals Chowkidar (night watchman) to be Male
Rano came to consiousness in a female ward after spending 4 years disguised as a man. On being interrogated, 'she' at first denied the charge of fraud. On further probing 'she' finally broke down and confessed that extreme poverty led her to claim the job meant for her dead husband

By a staff reporter
 
   
   
 

This work is Malani’s interpretation of ‘The Job’ by Bertolt Brecht, set by the writer in the period of the depression in Germany. It carries the memories of an impoverished woman who had to impersonate her dead husband in order to procure his job as a night watchman. She has two small children and takes on a 'wife' to complete the disguise. After an accident her identity is discovered and she is not anymore allowed to carry on her work. Jobless she is forced to walk the darker side of life to survive.

Through the process of drawing and erasure on a parchment, the story is told in animation. The parchment acts as the memory membrane of the wo/man that gets overloaded and dies.

 
   
   
  Produced by Max Mueller Bhavan Bombay, a branch of the Goethe Institute.

Solo show at the Zenith New Media Lounge, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York and 'Recent Video Works - Nalini Malani' at Apeejay Media Gallery, New Delhi.
Exhibited at Second Asia-Pacific Triennial, Brisbane; Mumbai International Film Festival, Bombay; 'Another Landscape' at Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and as part of the installation for 'The Job' at the Experimental Theatre, National Centre of Performing Arts, Bombay and National School of Drama, New Delhi.


 
   
copyright © 2004 Nalini Malani