Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology

Smriti Mehra and Tahireh Lal's film TADE will be featured as part of Monitor 7. Toronto-based SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) presents Monitor 7: New South Asian Short Film and Video as an annual experimental short film and video screening program to showcases independent work by South Asian artists from Canada and around the world. Monitor 7 brings together 12 new works that explore the relationship between everyday objects and the moving image in our rapidly changing global society. The films and videos included in Monitor 7 use playful, personal and creative strategies of coping with shrinking public space and growing economic disparities.

The film is a visual exploration of the aftermath of the ritual of immersing idols of Ganesh on the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi. Traditionally, the idol was made out of earth. Once worshipped in this form the idol was returned to the Earth by immersing it in a water body. This is representative of the cycle of creation and dissolution in nature. The sentiment is lost in the practice of this ritual as the materials used to make these idols no longer dissolve. Ganesha, who is worshipped as the remover of obstacles, has ironically turned into one himself. The film opens with the chanting of the Ganesh mantra, which calls upon him to remove the obstacles in the tasks to be accomplished. The task at hand is the cleaning of the tank into which the idols have been immersed.

TADE was filmed in Bangalore in 2010 and will be screened during the Monitor 7 program at 7:30pm, March 24, 2011 at Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Avenue), Toronto, Canada.

The work is part of the Watercasting project, a collaboration between CEMA and the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP).