Shaina Anand / Ashok Sukumaran

From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf (the film from the project The Boat Modes) is a result of four years of dialogue, friendship and exchange between CAMP and a group of sailors from Kutch, India. Their travels and those of co-seafarers from Sindh, Baluchistan and Southern Iran show a world divided into many parts not easily bridged by nostalgics or nationalists. Instead, we follow the physical crossings made by these groups of people who make and sail boats, and who also make videos, sometimes with songs married to them. The categories “sovereign”, “pirate”, “cosmopolitan”, “container”, “free trade”, “money” and “work” evoke a world not easily controlled by sanctions, tariffs or structural adjustments. Through the medium of a “collective film journal”, these modalities and encounters at sea (and on adjacent land) are not so much tied together as allowed to speak. Taking this example – which was shown at documenta 13 and recently premièred as a feature-length film at the 2013 Sharjah Biennial – together with other works, Anand/Sukumaran will explain their working method, which is directly involved with geography, technological media, archives and their uneasy relationships.

There follows a discussion with Thomas Kilpper.