Can The Invisible Disappear?

We invite you to our first public programme of the Fall 2024 Residency with filmmaker and scholar Pallavi Paul, on Wednesday, 30 October 2024 from 7PM - 8.30PM at Common Room.

We will screen ‘The Blind Rabbit’ (2020), a film by Pallavi Paul that interrogates the brutality of a populist state. Chronicling the systemic abuse of power as it manifests in key, seemingly unrelated events from the 1970s to present day India, the film captures the resulting psychological fragmentation and trail of fear left in their wake.

From the Indian national emergency of 1975-77, to communal conflict and faith-based discrimination, the recent attacks on civil liberties don’t appear as moments that can be reported or captured fully, but as pulsing wounds. The film extends the idea of ‘blindness’ not as a loss of capacity, but a ploy and a counterforce to the hubris of state histories and power.

The film screening will be followed by a conversation between Pallavi Paul and Carolin Köchling, who will speak about The Blind Rabbit within the context of Paul’s wider practice. They will also touch upon the artist’s research focus for her residency at Alserkal Arts Foundation around the rituals of mourning in the Gulf, building on her recent projects around death as the porous, shifting and sometimes even generative gap between the living and the departed.

Date: Wednesday, 30 October 2024
Time: 7PM - 8.30PM
Venue: Common Room, WH51, Alserkal Avenue - Google Pin

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Pallavi Paul is an artist, filmmaker and film scholar based in New Delhi. Her practice speaks to poetic exploration of cultural histories, questioning the limits of speculation and facticity and evidence. Paul is also engaged in thinking about ideas of the archive, tensions between document and documentary and the implication of trace within these openings. She has received her PhD in Film Studies from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Paul’s work has been exhibited in venues including Tate Modern, London (2013); AV Festival, New Castle (2018, 2016), Beirut Art Centre, Lebanon (2018), Savvy Contemporary (2019), Contour Biennale, Mechelen (2017), New Alphabet School, HKW (2020). Her most recent solo exhibition How Love Moves recently concluded at Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin.

Carolin Köchling is an art historian and curator. Since 2023 she has been Adjunct Curator at Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project. Previously, she was Associate Curator at Large at Gropius Bau in Berlin (2022–24), Nuyten Dime Curator at Large and head of the curatorial department at The Power Plant in Toronto (2016–22) and held curatorial positions at Schirn Kunsthalle and Städel Museum in Frankfurt (2010–15). She has curated exhibitions at Sesc Pompeia, São Paulo (2020) and MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2017) and was part of the curatorial team for the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2019).

Image courtesy of the artist.