Wednesday, December 6, 2023 at 7:00 pm
UB Distinguished Visiting Scholars program (DVS), UB Humanities Institute, Hallwalls, & Squeaky Wheel present
Hallwalls Cinema
Screening preceded by reception with food from Alibaba Kebab, 6–7pm, in the lobby outside Hallwalls Gallery. FREE and open to the public. Screening in the Cinema at 7:00pm.
If From Every Tongue it Drips is a hybrid documentary film that uses the framework of quantum physics to explore the ways that personal relationships and political movements at once transcend and challenge time, space, identity, and location.
The film follows the lives of a couple living in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka: Ponni writes Rekhti, a form of 19th-century, Urdu, queer poetry; the other, Sarala, is the camera operator. As their personal lives unfold on camera, the lines between rehearsal and reality, location and distance, self and other dissipate and reinforce one another.
Simultaneously, through the poet and camera operator’s daily lives, interconnections between British colonialism, Indian nationalism, and the impact of both on contemporary poetry, dance, and music in South Asia is revealed.
The film explores both literal and figural translation as multiple ways of looking, embedded within the filmmaking process, which was all conducted long distance. The scenes were constructed in Montreal, where Sharlene sent informal instructions to Sarala, who then filmed Ponni, who would then send the footage back to Montreal, from which the next scene was written. This process continued for 6 months on a weekly basis, after which most of the film was constructed. The sound was constructed between Montreal, Batticaloa, and the Isle of Skye, where the sound designer Richy Carey resides. The film incorporates the sonic sphere of all three locations, enhancing notions of quantum entanglement which are employed throughout the filmic process, to showcase the interconnections between location, geography, self, and other, which continue to be intertwined.
This film nods to Sharlene’s ongoing interest in both the many ways that popular culture can be politicised and the sensuous possibilities of its reclamation.
DIRECTOR BIOGRAPHY
Sharlene Bamboat is a moving image and installation artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Her practice engages with translation, history, and sound to uncover sensory and fractured ways of understanding the relationship between the self and the social in transnational contexts. Her works examine the role of colonialism, globalization, culture, and desire through poetics, abstraction, and collaboration by working with artists, musicians, and writers to animate historical, political, legal, and pop-culture materials. Her most frequent collaborator, since 2009, is Alexis Mitchell. In addition to her art practice, Sharlene works in the arts sector, including artist-run organizations and collectives in Canada, and with artists both locally and internationally.