We have extended human vision to the point of being able to see the whole of our world all at once, according to Ana Paraica’s formulation of the ‘total image’. With the development of imaging technology, our eyes have left our bodies and lie within the lens of the camera, the satellite, the closed-circuit television. We see the image before we see the world.

Our uncanny present bears a resemblance to our felt reality, and yet we see the flattening of land into data, losing our memory of the urgent real. India is developing National Digital Twins of major cities by the year 2030 through intensive accumulation of satellite imagery and geospatial data, according to the National Geospatial Policy 2022. The Digital Twin is described as a virtual replica of a “physical asset” that will facilitate “better decision-making”. Resolution is turned into a language claiming accuracy, where the machinic image becomes infallible. Where does the claim to territory lie, with the state or with the citizen?

At the centre of this exhibitory proposition is the idea of the ‘claim’ and the slippages between abstracted and projected reality. What are the maps being redrawn; what internal and border conflicts are currently underway? Technological savvy seeks high resolution imagery to quantify claims of land and ocean, where sub-surface infrastructures intervene. Yet, what lies in the call to the uncanny via the Digital Twin, where breakages occur in the cohesive image form?

Participating Artists

• Akshay Sethi
• Joe Paul Cyriac
• Nihaal Faizal
• Suvani Suri
• Vshpag (Vrinda Singh)
• Zishaan A Latif