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The Yamuna Blues

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Over the last years the artists have realized several installations in Europe themed around the issue of increasing floods in the continent due to climate change; the central symbol in those artworks was that of a flooded car, since automotive emissions are a main source of the carbon dioxide that causes global warming. For India, that experiences flooding mostly due to monsoons (which also fluctuate in duration and intensity due to global climate change), this theme is rendered via a different metaphor and aesthetic.
The artists will use the traditional Indian technique of bamboo scaffoldings to build a hybrid construction, a 10 m high tower, which has connotations of a lighthouse or a radio tower. The structure will transmit video images instead of the conventional time-encoded rotating light beam.
The installation subverts the normative and mandated function of a lighthouse, which indicates the unseen hazards such as hidden rocks, unpredictable currents and treacherous channels. This urban lighthouse, however, is not a marker of certitude but an equivocal glyph, and may also be interpreted as a watchtower, which has its own set of ambiguous interrogations, since the projected images will depict issues relating to water – either in terms of the specific ecology of the river Yamuna, or more generally in terms of reading the threat to water as life’s vital source.



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