Modinagar is a small industrial town 40 Km from Delhi. The town is dominated by three main industries – sugar, cotton and steel. Over the years, heavy unemployment has hit Modinagar, leaving it a decrepit industrial township.

A bathroom corridor is transformed. The three toilets are transformed with partitions into cubicles, the walls separating the cubicles are transformed with light into exhibition spaces, In three cubicles raw industrial sugar cane, cotton, and steel are installed, Eighteen people from all different classes were interviewed on the streets of the town. The conversation was structured around three main axes – origins, fear and aspirations. Each person interviewed was invited to get their photograph taken at the town photography studio, two copies were printed one went to the individual the other was exhibited in the installation. An edited audio-track of the interviews is broadcast in the corridor. In a small dark room a two-minute video loop with images from the city and questions addressed to the audience is played.

This is an attempt at archaeology of a site — the en framing of the relationship between the inhabitants of a town to the conceptual existence of that town. The political economy of the space, the way it manifests itself in people’s daily existence, is explored rather than dramatized. Moving from the position of the passive consumer, the audience encounters their social marks of difference through a series of questions (Why do you live where you live? What do you do to get money? Who watches when you speak?). To move from an experience of the self as a stable located site – to an experience that questions the sell itself.