Alibi in North Sikkim | Ruchika Negi and Amit Mahanti | KMB 2022-23

Ruchika Negi and Amit Mahanti
Lives and works in New Delhi, India

Alibi in North Sikkim (2010, 2022)

Curated by Shubigi Rao

Documentary filmmaker and educator Ruchika Negi works with filmmaker, cinematographer and editor Amit Mahanti to explore questions of ecological transformation, culture and politics.

At the onset of their collaborative work in 2010, the state of Sikkim in Northeast India was witness to a spate of hydroelectric projects – 27 existing, ongoing and proposed works in the Teesta River basin.

As Alibi in North Sikkim shows, the works resulted in extensive devastation to the landscape. The rivers were squeezed into tunnels, the mountains dug through. The dam’s call-to-work sirens marked time as the dust settled, layer upon layer, through the day. The inhabitants of the area were left to weigh their losses and gains carefully. Most conversations were ambivalent and uneasy, most points of view unfixed. There were no straight answers, just a foreboding of imminent change, a feeling that nothing may ever be like it was.

A decade later, the river is back in another shape and form. The mountains seem to have healed, the streets have gone quiet again. Vehicles full of tourists pass by, momentarily disrupting the silence.

The work was developed as a part of Negotiating Routes: Ecologies of the Byways (2010), supported by Khoj International Artists Association, New Delhi and Kochi Biennale Foundation (2022)

This artwork is displayed at Laboratory, Aspinwall House
Until 10th April 2023

Video Lab Support- Kiran Nadar Museum of Art