https://arjunakeshvaniham.co.uk Arjuna Keshvani-Ham | London Fri, 22 Sep 2023 14:16:20 +0000 https://arjunakeshvaniham.co.uk en https://arjunakeshvaniham.co.uk/Snapshots-of-Lagos Thu, 22 Jun 2023 12:15:14 +0000 Arjuna Keshvani-Ham | London https://arjunakeshvaniham.co.uk/Snapshots-of-Lagos SNAPSHOTS OF LAGOSMedium: HD Digital video, colour, B&amp;W &amp; sound. Digital file conversion from 8mm, DV tape; archival footage. Country: UK, PortugalYear: 2021 - present <img width="1920" height="1080" width_o="1920" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/01fc01124f266f7f298e4429d3a40021264735e171ffd5a40d0af9411312b943/colour-skulls.png" data-mid="221419172" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/01fc01124f266f7f298e4429d3a40021264735e171ffd5a40d0af9411312b943/colour-skulls.png" /> <img width="3022" height="1712" width_o="3022" height_o="1712" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d151dd89c2bd2f9113bcd2ff1a81e0274659e70f0f3860f0f66d50bfb70cca75/Screenshot-2023-09-27-at-20.34.04.png" data-mid="192048714" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d151dd89c2bd2f9113bcd2ff1a81e0274659e70f0f3860f0f66d50bfb70cca75/Screenshot-2023-09-27-at-20.34.04.png" /> “In a Portuguese coastal town tangibly haunted by the afterlife of slavery, a documentary filmmaker searches for the remnants of a rumoured mass grave from the 15th century, forgotten by tourists and residents. A poetic meditation which combines the methodologies of documentary and fiction, Snapshots of Lagos uses the microcosm of a small town to open up a broader interrogation of the violent mechanics of erasure at the heart of nationalist revitalisation projects. Snapshots is set in Lagos, a touristic town on the Algarve to which many historians trace the roots of the Atlantic slave trade. As the narrator ambles through the town, she stumbles upon a constellation of three architectural sites: a statue, a museum, and finally a mass grave, which was excavated accidentally in 2009 and subsequently re-buried beneath the concrete ruin of a multi-storey car park. Below, the bodies of the former enslaved still lie unmemorialised, denied a proper burial. Though at first seemingly unrelated, the sites gradually begin to resonate with one another, as the narrator uncovers residues of the unsettling histories buried in their depths.” Stills from Snapshots of Lagos; London, Portugal (2021) &nbsp; Fragment 2, ‘Snapshots of Lagos’, 2022. <img width="1920" height="1381" width_o="1920" height_o="1381" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/182d924dcc40d8e83238956e16e8e9b845c7ab3f561caa9750d7305d484038a3/cemertary.jpg" data-mid="184108957" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/182d924dcc40d8e83238956e16e8e9b845c7ab3f561caa9750d7305d484038a3/cemertary.jpg" /> Mapping Imaginaries: Site III, The Cemetery. Pencil and ink on paper, digital overlay (2021) <img width="3840" height="2715" width_o="3840" height_o="2715" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/551e5d8b9d96057caab97f623fefeb246e06860926296aef38e865ecfb2aa86d/snapshots.jpeg" data-mid="192048713" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/551e5d8b9d96057caab97f623fefeb246e06860926296aef38e865ecfb2aa86d/snapshots.jpeg" /> Mapping Imaginaries: Site Index. Pencil and ink on paper, digital overlay (2021) <img width="14400" height="10800" width_o="14400" height_o="10800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/82f5879b1a7c0f211ecc425b343d3df6ab35dc40f10ec52fab2cd36ca7aa843f/Snapshots-of-Lagos.jpg" data-mid="192052217" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/82f5879b1a7c0f211ecc425b343d3df6ab35dc40f10ec52fab2cd36ca7aa843f/Snapshots-of-Lagos.jpg" /> Mapping Imaginaries. Pencil and ink on paper, digital overlay (2021) <img width="1440" height="1080" width_o="1440" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d31e5e67a315920960e0323c4cebfecd16d8328b6c3a767494ca853362cba131/exhibition-photo-MengQing-2.PNG" data-mid="212778267" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d31e5e67a315920960e0323c4cebfecd16d8328b6c3a767494ca853362cba131/exhibition-photo-MengQing-2.PNG" /> <img width="2048" height="1536" width_o="2048" height_o="1536" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/df95db567426d844d093c45f28194c92ccef358123b3c7b296d86272f1651e67/IMG_9194.JPG" data-mid="212778261" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/df95db567426d844d093c45f28194c92ccef358123b3c7b296d86272f1651e67/IMG_9194.JPG" /> <img width="2048" height="1536" width_o="2048" height_o="1536" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/677a1b99b395773c24613d66039a8373fce3212fcf8fc53aa3b19dba31145537/IMG_9196.JPG" data-mid="212778287" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/677a1b99b395773c24613d66039a8373fce3212fcf8fc53aa3b19dba31145537/IMG_9196.JPG" /> <img width="2048" height="1536" width_o="2048" height_o="1536" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a12fcedf7dfc51f3cfe038ebf209d4e2d0211cd66d45ae92ce82d2fc8233ab7d/IMG_9195-2.JPG" data-mid="212778291" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a12fcedf7dfc51f3cfe038ebf209d4e2d0211cd66d45ae92ce82d2fc8233ab7d/IMG_9195-2.JPG" /> Documentation from screening of ‘Vale da Gafaria (Leprosarium Valley)’, Whirled Cinema Brixton, 2022.&nbsp; <img width="14960" height="11417" width_o="14960" height_o="11417" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fb9c7ed4da8f36306ca51cbc9ad232e73e976c8b61750c137ac1cd4c3b218322/2022_the-pluralist_9.197-words-in-blue-neon-3.jpg" data-mid="192058578" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fb9c7ed4da8f36306ca51cbc9ad232e73e976c8b61750c137ac1cd4c3b218322/2022_the-pluralist_9.197-words-in-blue-neon-3.jpg" /> <img width="14960" height="11417" width_o="14960" height_o="11417" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d57991fc4b4f939221db89636945d0eacd9d082c71e80e7d6fdc1ce36035eebc/pluralist-o-2.jpg" data-mid="192058576" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d57991fc4b4f939221db89636945d0eacd9d082c71e80e7d6fdc1ce36035eebc/pluralist-o-2.jpg" /> Extract from Dark Rooms, The Pluralist Magazine (2022) Read text for the project here. https://arjunakeshvaniham.co.uk/Losing-Your-Mother Thu, 22 Jun 2023 12:15:14 +0000 Arjuna Keshvani-Ham | London https://arjunakeshvaniham.co.uk/Losing-Your-Mother LOSING YOUR MOTHER Short experimental documentary Status: In progress Medium: HD Digital video, colour, B&amp;W &amp; sound. Digital file conversion from 8mm, DV tape; archival footage. Country: UK, India Year: In 2022 - present Losing Your Mother stages an encounter with a collection of found objects: a set of colonial postcards and a collection of photographs and films drawn from my family archive. I draw on my travels across India to my grandfather’s hometown of Amreili, which he left shortly after partition, reflecting on the legacies, technologies and history of colonial image making. In the film, the speaker’s attempts to align her fragmented memories/postmemories of India with the reality of the spaces she encounters are constantly frustrated. There is a discrepancy between the real, encountered space and the space of memory.Losing Your Mother takes it’s title from Saidiya Hartman’s 2006 text ‘Lose Your Mother’, in which she traces the history of the Atlantic slave trade by recounting a journey she took along a slave route in Ghana.&nbsp; The partition of India in 1947 into two new nations, India and Pakistan, is the central trauma arond which the events of the film precariously hang. The event, which resulted in the mass displacement of people across borders, is central to the speaker’s family history. However, in the film this context is a black hole,&nbsp; referenced only indirectly. The film uses superimposition of images––a modern reinterpretation of illusion-building strategies like double exposure used in the production of colonial postcards––to draw attention to the illusion of photography's indexicality, and the seemingly insurmountable problematics of the decolonial project. &nbsp; <img width="1920" height="1080" width_o="1920" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/866c1a19e0e5852d677caf970f35476de0e159f79e7da957aecd28e40beb3da5/city-with-postcard.jpg" data-mid="184105821" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/866c1a19e0e5852d677caf970f35476de0e159f79e7da957aecd28e40beb3da5/city-with-postcard.jpg" /> <img width="1920" height="1080" width_o="1920" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/64b129c4423f6c0cb1b88705b1f6f9f8239fc3c19c874949e5e8229a2793ad1f/harbour.00_00_38_02.Still006.jpg" data-mid="184105531" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/64b129c4423f6c0cb1b88705b1f6f9f8239fc3c19c874949e5e8229a2793ad1f/harbour.00_00_38_02.Still006.jpg" /> <img width="1920" height="1080" width_o="1920" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1142b3597d3b92a9ac90427932dcb20a8544e1ce97759889460c28fafcac76a0/bird-and-postcards.jpg" data-mid="184105826" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1142b3597d3b92a9ac90427932dcb20a8544e1ce97759889460c28fafcac76a0/bird-and-postcards.jpg" /> <img width="1920" height="1080" width_o="1920" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/05ab9cb303a16a0796d004d9850e18b0e8e125f075db49ac76e53d077a89a69e/building-and-postcards.jpg" data-mid="184105846" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/05ab9cb303a16a0796d004d9850e18b0e8e125f075db49ac76e53d077a89a69e/building-and-postcards.jpg" /> <img width="1920" height="1080" width_o="1920" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4476def0ffe401271db4d7e20994a23881d9e2bf25aba5c7734523bbea3207c3/final-print_3.jpg" data-mid="183998887" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4476def0ffe401271db4d7e20994a23881d9e2bf25aba5c7734523bbea3207c3/final-print_3.jpg" /> Stills from ‘Losing Your Mother’, 2023. https://arjunakeshvaniham.co.uk/About Fri, 22 Sep 2023 14:16:20 +0000 Arjuna Keshvani-Ham | London https://arjunakeshvaniham.co.uk/About <img width="4272" height="2848" width_o="4272" height_o="2848" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/61dc7174db437efa9fc7114938eb0b6894eadc5fd31a768497cff646a69bfeaf/IMG_5044.jpg" data-mid="191570812" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/61dc7174db437efa9fc7114938eb0b6894eadc5fd31a768497cff646a69bfeaf/IMG_5044.jpg" /> Arjuna Keshvani-Ham (b. 1999) is a British foreign correspondent and filmmaker. She received her BA in English and German at the University of Oxford (2021). Arjuna is a regular contributor to The Times &amp; Sunday Times, where she covers South Asia; she also has bylines in Prospect Magazine, Engelsberg Ideas, The London Magazine and The Oxford Review of Books, among others. She makes regular appearances on Times Radio. She has covered subjects from Indian foreign policy to the Gen-Z revolution in Nepal and the legacies of the monsoon revolution in Bangladesh.In 2025 she was awarded the Richard Beeston Prize for emerging British Foreign Correspondents in order to report on Tibetan exile communities in Nepal and India. She is currently a Research Fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC. Arjuna’s films and installations have been exhibited internationally at festivals and exhibitions, including at the Tate Modern (London), Antimatter Media Art Festival (BC, Canada), VCAS (Vienna), Belvedere 21 (Vienna), SET film festival (London), Deluge Contemporary Art Space (Canada), Artcore Gallery (Derby), the Royal College of Art (London). In 2024 she was selected for an international residency with 1 Shanthi Road Gallery (Bengaluru) and Artcore Gallery (Derby). In 2022 Arjuna collaborated with EUROCLIO and the University of Oxford to produce a series of short documentaries and digital archive on the enduring legacies of the Atlantic slave trade in Portugal, which premiered at Whirled Cinema (London, 2022). Arjuna is based between New Delhi and London. Contact: arjuna.ham@gmail.com