I can, I can’t

Video essay with sound – running in loop

Many years ago I met an adolescent girl during a summer spent with my estranged father in India. A friend whose identity keeps slipping from me each time I reach for it. This video essay begins as personal recollection and reveals itself as something more structural; an inquiry into why certain memories are not merely forgotten, but made unfindable through imposed forgetfulness.

The work examines the managed distance between how caste and caste-based violence are understood in Indian cities versus in villages. A gap that is socially rehearsed and institutionally protected.

This film remembers poorly. And makes that poor remembering legible as a political condition.