SKETCHING STORIES OF KOLKATA THROUGH THE CAMERA–EYE: DRONES, INSTALLATIONS AND SOCIAL MEANING OF NEW MEDIA PRACTICE

This paper grows from my art–practice and reflects on the projects which are connected to the city (of Kolkata, India), maps, and archives. I have discussed elsewhere (Mukherjee 2019), how our project executed at Gem Cinema, Kolkata, in 2018 (Mukherjee 2025a), generated a multi–planar history, by setting up a CC camera on top of the theatre. We argued that the omniscient camera–eye provoked us to become intimate with our immediate and distant contexts. In this paper, I put the spotlight on ‘Sketches and Stories of Kolkata’ media–installation projected on a curved screen at the historic Victoria Memorial Hall and Museum, Kolkata, in 2022. The work operated within ‘Archives and Museums’ programme, and the trajectory of Adi Ganga (rivulet) aka Tolly canal became both the route and a method of remapping the city. It became an arc that connected pre–colonial geographies with post–colonial overgrowth. By rethinking uses of drone camera in the 2022 project, I discuss how such technologies are repurposed toward collective histories, via intense juxtaposing. I unpack the processes of digital–documentation and ‘decolonisation’—by installing the video within the colonial monument. By addressing ‘unequal participation’ during recording, I speculate how the site of installation activates alternative routes, experiences and shared futures.