The Lightning Testimonies

The Lightning Testimonies creates an experience that emerges from a constellation of eight synchronized choreographed projections with sound tracks that lead to disparate narratives that then converge into a single projection. As the stories unfold, women from different times and regions come forward. The multiple projections speak to them directly, in an effort to understand how such violence is resisted, remembered and recorded by individuals and communities. Submerged narratives appear, disappear and are then reborn in another vocabulary at another time. Using a range of visual vocabularies, The Lightning Testimonies transports us beyond the realm of suffering into a space of quiet contemplation, where resilience creates the potential for transformation. Amar Kanwar’s poetic documentary films and video works explore the political, social, economic and ecological conditions of the Indian subcontinent, often through stories and experiences. Much of his work traces the legacy of decolonization and partition, with the splitting of families, sectarian violence and border conflicts forming recurrent motifs. Interwoven throughout are investigations of family relations, gender and sexuality, philosophical and religious questions, and the processes of globalization. Through images, ritual objects, literature, poetry and song, Kanwar creates lyrical, meditative film essays that do not aim to represent trauma or political situations so much as to find ways through them; Kanwar’s work looks deeply into the causes and effects, and of how they are translated into everyday life and cultural forms.