Period
2011
Proposed by
Sadia Shirazi
Location
Karachi
External links
About the project
MKMC uses the medium of video projections to explore meaningful ways of working in the increasingly privatised, securitised and segregated public spaces of Karachi. Between 2011—2013 we worked with local communities in diverse neighbourhoods, enabling residents to construct intimate narratives of everyday life with cheap, accessible mobile phone technology. These personal documentaries were projected back on to various surfaces of the neighbourhoods by Mobile Cinema Rickshaw in communal screenings that acted as transformative cinematic events, temporarily disrupting the hierarchies of everyday socio-spatial relations by making visible the multiplicity of urban experiences and transgressing boundaries between public and private life. Each iteration of this project was created over an engaged period of months creating cross-class and cross-place collaborations within Karachi, through which new producers and audiences staked a claim in representations of the city.
For the past six months, MKMC has been collaborating with artists to create site-specific projections (video, sound, readings and performance) in public spaces by producing new modes of engagement, imaging and circulation in urban spaces with diverse publics outside contemporary art networks. These projections explore the possibilities and potentialities of public art practice in Karachi. We hope to expand MKMC by undertaking a cinematic, phenomenological and philosophical inquiry to reflect in public ways on the linkages between the visual and the political in an ever-expanding, burgeoning metropolis like Karachi. We have received support from Rocket Hub crowd sourcing, New York Foundation for the Arts, USIP, University of Singapore, VASL artists collective, and several generous individuals.
External links
About the artist
The Tentative Collective is a group with six core members sharing resources to create interdisciplinary works of art in public space. Our projects strive to be collaborative, site sensitive, and open to a diverse range of participants. We have organized over twenty projections, many of which were long term engagements with parts of the city outside networks of fine art production. Our work has been presented at universities, cultural forums, and international conferences.
