Karail, 2017
Mixed-media two-channel HD video installation
13 min. 57 sec.
The work Karail was realized after a one-month artistic research residency by Benjamin Busch in Dhaka, Bangladesh and depicts the self-organized settlement Karail Basti with an assemblage of fragments. Utilizing wood and corrugated iron, the installation emphasizes the settlement’s vernacular materiality and tectonics. It carries fragments of the everyday: a “lucky” brick and a painted zebu figure in reference to Cow Brand sheet metal that is prevalent in the neighborhood. Two original videos show alternate modes of spatial perception: a walk-through video projected on the corrugated structure meanders through Karail Basti’s labyrinthine passages, maintaining its rationalist one-point perspective; a video shown on a CRT monitor zooms into the sensuality of human-material interactions.