Paras Vijan

Tathāstu
10.30–12.13.2025
Room 2

SUPER:
Between 1526 and 1992, and the thirty-three years since. However, it’s equally important to consider the present, the position you find yourself in now, wherever that may be.

EXT. SMALL PARK — SUNSET
A small park lined with trees, compact shrubbery, benches facing inwards. The sun attends as lighting. Either beginning to rise or descend, initiating an eclipse into dusk.

INT. MODEST HOUSING — SUNSET
At other points the setting is indoors, in what’s known as housing, a location never too far from the situation of a park. These two points are inextricable.

EXT. SMALL PARK — SUNSET
Two men sit on a bench, their bodies and intentions facing externally towards the narrow space of communication. Their eyes track the movement of other men and boys who pass by; greetings are exchanged. Their mouths move; they gesture with their hands. Men in jeans and chappals walk past, moving their thumbs in the ubiquitous way, up and down. Light reflects off the screen like a shard. Persuasive chatter circulates like a wind against a background of frictive noise emanating from a construction site beyond the immediate scene. Each of these men would like to convince the other of what happened on December 6th, 1992.

INT. GALLERY SPACE — SUNSET
You enter a room and are prompted by a sequence of bricks — one of which is a glossy, concentrated shade of saffron — that amount to a pathway, suggesting two directions, either back the way you came which is familiar, or forwards. What you observe in this room are mostly static objects inflected with indications of very recent movement. Are you feeling distracted?

EXT. SMALL PARK — DUSK
The park cools off. A young man, recently graduated from university, lifts his phone to take a picture. A handful of tawny birds swoop down, synchronized and focused on a single direction. For the most part, people are now exiting the park, as it’s dinnertime. Lamps around the outer perimeter flick on, orange light is sent upwards. There’s another solitary man sitting still on a chipped wooden bench, perhaps unaware that he’s the only one left from the group with whom he was discussing earlier. Harshly lit by a crisp umbra issuing from an unchanging zone of newsreels, the man finds his head swimming with words he could’ve employed earlier. He’s agitated. Tomorrow he’ll return to the park, to restart where he left off, since there’s nothing else to do.

— Emily Zuberec

We thank Webster & fils ltée for the donation of bricks.