The Regime of Visuality in Pre-modern Northeast India

(2020-ongoing)

Cinema as an apparatus designed and employed by Western industrial societies in the early 20th century has re-defined the possibilities of perception globally, at the same time creating a rupture with pre-modern regimes of visuality. As these possibilities of perception have been gliding into full automation of perception, there is a conscious attempt to recover other systems or at least conditions of feeling and being in the world, with the purpose of fighting entropy.

Our current research project is such an attempt in regard to the Northeast region of India. Our contention is that we can no longer see this world – therefore one must invoke cinema as a pharmakon, to help build the tools and the images that would make one see, therefore understand and feel, therefore know, and finally become part of this world. This being part of both a human community and a divine order means entering the embrace of Vishnu.