KENT CHAN

HOT HOUSE PROJECTS - PAARA

(Exhibition, 2020)

PAARA was an exhibition featuring the film, PAARA by Goutam Ghosh and Jason Havneraas at the Hot House, curated by Natasha Marie Llorens.

Shot in Jharkhand, India in 2017, "PAARA" tells the story of a ninety-year-old magician looking back at his past life, unable to distinguish between memories of magic and memories of reality. Ghosh and Havneraas explore myth and ritual using both figurative and geometrical props. Each scene is structurally analogous: there is a task, there are people—people who are also somehow luminous drawings—and there is a spoken narrative overwriting their gestures that is concise without being analytical. The intention behind the system that governs the appearance of these people in the world is not stated. The film simply reflects on them through perpetual re-positioning.