(← selected work) (research question)

what does a heritage monument become if you use it for an evening?

Formgiving, one evening that turned Amritvarshini Vav, a stepwell in Khadia, into a cinema.

Amritvarshini Vav is a small eighteenth-century stepwell inside Ahmedabad's walled city, at 23.02495° N, 72.5972° E, protected, dry, and mostly closed. The performance was simple: a white sheet across the arch at the bottom of the steps, a projector on the top landing, and an invitation. By eight in the evening the steps were an auditorium. The film was not the point. The point was to see whether a monument the city preserves by keeping people out could be brought back to use by letting them in, for two hours, without changing a stone.

(role): performance · set-up · documentation
(period): 2018 · one evening
(context): amritvarshini vav · khadia · ahmedabad
(status): performance

fig.01Eight in the evening. The steps of the vav as seating, the screen in the arch below, the audience facing the well.

(00) the vav

A well with steps for seats

Ahmedabad's walled city has dozens of stepwells, most of them dry, protected, and shut. The Amritvarshini Vav at Khadia is one of the smallest: a flight of steps down to a well, a colonial building over one side, the fort wall and a bastion on the other. Its section is an auditorium's, steps facing an arch, and the performance took that literally.

fig.02The set-up, drawn. The stepwell with the colonial building behind it, the fort wall and bastion beside, the projection screen across the lower arch, the projector above, people watching from the steps.

Setting up. The sheet lowered from the parapet, the projector wired, the first test image on the arch. — fig.03Setting up the performance. Hanging the sheet, running the cable, testing the throw.

(01) set-up

A sheet, a projector, a cable

A white sheet hung from the parapet and pulled square across the lower arch. A projector on the top landing, a laptop on the step below it, a cable to the nearest plug. Three people to hang the cloth, one to aim the light. The whole set-up fits in a rickshaw, and the monument is untouched.

fig.04The sheet goes over the arch. Three of us on the parapet, the cloth dropped and pulled square from below.

The projector on the top landing, the laptop on the step below it. — fig.05–06The projector on the landing; the arches of the vav before the light went.

The vav's arches from the landing. The space the film would be thrown into. — fig.05–06The projector on the landing; the arches of the vav before the light went.

(02) the screening

What a vav cinema

From six the sheet went up; by eight the steps were full. The film mattered less than the fact of it: a place the city keeps by keeping people out was in use for two hours because people were let in. The last image thrown onto the sheet was the vav itself, projected onto its own arch. A monument's future use is a matter of permission, not construction.

fig.07Six to eight. Setting up the theatre; the first people coming down the steps; learning where the light falls; projecting the vav onto the vav.

The screen. A face across the arch at the bottom of the well. — fig.08–09The screen in the arch; the poster.

The poster. Formgiving: re-activating and repurposing the Amritvarshini Vav. What a vav cinema. — fig.08–09The screen in the arch; the poster.

(outcome)

Formgiving. A one-evening cinema in Amritvarshini Vav, Khadia, Ahmedabad: a sheet, a projector, an audience on the steps. One of three urban performances made in the walled city that term; the plaza playground at Bhadra is on the rebel bodies page, the market living room is not yet on this site.

(what I'd do next)

Do it with the keepers of the vav rather than around them: a screening programme the trust runs, so that the monument's opening hours are the performance.

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