Lacuna in Testimony

Lacuna is about attempting to listen to the testimonies and to question whether one can enumerate and describe these events as they remain opaque when one truly seeks to understand them. Since testimonies contain a lacuna, the threshold of the in distinction between inside and outside, which I see as a connection or a dialogue. This interests me a great deal.

‘Lacuna in Testimony’ could not have been realized without spending time with people in the transit camps in Ahmedabad in 2002. The process of being there, looking in and listening produced moments for dialogue. And a sense of creation not restricted to the outcome alone. Such spaces are not free of disagreements and disappointments but the unimagined new responses and critique could further the possibilities of a dialogue and trust. For example, when I took ‘Lacuna in Testimony’ to Ahmadabad a year later to show and know the response / reactions of the people whom I had met in transit camps, but had shifted to the new accommodations, re-connection was welcomed at one hand but viewing this video with them on the other hand there were moments of openness which extended the dialogue to the post riots everyday life and lack of public trust, generalization of their identities which tends towards erasures of peculiarities and difference.