Absent Decay
2006
16 mm film transferred to DV, color, silent
5 minutes 31 seconds
Absent Decay documents a small 25-year old structure in the historic Banganga Tank area of Mumbai, India. It contains a few stray squatters living among the granite and marble flooring that has not yet been cemented down.
Mumbai is dotted with partially built buildings, dark unfinished concrete structures, standing as mute markers of owner or developer greed and municipal semi-potency. These structures are illegally built or have exceeded their legal allotment of space and are now vacant or occupied by squatters. Some have stood incomplete for as long as 40 years, hallowed in legal limbo, destined to be poised at the point of becoming and decaying. The City Development Plan never included them and never will, since they remain beautifully illegal.
Absent Decay maps the void in the plan, giving shape to the lines missing in the development plan.
Absent Decay was first shown at the 10th Venice Architecture Biennale.
FILM STILLS
