Filmmaker and composer Sindhu Thirumalaisamy spent several years in Bangalore, India, a city that used to be known for its pleasant climate and green spaces. Today, Bangalore’s wetlands are polluted with sewage and waste to such an extent that they produce spectacular foams — in the artist’s words: “bubbles of wealth surrounded by pools of neglect.” The Lake and The Lake responds to a media-driven crisis around these phenomena by offering a representation of one particular lake, Bellandur, as a toxic commons. The lake is toxic in both senses of the word: poisonous to the living beings that inhabit it and high-risk in economic terms. Nevertheless, it remains a space of commoning for various people whose labour sustains the city’s development. Moving through the peripheries of Bellandur lake alongside fishing communities, waste workers, foragers, security guards, street dogs, and children, the question arises: what constitutes a ‘nature’ worth protecting? On the soundtrack, the landscape is washed over with acoustic and acousmatic voices, devotional music, religious speech, jet engines, rifle shooting sessions, children playing, the rhythms of work, the chatter of hundreds of birds and insects. “Like much of my work with ambient sound, these moments are about presence, about dwelling in common...I treat some sounds as residual echoes, mimicking my experience of the music that echoed over the surface of the lake. When music reached me from across the lake, it would be hollowed out with only a faint traces of its melody. I recreate this effect of the sonic residue in some segments of the film, producing an uncanniness that I associate with the lake.”
“Patient frames lead us along the shores where we can examine a square metre of dirt, a posse of lounging dirt dogs, plants whispering in the breeze. The artist traverses the city’s fringe, the liminal edge, as conversations with friends and strangers, experts and neighbours weigh in, along with a bevy of carefully crafted field recordings... In place of a polemic, a broadsheet, or an overview: there is a search. An attuning. A being with. Little surprise that the artist has a sound practice, not only because her tracks are so rich, but because this is a movie that invites us to listen to her listening. Such a deep and unexpected pleasure. As if there was time for that too.” (Mike Holboom)
