DUSTIN ERICKSEN AND JASON DUNGAN

The video begins on the Jantar Mantar, New Dehli, one of several sites in northern India of large astronomical devices constructed in the 18th century. Built on an architectural scale, this Jantar Mantar is composed of a series of elegant red geometric structures that operate with shadow and alignment. Originally commissioned by the area's local ruler, Jai Singh II, as a demonstration of his power and scientific knowledge, the monument now sits largely unused, in a park. The devices continue to function, but there is no one receiving the cosmological information.The video also drifts through two other locations. First, Jantar Mantar Road which, until recently, was an epicenter of free political speech in New Delhi. The second was a vast yoga/protest involving tens of thousands of people. They were practicing in solidarity with Baba Ramdev, a yogi who was conducting a hunger strike to promote a Lokpal, or anti-corruption watchdog style, bill in Parliament.

Much of the footage is produced in a direct, physical collaboration with the Jantar Mantar. The cameras are placed on wheeled mounts which rolled around the surfaces of the devices, or carried by hand on extended walks. The final video is a massively extended movement around the Jantar Mantar site, the protest site and Jantar Mantar Road. It is a wandering document of the objects themselves and their function as machines that record cosmological time, counterposed to contemporary events and political agency.