The Berlin-based annual festival for art and digital culture, transmediale, has extended their space into the online realm with
Almanac For Refusal, which features a variety of browser-based media artworks - such as films, photo essays, texts, images, sound experiments. A particular piece of work stood out to me though, and upon watching it, had me transfixed. In the video essay “Finalforest.exe”, Mumbai-born artist Sahej Rahal narrates his own metaphysical musings through a 3D-rendered beastly shamanistic creature. In nine minutes and 30 seconds, he brings you on a mystical and contemplative look into the spinal cord of Indian society - the supposed divinely-oriented caste system - using bits of folklore, urban legends, archaeological records, conspiracies and science fiction.
Though presumably rendered based on Rahal himself, the character design comes across as being very intentional. The shamanistic creature has a body of an unpolished crystal with several tentacles that extend outwards to help it walk. According to the dialogue, it can be inferred that the tentacles represent the “tentacles of state bureaucracy that slither out to revoke fundamental rights of minorities and silence all forms of dissent through police action”. Rahal is referring to India’s politicisation of caste and the mistreatment of lower caste Indian nationals, which can be seen in the distribution of basic needs, like housing, and social relations.