Wherever I Am, the Sky is Mine

What is captured in these two video installations is the ever-present permeability and beauty of Karail, Bangladesh. Setting suns and ambient music are a classic combination on Youtube. They’re fan-fiction music videos made with drifting skies.

Roshanak Amini and Juniper Foam have created two video installations that learn from this phenomenon, and they push beyond the surface-level beauty into a world full of real, socio-political undercurrents that are hiding in plain sight. “Staring at the Sun” and “Wherever I Am, the Sky Is Mine” speak the language of remix culture and smooth astral jazz, but the space they create belongs to an emerging genre we might call Future Lofi.

The rhythmic flow of the inhabitants leaving from and returning to the “illegal settlement”, Karail, through a small gravel pathway that appears on the body of water which divides the two worlds, is a sign that nothing remains isolated: that these two worlds, Karail and the rest of Dhaka, seep into one another, into every aspect of “the other’s” everyday life.
The merchandise moves into and out of these two spaces. The labor force which builds and serves those living in the “legal” parts of Dhaka comes from these settlements.
While the flow is constant throughout the day, it escalates during sunrise and sunset. What is captured here in these videos is the ever-present permeability of Karail.

Roshanak Amini is a visual artist currently living and working in Berlin, Germany. She was born in Iran and immigrated to Canada as a child. Over the last 5 years, Amini has focused on how art can enter into and impact the space of everyday life. This interest has led her to step outside of the safety of the White Cube and explore the diverse and rich settings that public spaces have to offer. Participatory art, artistic interventions, public installation, and performative research have been central to her artistic practice. Roshanak considers making art as a way to respond to the world around her: to place some stones in the river in the hopes of slightly changing the course of the water.

Juniper Foam is an artist and teacher based in Berlin, working with video, music and people. Born in Michigan in 1982, he received an MFA from CalArts and then moved to Berlin when he was awarded a fellowship for artistic research at the University of Art’s Graduate School (UdK). He founded the label Care Of Editions in 2012 as a form of social practice, where he redesigned models of music distribution through the lens of performance. Today he runs the label as a collective with his former students and young curators from around the world. In the past year, Juniper’s works have been shown internationally at the Triennale Milano, the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro and the Cultural Center of Belgrade.

credits: Roshanak Amini, Karail/Dhaka, Bangladesh