The video narrates the journey of the westward bound European conquerors en route to the East Indies. Upon discovery of the Americas, they knew next to nothing about this new world and mistakenly named it « Western Indies ». Henceforth local inhabitants would be named Indians. The video’s soundtrack features a Native American tune (by the Kali’na people of French Guiana and Suriname) as sung in Tamil (a language from Southern India). The tale undergoes a slow transformation: now it’s not so much a journey from East to West as it is an inner quest, a discovery of the Self as Terra incognita. For in a globalised world, East and West tend to become interchangeable poles, depending on the observer’s geographic location. In today’s world, other poles now stand in prominence, namely the “local” and “global” dimensions. « Travels to our Inner Indias » endeavours an exploration of the successive layers of the Self: the external layer, which interfaces with westernised life-styles and global flows ; the middle layer, that of focal sight and the strength of designation ; the deep layer, that entails peripheral vision and inner sensations.
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