NIKHIL VETTUKATTIL
IMAGINES
STRUCTURAL FILM AFTER GLOBALIZATION
Free
RSVP required
IMAGINES
STRUCTURAL FILM AFTER GLOBALIZATION
Free
RSVP required
Saturday,
October 25, 2025
6:30
Doors
7pm
Screening begins
Limited capacity
October 25, 2025
6:30
Doors
7pm
Screening begins
Limited capacity
Most video produced today isn’t meant to be seen—at least not by the eyes of a person. Whether shot by a surveillance camera, a driverless car, a drone, or a doorbell, this video without viewers could be considered alongside a set of intentional (one could say, artistic) techniques in filmmaking that in another era came to define “structural film.”
Meanwhile, an ever-growing digital archive of footage sits on servers, indexed but unwatched, as algorithms recalibrate the ways in which video data might be made legible. What does a structural approach mean today, when the structure of the moving image extends so far beyond the visual?
The artist Nikhil Vettukattil makes work for and against a culture attuned to such a surfeit of information. Tending toward limitless duration, Nikhil’s work—across video, sound, performance, and sculpture—sifts through and reorganizes the field of existing cultural production, bringing dissonant historical, political, and mass cultural moments to bear upon each other, and on the present.
His work Decade 2014 – 2023, 2024 distills roughly eighteen hours of news footage, music, lectures, and political speeches drawn from digital archives into a three-channel video montage that is reconfigured each time it’s shown. One version of the work can be freely shared over the BitTorrent protocol at this link (~60 GB).
Meanwhile, an ever-growing digital archive of footage sits on servers, indexed but unwatched, as algorithms recalibrate the ways in which video data might be made legible. What does a structural approach mean today, when the structure of the moving image extends so far beyond the visual?
The artist Nikhil Vettukattil makes work for and against a culture attuned to such a surfeit of information. Tending toward limitless duration, Nikhil’s work—across video, sound, performance, and sculpture—sifts through and reorganizes the field of existing cultural production, bringing dissonant historical, political, and mass cultural moments to bear upon each other, and on the present.
His work Decade 2014 – 2023, 2024 distills roughly eighteen hours of news footage, music, lectures, and political speeches drawn from digital archives into a three-channel video montage that is reconfigured each time it’s shown. One version of the work can be freely shared over the BitTorrent protocol at this link (~60 GB).
Focusing on perspectives from largely outside of the Anglo-American imperialist axis that came to define structural film in its nascent form, Nikhil presents a suite of moving image works in video, HTML5, and live processing by CAMP, Jan Gerber, kleines postfordistisches Drama, Pad.ma, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, and himself that can be seen to enact the legacy of structural film’s techniques, while positioning lived experience and social intervention as primary.
Nikhil Vettukattil, Defund the Police, Oslo Kunstforening, 2024, Installation view; Photo: Tor Simen Ulstein
Nikhil Vettukattil (b. 1990, Bengaluru, IN) is an artist living and working in Oslo. He is part of The Institute for Scene Experiments, a parafictional institution that reflects on the film crew as a social form, exploring alternative modes of production and working conditions. Recent solo exhibitions include DECADE, AGIT, Berlin (2025) and Defund the Police, Arcadia Missa, London (2024). Forthcoming exhibitions include Four Dilations, MoMA PS1, New York, US and Figures of Fascism and Anti-Fascist Solidarity, Kaaitheater, Brussels, BE.
CAMP is a collaborative studio founded in Bombay in 2007. CAMP Studio's current denizens include: Zinnia Ambapardiwala, Shaina Anand, Rohan Chavan, and Ashok Sukumaran. From their home base in Mumbai, they co-host the online archives Pad.ma and indiancine.ma and have run a rooftop cinema for the past 15 years. They recently closed Video After Video, The Critical Media of CAMP at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2025), and have exhibited internationally at institutions, biennials, and film festivals.
Jan Gerber is an artist and software developer from Berlin. He develops internet platforms for the production and distribution of video material, such as v2v.cc, 0xdb.org, Pad.ma, dictionaryofwar.org, pan.do/ra. He has initiated research and public events on questions of intellectual property and piracy in projects such as Pirate Cinema and The Oil of the 21st Century: Perspectives on Intellectual Property. He works on the free and open video codec Ogg Theora and related tools ffmpeg2theora and Firefogg.
CAMP is a collaborative studio founded in Bombay in 2007. CAMP Studio's current denizens include: Zinnia Ambapardiwala, Shaina Anand, Rohan Chavan, and Ashok Sukumaran. From their home base in Mumbai, they co-host the online archives Pad.ma and indiancine.ma and have run a rooftop cinema for the past 15 years. They recently closed Video After Video, The Critical Media of CAMP at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2025), and have exhibited internationally at institutions, biennials, and film festivals.
Jan Gerber is an artist and software developer from Berlin. He develops internet platforms for the production and distribution of video material, such as v2v.cc, 0xdb.org, Pad.ma, dictionaryofwar.org, pan.do/ra. He has initiated research and public events on questions of intellectual property and piracy in projects such as Pirate Cinema and The Oil of the 21st Century: Perspectives on Intellectual Property. He works on the free and open video codec Ogg Theora and related tools ffmpeg2theora and Firefogg.
kleines postfordistisches Drama (kpD / small postfordist Drama) was based in Berlin and consisted of Brigitta Kuster, Isabell Lorey, Marion von Osten and Katja Reichard. kpD developed in the framework of the exhibition Atelier Europa, held in the spring of 2004 at the Kunstverein München.
Pad.ma (Public Access Digital Media Archive) is an online archive of densely text-annotated video material, primarily footage and not finished films. The entire collection is searchable and viewable online and is free to download for non-commercial use. The Pad.ma project was initiated in late 2007 by a group consisting of CAMP from Mumbai, 0x2620 from Berlin, and the Alternative Law Forum from Bangalore.
Araya Rasdjamreansook (b. 1957) is an artist living and working in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Her video, installation, and graphic works have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale (2005), Documenta (2012), a retrospective exhibition at the Sculpture Center in New York City (2015), and a solo show at Maiiam Contemporary Museum, Thailand (2025). She is a semi-retired professor at Chiang Mai University.
Pad.ma (Public Access Digital Media Archive) is an online archive of densely text-annotated video material, primarily footage and not finished films. The entire collection is searchable and viewable online and is free to download for non-commercial use. The Pad.ma project was initiated in late 2007 by a group consisting of CAMP from Mumbai, 0x2620 from Berlin, and the Alternative Law Forum from Bangalore.
Araya Rasdjamreansook (b. 1957) is an artist living and working in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Her video, installation, and graphic works have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale (2005), Documenta (2012), a retrospective exhibition at the Sculpture Center in New York City (2015), and a solo show at Maiiam Contemporary Museum, Thailand (2025). She is a semi-retired professor at Chiang Mai University.
Due to the age and character of the building, the space is not optimized for ADA accessibility and is located up a single flight of 20 stairs with handrails. If you have questions about access, please contact us in advance of the event, and we will make every effort to accommodate you.
