Mario’s Maximum City

As one enters a dark room at the gallery,three videos running on the walls scream for attention. The first transports those present into an ice factory,where large blocks of ice are being made. The idea to shoot the factory came to Pfeifer when he saw people carrying large chunks of ice on motorcycles on the Mumbai streets. He couldn’t understand where they were going and where these huge blocks of ice were coming from. After following them,he traced one of the ice factories to a fishing village in Versova. “In my country,machines produce it. I was surprised to see the use of manual labour for a short-lived good. It is so hot in the country and by the end of the day the ice melts. The total energy invested is gone,” says Pfeifer,who was surprised to see that this ice was eventually taken to households with no refrigerators.

Take a 90 degree turn and another video tracing the journey and experience of an auto commuter on a busy Mumbai street comes up. A transgender wearing a sari wishes the commuter for a prosperous life and a happy marriage. “At first,when I saw them,I could not understand why they do this. Soon I got to know that this is their way of asking for money,” he says. Pfeifer further adds that he was not present while shooting this particular scene. He waited outside while the scene was shot by his crew members. “It would have been difficult for a white artist to gain access to this community,” he says.

Apart from this,there were several other instances that intrigued the artist,which can be seen in other episodes of the video installation. “When I came to India,I didn’t know why men got their heads shaved,” says Pfeifer,who soon realised that it was to mourn someone’s death in the family. He also didn’t know why women applied henna. Shot in Mumbai’s Crawford Market,Chembur,Versova and Belapur,the multi-channel project doesn’t have any background story for a Western audience. “In the past,when filmmakers from the West came to India to shoot episodes for BBC and CNN,they would give a background story to help the foreign audience understand it. I didn’t want that. There is nothing to explain. It is upto the audience to interpret,” says Pfeifer about the project,for which most scenes have been shot only once,and any error or unplanned event that happened eventually became a part of the videos.