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Bangalore, almost a kiss: A compilation of narratives held together by the criss-crossing fibre optic cables.
Across Bangalore, young engineers move from terrace to terrace carrying coils of fibre-optic cable. To cross a street, they wrap black tape around a tennis ball and throw it into the air. Someone waiting on another rooftop catches it. A cable follows. For a brief moment, the city becomes a game of impossible distances.
Bangalore, almost a kiss begins by staying close to these gestures. Working across film, photography, sound and text, the project follows the workers who assemble the city's internet : one throw, one knot, one rooftop at a time. Their movements sketch another map of Bangalore - one held together less by master plans than by improvisation, balance and trust.
The cables are not only carrying data. They gather conversations, rumours, forgotten histories and the weight of everyday labour. Following their routes through the city, the project drifts between observation to fiction. Every throw of the tennis ball opens the possibility of another story, allowing imagined voices to travel along the same lines as broadband. Through these crossings, Bangalore, Almost a Kiss looks for a city that persists beneath the promise of seamless technology: fragile, entangled, playful and always in the process of being made.