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Mishbehaving Bollywood Archive
As public institutions of film preservation are increasingly reorganised and consolidated, Bollywood’s material histories are also finding their way into private collections—posters, tickets, songbooks, lobby cards and other fragments of a popular cinema. The question of who collects, preserves and gives meaning to these remnants becomes increasingly urgent.
Mishbehaving Bollywood Archive responds to one such collection of more than 300 films. Rather than treating the material as a stable record to be preserved, the work lets it wander, collide and misbehave. Images and sounds slip out of their original stories, moving across decades, bodies and places. Romance becomes chase; voices, synth samples, effects and the rest find unexpected relations.
Across multiple screens and through a building in Okhla, Delhi, the archive is set in motion, eventually spilling into the streets—where Bollywood’s songs, dialogues and gestures continue to live in everyday memory.