‘7 Minutes’ is an outcome created on the given prompt of ‘reality’ for the Fabrica Residency trials. It is an accurate depiction of the initial stages of my creative process, where I take on a subject and explore as many directions as possible while drawing inspiration from my cultural and interdisciplinary knowledge.

The prompt flung me down a rabbit hole, and the only question that reverberated was, “What is reality?”

I find reality to be an amusing, unassuming thing which changes every nanosecond, second, minute, hour, day, week, fortnight, month, year, decade. A micro and a macro change simultaneously happening, affecting every individual and the whole world collectively, constantly. It is the foundation of our existence – the existence of reality. Yet no one has come close to understanding or explaining it. It is a true mystery. This intrigued me. I was also intrigued by the interconnectedness of events in our reality. The ripple effect of 9/11 triggering a chain of events that eventually led to The Twilight Saga becoming a pop cultural phenomenon. Or, how even with the advancements in medical science and technology, COVID-19 brought about an unimaginable reality – nothing could be explained, understood, or even done. People realized that the next natural disaster might be something we never recover from, but time continued. With time, so did reality. But where does reality begin? Was it with the Big Bang? Where does it exist? Literature, mythology, consciousness? Is it like the Ship of Theseus? Can we create our own realities? Jim Morrison did by predicting his own death. The Simpsons have predicted future realities for a long time. Is it easy to do so? Will we see a reality where Machine Learning made it possible for machines to overtake humanity? But the most haunting thing I wanted to explore was what happens to our reality after we die. I decided to explore all these questions and nuances through a short film comprised of a mini-series of 7 physical collages, digital art and animation.

I knew I wanted to have both physical and digital art, partly because some aspects I wanted to explore (future reality, fictional reality) made more sense to be portrayed that way and partly because reality is both a physical and abstract concept. It’s the past, the present, the future. It shifts constantly and simultaneously, warping into physical manifestations and metaphysical ideas.

The video is a play on the unpredictability of reality. The narration abruptly switches to a song with a vintage, sci-fi feel, and the switch from abstract interpretations to more literal ones is all supposed to have a jarring, raw effect. The purpose is to keep the viewer on their toes at every point, guessing what’ll come next. Some guesses might be predictable, and some would not. And the aim is to make the viewer think when it ends. To confront their own series of questions, go down their own rabbit hole. Reality is as predictable as it is unpredictable. It can change any second; it can change in the course of the video as you read these words. I have tried to capture that essence with ‘7 Minutes’. It’s supposed to unnerve, make you pause, get under your skin, and make you wonder, “What was that?”