beneath the placid lake

Forum Expanded Exhibition 2025

beneath the placid lake is a projection-based installation that examines the multilayered spatial, social, and cultural aftermath of displacement and slow violence following the creation of a massive dam in the southern Indian state of Telangana. The dam’s construction submerged roughly one hundred villages, forcing the relocation of about 150,000 people. Simultaneously, more than one hundred monumental temples were spared from the floodwaters through a complex process of salvage and preservation.
Drawing on archives found and collected by three generations of researchers, beneath the placid lake contemplates how experiences of space are transformed through forced evictions and when official, monumental histories intersect with submerged local narratives. The installation investigates how methods of knowledge production shape the representation of violence, often towards inevitability.
beneath the placid lake resists this normalization through its formal strategies – combining photographs, moving images, and textual annotations – ephemerally meeting on the screen’s surface as a platform for dreaming different futures at varying temporal scales.

by Kush Badhwar (Director), Vyjayanthi Rao (Director) India / Finland 2025 English 10' Colour & Black/White World premiere

Crew

Directors	Kush Badhwar, Vyjayanthi Rao
Producer	Kush Badhwar

Produced by

waydk

Kush Badhwar

Kush Badhwar is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher whose work explores social and spatial dynamics in peri-urban environments and amidst colossal development drives. Selected screening or exhibition of his work includes at Addis Video Art Festival, the Flaherty Seminar, Tallinn Photomonth Biennale, Experimenta Bangalore, and Videobrasil. In 2014, he was part of the Forum Expanded with the New Delhi-based collective Word Sound Power and the film Blood Earth.

Filmography

2013 Blood Earth; 35 min., Forum Expanded 2014 · We in a One Room Kitchen; 14 min. 2014 Work Starts Now; 9 min. 2016 Geographies of Production; 15 min. 2019 1000 Mornings; 1 min. 2020 Brave Revolutionary Redubbed; with Renu Savant, 20 min. 2021 TXMALL; 6 min. 2022 Water on the City; 1 min. 2025 beneath the placid lake

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2025

Vyjayanthi Rao

Vyjayanthi Rao is an anthropologist, writer, and curator focusing on displacement, memory, heritage, and imaginaries of the future, with a particular interest in speculative practices in contemporary social life. She explores the connections between violence, ruination, uncertainty, and speculation in contemporary culture and has published widely on these subjects.

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2025