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RISE AND FALL
2023
4K video | 2.39:1 | 7.56 min. | color | sound


In a grand opening shot, Rise and Fall opens onto the great auditorium of the Museum of Natural History in Chandigarh, revealing the impressive cyclorama Evolution of Life. The initially static framing emphasizes the monumentality of the display panels within the almost sacral atmosphere of Le Corbusier’s modernist architecture, gradually building anticipation in resonance with the low-frequency sound composition. The camera then begins to move, following the depiction of planetary evolution along the circular architecture. In a multiple, looped 360-degree tracking shot, the film explores the unfolding of life on a macrocosmic scale, while simultaneously tracing its microcosmic fading and, ultimately, its unexpected dissolution. Finally, the camera returns to the static opening position, now revealing the fourteen paintings in a state of complete blankness—dissolving history and chronological time into sheer nothingness and white noise. The juxtaposition of linear development within the cyclorama’s narrative and the film’s cyclical camera movement points to divergent cultural concepts of time that converge in this place. Western tradition largely follows a linear model of temporality, predicated on progress and the promise of an ideal future—an idea reflected not only in the Darwinian evolutionary narrative of the cyclorama, but also in the utopian ambitions embedded in Le Corbusier’s architecture. By contrast, many Eastern traditions and Indian philosophy conceive time as fundamentally cyclical: within the great rhythm of the world, infinite periods of creation, preservation, and dissolution succeed one another endlessly. Seen in this light, the utopian circular architecture appears almost as a panopticon: a gaze from the center that surveys evolution and progress. Humanity is positioned not as part of the world, but as an external force observing and controlling it. The extinguishing of the display panels thus signifies more than temporal passing; it reveals an overwhelming loss of authority and marks the end of a particular mode of viewing, narrating, and mediating history. In the final image, the chairs appear fragile and abandoned, yet they also quietly invite a collective rethinking of the world, of time and temporality—beyond deeply Eurocentric, universalist narratives, and toward alternative ways of understanding coexistence and becoming.



Concept / Camera / Edited: Kay Walkowiak
Composition & Sound Design: Natalia Dominguez Rangel
Postproduction: Gabriel Gschaider, Paul Vincent Schütz
Color Grading: Andi Winter
Production Assistant: Barbara Probst
Supported by: Austrian Cultural Forum New Delhi, Federal State of Austria, CNA Luxembourg



︎ Archive Film