The Exception and the Rule

Shot primarily in Karachi, The Exception and the Rule employs a variety of strategies in negotiating consciously political themes. Avoiding traditional documentary modes, the film frames everyday activities within a period of civil unrest, incorporating performances to camera, public interventions and observation. This complex work supplements Mirza /Butler’s Artangel project ‘The Museum of Non Participation’. – Mark Webber London Film Festival

Every morning in Karachi we read the local newspapers. This became a pattern. The front pages of the International and Local news told us how our day might go. In these troubled times news headlines had direct impact on our sense of freedom around the city. The distance we were prepared to go from home. Most articles were lucid, intelligent, balanced and current, but as the days and opinion cycled past so our interest in these articles waned. After all, even a cursory look at a map would raise an eyebrow as to the complexity of Pakistanâ €™s neighbours . This is a country where so many [geo-]political points converge that their tides are directly played out in peopleâ €™s everyday. The pace of daily change piled thoughts on top of one another. When we put this to a learned friend active in Pakistan he laughed and told us that: To understand Pakistan you must first understand that you cannot rationalise the non rational. Experiences of cities like Karachi are played out globally through inexhaustible layers of mediation. If we had time, we could interrogate every representation; every word and every image. But we do not have time, instead we are all constantly in the process of making ideological decisions to curtail such discussions, in the interests of getting things done. To put it in a nutshell, we all have the feeling that we are being colonised but we donâ €™t exactly know who by. The enemy is not easily identifiable and one can venture to suggest that this feeling now exists globally.—K.M. & B.B.

This work is part of the ongoing project: The Museum of Non Participation.

First Prize – 2010 Onion City Experimental Film & Video Festival