What if you could feel a coal mine without ever descending?
Catatonik is a multi sensory installation project which becomes part of my final study for the course design for social change. It is an attempt at trying to build spatial and sensorial elements which lets the body feel the microcosms of experiencing part of a coal mine and in turn an ingrained empathy as the effect of the experience. A consciously designed installation set to present the physicality of a place purely through an ethnographic reconstruction of sound and image in a different fabric of reality informed through research. The installation was entirely made in the campus of DJAD both the recording of the audio, video and its related textures.
Sound
Ethnographic audio reconstruction mines memory, not just coal
Direction
Eight minutes of deliberate spatial disorientation
Production
Campus-built installation, zero commercial compromise
Director
Rishi Nandan
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The title fuses 'catatonia' and 'tonic' — suggesting both paralysis and stimulation, the body's conflicted response to witnessing others' labor.
Every texture was recorded on DJAD campus, meaning the 'coal mine' was fabricated from local materials — a meditation on how empathy must be constructed, not imported.
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