B h a r a t
for three channel video and stereo sound

22'00", 2002

Bharat was shot in Northern India in early spring 2002 and premiered in November of the same year. This is the first time I shot with the aim of assembling in panoramic triple screen mode. Scanned panning scenes were reconstructed from multiple exposures. The text is extracted from the last known recording of Mohandas K Gandhi a few days before his assassination in 1947. The text is reproduced below.

Music and images: Jean Piché
Violin: Ivan Zawada
Voice: Mohandas K. Gandhi
Rights: The GandhiServe Foundation, Berlin

Click on thumbnails for Quicktime previews. Bharat is available for performance in triple DVD format only.

Madam President and friends,


I do not think that I should apologize to you, for having to speak in a foreign tongue. I wonder if this loudspeaker carries my voice to the farthest end of this vast audience. Will some of those who are far away will raise their hands if they listen to what I'm saying? Do you listen? Alright. Well, if my voice doesn't carry, it won't be my fault, it will be the fault of these loudspeakers.

I was wondering what I was to speak to you. I wanted to collect my thoughts, but let me confess to you, that I had no time.
Who followed Buddha? Jesus, again from Asia. Before Jesus was Moses, ... And then what happened? Christianity became disfigured

… and in order to make you understand, if my poor speech can make you understand, … everything that the cities of India have to show you, is not real India. Certainly, the carnage that is going on before your very eyes, sorry, shameful…beyond the confines of India..

the message of Asia, is not to be learnt through European spectacles, through the Western spectacles, not by imitating the tinsel of the West, the gun-powder of the West, the atom bomb of the West. If you want to give a message again to the West, it must be a message of love, … a message of truth.

You can redeliver that message now, in this age of democracy, in the age of awakening of the poorest of the poor, you can redeliver this message… Then you will, you will complete the conquest of the whole of the West, not through vengeance because you have been exploited, and…when next you meet in India, you will all be, exploited nations of the Earth will meet if by that time there aren't any exploited nations of the Earth. I am so sanguine that if all of you put your hearts together, not merely your heads, but hearts together and understand the secret of the messages of all these wise men of the East have left to us, and if we really become, deserve, are worthy of that great message, then you will easily understand that the conquest of the West will be completed and that conquest will be loved by the West itself. West is today pining for wisdom. West today is in despair of multiplication of atom bombs, because a multiplication of atom bombs means utter destruction, not merely of the West, but it will be a destruction of the world, as if the prophecy of the Bible is going to be fulfilled and there is to be a perfect deluge. Heaven forbid that there be that deluge, and through men's wrongs against himself. It is up to you to deliver the whole world, not merely Asia but deliver the whole world from that wickedness, from that sin. That is the precious heritage…


Mohandas K Gandhi
Inter-Asia Relations Conference
1947