Urban Noir: Disruptions and Dislocations in Karachi

Join us for the second talk in the public programme accompanying the exhibition ​کبھی قطرہ سمندر میں بدل جاتا ہے | A Drop Becoming the Ocean presented by the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Aga Khan University and the Furqaan Ahmed Collection.

In this talk and Q&A, Prof. Kamran Asdar Ali explores the film Laal Kabootar (dir: Kamal Khan, 2018) to think about contemporary Karachi. As Ram Gopal Verma’s Satya (1998) was an experimental offering, Bombay Noir, there Laal Kabootar may historically be remembered as an attempt to create Pakistani filmic history, Karachi Noir! The multi-layered film captures the continued sense of foreboding present in the population of the city, a sense of anxiety that leads to an urban economy of surveillance, security, and violence (state and otherwise). While Karachiites are compelled to exist within the double binds of uncertainty of employment and the terror of unexplained violence, the question the paper seeks to ponder is how to imagine a social, economic, and cultural healing process for this fractious city. To partially respond to this query, Prof. Ali relies on Laal Kabootar to focus on the everyday experiences of working-class men and women to speculate and explore the contours and possibilities of a future politics for cities like Karachi where the multilingual, and muti-ethnic population continues to consider the challenges, pitfalls, and compromises of co-existence.

The talk activates the educational and discursive aims of the exhibition کبھی قطرہ سمندر میں بدل جاتا ہے | A Drop Becoming the Ocean, which takes water as a red thread for intersecting conversations on ecology, migration, class dynamics, and colonial histories in Pakistan and South Asia. This unique collaboration between the Furqaan Ahmed Collection and the Faculty of Arts & Sciences (FAS) at Aga Khan University brings to campus works by internationally acclaimed artists from Pakistan and South Asia including Naiza Khan, Salima Hashmi, Zarina Hashmi, Saba Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Jr., and Lala Rukh.

The talk and Q&A will run from 5–6pm. Following the talk refreshments will be served and you are welcome to tour the exhibition.

NB: Please bring your CNIC card or foreign passport to ensure access to the building.

For press or other inquiries please email [email protected].

About the speaker:

Kamran Asdar Ali is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin. His research interests range from gender, sexuality, health and political economy to labor history, urban studies, and popular culture; his work focuses mainly on South Asia and the Middle East. He is the author of Communism in Pakistan: Politics and Class Activism 1947-1972 (IB Tauris, 2015) and Planning the Family in Egypt: New Bodies, New Selves (UT Press, 2002). He has co- edited Gender, Politics, and Performance in South Asia (OUP, 2015), Comparing Cities: Middle East and South Asia (OUP, 2009) and Gendering Urban Space in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa (Palgrave, 2008). His most recent co-edited volume is Towards Peoples’ Histories in Pakistan: (In)audible Voices, Forgotten Pasts (Bloomsbury, 2023).

Host or Publisher Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Aga Khan University