CAMP

Established 2007, India
Based in Mumbai, India 

Sydney Opera 2026 

2K CCTV video, stereo sound, looped 106 mins

Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and Rubaiya Qatar, Qatar Museums Authority

Courtesy of the artists 

CAMP: 

Shaina Anand Rohan Chavan Jan Gerber 

Ashok Sukumaran Zinnia Ambapardiwala 

With Kush Badhwar, Alana Hunt and Laura McLean Soundtrack: Tushar Adhav 

Featuring, in order of appearance: Douglas “Esky” Cummings, Kathryn Bird, Shivanjani Lal, Alison Martin, Brami Jegan, Kush Badhwar, Shubhangi Singh, Kieran Krishnan, Wendy Bacon, Jooloo Griffiths, Helen Grace, David Watson, Victoria Clarke, Alana Hunt, Jasmin Stephens, Sigrid “Koki” De Silva, Iqbal Barkat, Muslim Collective, Kalanjay Dhir, Feras Shaheen, Saba Abdi Zaidi, Munasib Hamid, Antony Lowenstein, Tammi Gissell and Nyaluak Leth 

Filmed using a generic pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) CCTV camera mounted atop the roof of this building, White Bay Power Station, Sydney Opera is a cinematic survey of Sydney and its occupants, composed as a living mise-en-scène. Slow panning shots, tilts and deep zooms trace everyday activities across the city, collapsing public and private worlds. Through this choreography, agency is returned to city denizens, who reclaim space within the urban field, transforming the ancient, colonial and commercial immensity of the city into a domain of living, breathing, resisting, and remembering. 

The sprawling metropolis has long been a trope of modern cinema, where characters are swept up by the forces of industry, vertical architecture, and relentless motion. Often portrayed less as a landscape than as a deity, the city becomes an omnipotent presence. Extending this tradition, Sydney Opera interrogates the ubiquity of urban surveillance culture and its social consequences. The work continues CAMP’s decades-long engagement with the political and authoritarian implications of video technology, reframing surveillance as both a tool of control and a site of possibility.