For the last five months, Joey Foster Ellis, a functional artist and craftsman from Auburn in upstate New York, has been sifting through the most bizarre collection of YouTube clips from his studio in Jingdezhen, China. Some of them include a Marathi balgeet (nursery rhyme) called Shaka Laka Boom Boom; a behind-the-scene dekko of actor Jackie Shroff using cuss words in a polio ad; a hilarious video of an Indian politician’s false teeth falling off while speaking and the foot-tapping Tamil song, Chikku Bukku Raile by AR Rahman. His home is full of a staggering 9,000 photographs that he has shot and playthings such as play-doh, kinetic sand, miniature humans and finger-paints preserved from his travels to India, Qatar, China and New York. “My favourite from the lot, however, is Sridevi’s Mr India number, Hawa Hawai. She looks incredibly beautiful,” Ellis tells us over the phone from Canada, where he is stationed to give a TED conference.

A still from the video depicting a childhood photograph of Arfaaz Kagalwala