Social Art in the Public Realm

There were 10 days in Bangalore working on a visual project about fear and gender in public spaces. First time in India. How to do that?
All the cultural exchanges and communication gaps … everything is part of my experience and I am part of my project.
The project was urgent and I was decided to propose it very open.
Do not teach, no orders, no impositions on others and feel the culture by letting it come and go.
It was very difficult to survive to that task.
It swallowed me.
The project itself talks about freedom.
And, as a photography project, we should respect TIME.
Freedom to be ready to share your thoughts, to say what you need to say.
It’s not possible to impose freedom but I could give free space !
27 virgin negative frames for each participant and a wall to expose the pictures at the end of the project.

The time we have need is the time we have, and we should use it with very few meetings and a long time alone taking pictures.

I chose disposable cameras for participants concentrate on what they see and what they want to show, and don’t get confused with technologies of digital cameras.

The camera was the instrument that aloud the participant to face their feelings and go trough, if you feel like it.

An invitation to revisit your experience and share it with others.

My rules about the project would be defined at the time they appear.
So that I didn’t work tight in old structures.

The first position, to reach the issue of being a Indian woman in public spaces passing trough my themes, fear and safety … me, as Brazilian, couldn’t do by myself.
The only possibility of pass trough that experience it was by seeing through Indian women’s eyes.
I had 15 cameras :
- 7 art students from Shristi School
- Ekta and Pallavi from Maara Media Collective for who I gave extra cameras for that they invite local people to participate
- Mara, the cleaner of the apartment were I was.
- The security man of building I was living in.

When I opened for more people than the art students, I was expanding the group and inviting different classes and casts to work together, investigate their own culture and bring new perspectives of living in India.

The second position, for them feel free to express themselves trough the project (what was very important for the project to be successful) I decided not to give credit for each pictures.
The participants would have their names as collaborators.
It was a collective work.

If the participant wants to credit their picture, they are free to do it writing comments in the website.

The third position, the exposition should be this very collective wall of pictures. No names, no conclusions, not much information about the people.

The fourth position was about the edition of the pictures.
The idea was to show many pictures as possible, the limitations of the budget and the free space on the wall.
As it was a project that express people feelings trough the images, I couldn’t make an edition based on my hopes. I decided to catch images that:
-    Could communicate with me, enjoying it or not, following the idea that once I could dialogue with it, it could reach the public too.
-    Could offer a new point of view about the theme (even if most of them took pictures inside the rickshaw, I selected few of them, not all)

The fifth position was about to create an exposition that could represent the project meaning.

To be opened to meet the other.
My participation was to open the participants to investigate their feelings and explore it trough the disposabe cameras. It was also to guarantee the openness of the exposition.

I should bring questions for the exposition wall, not answers.
The pictures should show people’s questions about fear and safety and how photography can be a way for them to dialogue about it.
And, at least, the public of the gallery should be opened to the work, to watch the pictures as a way to dialogue with the participants, opening a conversation with the other but also revisiting their own
feelings and memories.

To see a 6×4’ piece of photo paper as invitation for a dialogue.
To make themselves questions about what the other wants to say … “what was she / he feeling when did it?” and “what do I feel when I see it” is a way to put yourself in the place of the other.

soon we have more about the project home_street_home at : indialand.wordpress.com

Intervention at Shivaji Nagar Bus Stop

I would like to start with why I got involved. After reading yet another forward on the art practices in the city, what really caught my attention with this project was the fact that it was about the city and would be within its streets (and not another galleries or studio). It took some convincing in figuring out why artists from across the globe ‘intervene’ the city’s streets with art practices that would sound esoteric to the communities in these pockets. I was still uncertain with the ‘fear and gender’ concept. So the best way to figure it all out was to go see for myself.

I met Ana and Richard on the 20^th of Jan 2009, at St. Mary’s Church in Shivajinagar, missed Liz’s mapping intervention due to some ‘permission’ issues. Was hoping to take Ana’s photo-mapping project, but she was still scouting for people and wasn’t prepared with the cameras. Richard had planned for a ‘Sound Mapping’ exercise, so since we were there…we just joined in.

Follow the leader….listen…observe…feel (the last one I added)!!

Auto horns, children crying,

Fruit vendors, a flute seller,

The flower lady

The butcher’s knife

A bollywood tune,

one o’clock prayers from the loudspeaker of a mosque..

All rapped up and thrown in together! Noise…or sounds.

We were asked to sort of follow a leader who led us through the tiny lanes of Shivajinagar avoiding contact with anyone- he specified not just to refrain from speech but also eye contact. “Just follow and observe the sounds you hear”.

At the end of a ten minute walk through the very busy market I caught myself making rhythms and music with all clutter-clatter around me. But after all the collection, there was no closure… I had just gathered sounds and voices in my head.. it was long before I let it diffuse.

Personally I’ve been in and out of these streets and they sound very much like any other market in the city. But there was something about the volume and intensity of the sounds. It takes you into a swirl and you can’t help but notice the increasing and decreasing of sound decibels from one lane to another.

I couldn’t stop the voice in my head that constantly kept updating me with my visual imagery of the sounds. We did share our responses with the group which consisted of Anoushka and Mrinalini from Srishti, me and Poornima. And of course Richard who was also our leader for the exercise. I found the process very interesting but couldn’t direct my ‘emotions and questions’ to any paved route. I felt we were left to interpret the process into our own vague abstract conclusions.

But then again this was my first day at the intervention. The Srishti students were initiated into it much ahead of us. So I stopped complaining and let my lost self gather the experience and save the questions for later.

Looking back now, I can tell you that the exercise and the unanswered have made me want to walk and observe very closely the sounds, its patterns in randomness. This makes me wonder what it was that Richard was trying to achieve through that process and my incomplete answer to that would be to ‘be aware’ of not just the ‘self’ but also ‘how’ the self maneuvers itself through the varied experiences in a day. And sounds to me represent the everyday elements that we consciously omit but unconsciously seep into our patterned routines.

Pallavi

from maraa

Disposable Cameras…

Connect…n click!!

Spaces that are safe

Spaces of fear…

Warm..n cold

Black or white…maybe just grey!!

The simplicity of the method which brought out the subtleties of the process excited me. The device was as simple as winding the knob and pressing a button. It was quick and easy to convince people in the local community to handle the camera and experiment with the process of capturing visuals of things/ people they felt safe/ fear with/ without.

Met Ana on the 20^th of Jan at Infinitea with Vera and Carolina when they met the Srishti students to discuss ‘ideas for Venue 2’. The concept of capturing ‘my public memories’ reminded me of an installation I had worked on in college the previous semester. The process left me with many many questions and I could not put it into an appropriate point of view. And in some way this brought closure to some of those doubts.

After two cups of Koshys filter coffees two days after a previous meet, Ana give me three cameras. One for myself and the other two I had the choice to give them to anyone I wanted to.

I chose to work around an area I was most familiar with, Kodihalli. A stretch of, say a kilometer en route to my house from the Airport road quite beside the very grand Leela Galleria.

Most of the people on this street have seen me dodge my way through the three-way (sometimes even four way) traffic of cows, fruit vendors, double parked cars, meat stalls hounded by hungry dogs with drooling jaws and over-flowing drains. The hustle and bustle of the street can intimidate a newcomer. For me, it is a place that I strangely feel very safe in; even to walk home at 11pm. Often greeted with an expected smile or an occasional stop to have nonsensical conversations about the filthy roads has kept me occupied during my many visits to the mallu (Malayalee) tea stalls and bakeries. Sometimes I feel even the cows give me a nod when I pass by.

I attempted to talk to a couple of them about the disposable camera project and tried to see how many of them would break the barrier of just surface conversations and allow me to take a sneak peek into their private spaces. I found most of them instantaneously getting curious and questioned me in depth about the concept and what I would do with the pictures. Many were excited about getting free developed pictures of family members and extended relatives and friends. But most of them backed out once I suggested that they take the camera and bring it back for me to develop it. I realized that most of the women were not sure if their husbands would approve of this; although they were very excited about clicking pictures of themselves and sticking to the brief I gave them.

Chintamaniaayi, an old vegetable seller who sits outside a temple, said her three sons might break it and was scared they would ruin the process if she took the camera home. (She also mentioned in passing that they would be drunk and their wives might not like an old lady showing off with a gadget). She did click a few pictures while I was talking to her…gave it back to me after 5 shots. And the men were reluctant, they said I could follow them and click pictures but they weren’t comfortable of taking it back with them. Feared it might disturb their business. I took the cameras home.

My little eight year old neighbor, Muddhamma, was very excited about the gadget. She learned to use the camera in just 5 minutes. Muddhamma stays in a tiny make-shift house in a vacant site beside my house. Her mother is a construction worker, who works all day at the upcoming plush flat across the road and her father works as a coolie (manual labour) for scrap-collectors. I’ve had several conversations with her on random things. She was quite curious about the process and was eager to play with this new toy that she had never explored before. The twisting and winding of the role, the sound of the click interested her more than actually focusing on an image. She told me I was to see for myself in the images what her story was… She is keen on seeing her pictures and I wish to soon give her a print of the roll. (Will post her reactions too)

I gave the second camera to my grandmom, she agreed but was too scared of using an unknown gadget (she fears the every bit of technology except the TV remote…very much required to shift her Tamil channels, Sun TV to Jaya TV). The reason I picked her was because I felt it was an important process for her as she never steps out the house. She fears everything that is the ‘outside’; she has mastered her daily routine and refuses any alterations. And I found that quite interesting. I am amazed at how she has found her ‘comfort’ and ‘safe’ blanket. Not wanting to alter it any way possible, she was documenting this herself…and stepping out in some way.

The third camera was for me…the process was exciting. Handling a camera wasn’t new, using a disposable camera was. Just as any other camera you would say. But I feel these days with the digitized SLRs, we have gotten so used to predicting the visual and manipulating the subject. Not that I do not enjoy that process, of course I do. These disposable cameras were definitely a challenge in the sense of not being sure of the result. And just the simplicity of the technique got me curious.

The brief was to ‘see through your eyes’ and visually document the things/ spaces/ people that make you ‘feel’ safe/ fear. I found the immediate connect working with the nuances of ‘emotions’ and it came pretty naturally. I did notice that there is a queer sense of ‘how’ a picture ‘must’ look and ‘what’ it ‘must’ include. Breaking these ‘constructed’ conventions was yet another highlight of this experiment that I wish to further explore and understand.

Another thing that I was glad with was the fact that Ana made it very clear from start about the representation of the works, the anonymity of the visuals during display. No names just credits for all the participants. Calling it a collective work and emphasizing the model of equal collaborators, organic as the project itself. We had roughly a week to experiment with the disposable cameras. After which it was time for ‘the’ presentation of ‘the’ works. To me the project was more of a ‘process-driven cum experiential and very personal’, so I was wondered how she would choose some and omit the others for the presentation. But then again it was a collective work of art!!

Exhibition at One Shanthi on 28^th Jan

Ana managed to develop all the rolls at G.K Vale on MG road,

Printed visuals

Red, pink, yellow..flowers

A clear sky with a kite caught between lines.

Poses of a woman against a bright shiny pink backdrop

Her wavy curls rushing through shoulders.

A coffee cup…half full or half empty?

Next image…a broken cup.

Images of a demigod

Thrown and hiding behind a fence.

A school bus

Construction workers

And that was what it was….a collective work of art. No justifications required! Narratives from the participants spoke volumes of their journeys through their daily routine. Fear and safety perceived in ways that one chooses to interpret them in. The perceptions that one takes from these images are as personal to the viewer as to the photographer. The concepts and ideas might merge in the visual journey. But that is something I feel only the visual can tell.

Pallavi

From maraa

Public space

What space do we want public space to be?
How to shape and initiate new relations to what is already there? How to transform, what is already there?
And what about the invisible space, the unsaid, the undone, the silenced space or the not yet invented

The body

What are different presences of a body in public space? What communication (or non-communication) is visible in the body? What limits, borderlines and concepts revealed by how we relate physically to the space, to each other?

Shiva-ji Nagaara: the bus stop- on the process of creating a score for an intervention

A place of transition, a spot for transporting yourself from somewhere to somewhere. A place where both woman and men are present. People pass through, some seem to be in a slight hurry, others wait and install themselves to wait for long time. The space is, structured by its function of buses coming and going, clear lines of platforms and lanes in the middle. Structured by habits that we developed for this kind of places. A melting spot, of different people’s way crossing.
The order of the space, the unspoken and spoken rules of how to use this place are clearly visible. Different for woman and men.

The process of creating a set of actions:
We explored Shivanajagar along following questions. The focus was on body and physical presence as the tool for observation as well as the object for observation and experience.

- How is space distributed in this location, observe and move within the pattern of space. What are patterns of man, of woman? What happens if you step out of the pattern, introduce for example another distance, another place to stand?

- How are men moving in this location? How are woman moving in this location? Copy physical positions, ways of walking of both woman and man. Try to understand through embodiment.

- What signs of unexpressed movement can you see

in people’s bodies? Study small physical impulses, and try to imagine the hidden movement, what would this movement be as it is expresses?

Observations after the exercises:
One very clear observation shared by everyone was, that man’s body often tended to be very lose and comfortable, swinging the arms loosely and taking up space actually, while thy experienced the woman’s body as more restrained and tension in

shoulders and sternum.

To break the pattern of space and place yourself in spaces, where for example a woman usually would not sit, or in a closer distance to s.o. was experienced as difficult to do, and not easy to feel comfortable while doing it. It brought to awareness the prevailing pattern of space.

Outline for actions, to be tried out on Thursday 22nd of January
We had 2 hours to research on site. Upon those experiences, a score for action for this space emerged. It was thought as a first draft to test actions, reactions and their potential. It was tried in the afternoon. About 8 girls were performing it, others engaged in documenting the event and reactions to it as well as engaging in conversations with people around. The tasks are forwarded to the participating group by SMS.

Part of the score was for example:

1. Welcome. Find out what the word woman is in any other language from people around you. Come back to the starting point when you are done and share the word.

2. In the subway tunnel: hand out pens and pencils and ask people to write down what they hear, see, smell. Other questions for a space of offering a reflection were going to be developed later.
3. Go to the spot of separate inside and outside “fence” mirror what people on the other side do, final action: show a mirror.
4. Shake your body, a group of at least 8 people, collectively in a visible spot.

5. Clean the benches and invite somebody to sit there, start a conversation.
6. Share a glass of water
7. Ask a man of the favorite place of his mother, sister, wife and which bus would take you there, invite him to show you the bus-stop, offer that you will close your eyes for him to take you there.

Some experiences as we did it:

The shaking was experienced as a kind of liberation by some of the girls, and took on wild forms. People watching started to smile,
Somehow I felt it as a collective relief, that some could watch others doing something that is restricted, and kept under the surface, as a silenced need.
Even the cops, first wanting to interrupt the action, started to laugh at the end and be witnesses of girls dancing madly and shaking the body at the bus stop.
One man commented: Usually it is man teasing woman, now it’s the girls teasing man.

Sumona, one of the students, describes her experience of part of the actions here (full length on Srishti students blog).

“We went back to subway. At this point we had caught the attention of the sweeper woman who told us that no man would dare to touch her, as she would beat him with her broom. She and her friends stood by and watched our next action. We formed a circle and hit a note together, gathering all the energy we could from the sound and ran full speed down the subway, up the ramp and burst onto the platform. We ran to the middle of the station and all eight of us jumped and shook ourselves- it was quite a sight and quite a feeling! A policeman came and blew his whistle but he just started laughing so we didn’t stop. We thought we would anger a few people through this action but it was very joyful and everyone who watched us had a smile on their face- especially the old women and the kids. One young man was asked why he thought we were doing this. He actually said he thought it was our way of retaliating against what men do to women.

Armed with a rag, some Colin and a glass of water we each occupied one bench along the length of a

platform. First we scrubbed and cleaned the bench. A lot of us were incredibly uncomfortable with this. I remembered the sweeper women while doing this. A lady told Mrinalini that she was too beautiful too be cleaning benches. This action catalyzed a lot of discussions about caste and colour between the public and us. Most people were pleasantly surprised. We then went up to random men in the station and asked them if they wanted a glass of water. We thought this might be a good gesture to begin with but were surprised to find that no one accepted. We the asked them a set of questions “think of one important woman in your life (everyone thought of their mother!). What is her favourite place in Bangalore? Which bus goes there? Can you take me to the bus? I will close my eyes.”

Sayantani met a policeman who agreed to accompany her but asked her to keep her eyes open. Swati was very surprised to find how carefully the man she met took her to the bus. A man who didn’t know where he was going himself led Urmila and they had a long conversation about the relationship between men and women in public spaces. The reaction I got from the man I approached was ” please don’t ask me to take you. The bus is right here!” I found at first that I was only willing to ask one kind of man- someone closer to my class perhaps, someone who was not clearly religious etc. but I pushed my self to step out of my boundaries.”

Video and photo cameras were present around the event almost all the time through, and they added to the perception and development of the interaction in the bus station. As well as woman, clearly spotted as foreigners, added to the interpretations and reactions. It would be interesting to see the difference, if Indian girls only carried it out.

Observation on movement related to the action:

It seemed to me that movement in some of the actions, as for example the shaking, was formulating the invisible. It became a catalyst for the unspoken desire, the undone dream, performed in public space, thus releasing a collective energy and zooming in on the relation of a larger public to a specific issue. A next step could be to make passer byes or a wider audience engages in the movement itself, thus offering them not to be only a witness, but participant.

Other movement was copying daily action but done by different people or in different place.

(As for example the cleaning of the benches). As well, it functioned as a strong catalyst for reactions and dialogue, and introduces other patterns than the prevailing ones in the public space.

Different angles on potentials and questions following this exercise:

• What would this actions need, to become a social practice?
How to shape actions that channel a need of doing something for people? What can be strategies to root it in daily life?

• The actions as a potential to trigger dialogue- the actual intervention is the trigger for a larger dialogue to happen, how to take care of that dialogue.

• Develop these actions so they provide an experience for the participant- what if the action turn to be invisible, but create a strong experience and questioning for the one doing it?

• …To be continued

As I sat very helplessly watching the so called ‘Moral Police’ on TV dole out their brand of social justice in Mangalore, I could not help but wonder as Radha put it -In 60 years nothing has changed for India. As we discussed fear and gender in a workshop and did interventions in Bangalore a bunch of regressive goons went on rampage nearby - and had the gall to justify it in the name of culture and tradition. Not surprising though - similar views were put forward by many people whom I spoke to in a recent encounter at a bar in Mathikere. One line which rings in my mind - ‘Women who come here are not respectable, we do not respect such women’ , ‘She is either desperate or a prostitute’. Culture, Indian tradition , Good Women, Pure Women, Hifi Women, Lower Class Women were words that came up a lot.

We started the Off-Limit project as a study , a photo documentation on public places which are ‘off-limits’ to women. We were to look at wine shops, pan - beedi stalls and deserted roads and lanes.  Places a woman feels fearful I started the work with a set of students from Srishti whom I told to look at these places and bring back images of places in which they felt this fear. The goal of this project  was to create awareness of these places and try to understand how fear is used to keep people of a gender away from places which by law belong to all. We have come up with a set of interesting pictures and are all set for a show on the 28th. It is a tough project where the participants have to come face to face with a fearful place, overcome the fear and document it.

What we have achieved is a good start and I will work with them to complete the project by end February.

As part of this project , in parallel I started photo documenting these off-limit places at various points in the day and asking people there a set of questions -

- Do you think its safe for a woman to come here ?

- Do you think a woman should come here?

- What would happen to a woman if she came here ?

- Do  you think this is a safe place ?

- If a woman came here what would you think of her ?

 The need was to document the off-limits spaces and also to understand what makes a space off-limits to women. Some of the responses were shocking eye-openers to the reality of our public spaces, some were expected responses. Most people seemed to have very strict rules on what women were allowed to do and places  where they could go. Also there were strong opinions on women wanting to smoke or drink or eat meat. Adjectives like modern and western seemed to be negative adjectives when used to describe a woman. Most people seemed to have a very sanitized , de-sexualized image of a ‘respectable’ woman in their minds. This was not surprising considering our history.

 As Amanda Weidman wrote - “Much interesting theorization has taken place on the ways in which Indian women were allowed to enter the public sphere in the first half of the twentieth century by, in effect, creating an impermeable barrier around themselves. Mrinalini Sinha (1996) has discussed the kind of subject position that Indian women assumed in order to be heard in the public sphere in the 1930s. Women had to position themselves as modern but non-Western, as claiming traditional ideals in the service of the modernizing project of nationalism (Sinha 1996, 491). Partha Chatterjee (1993) notes that middle-class Indian women were able to travel out into the world once they had properly internalized a self-image of virtuous domesticity that effectively erased their potential ly dangerous sexuality; such women, projecting themselves as loving mothers and loyal wives, were able to carry the home with them into the world.”

So why did women fear going to  these off limit places - What is this fear of ? I asked several women - from my friends to people I met during some of the interventions in the city.

It can be classified under the following heads.

- Fear of being attacked, molestation, rape

- Fear of appearing to be a lower class woman or a prostitute

- Fear of openly displaying want or need of something which the patriarchal society hasnt deemed fit for consumption by women

- Fear of society’s retribution for not following rules ( reinforced by attacks by the so called Moral Police )

- Fear of losing face

- Fear of demeaning family

- Fear of mixing with men ( from childhood one is taught to be careful of boys and not to mix too much )

- Fear of mixing with men and women of other classes

- Fear of attracting attention from the ‘wrong’ set of people

- Fear of going against the teachings of religion

- Fear of being commented on by other men

- Fear of men looking at them as sex objects

- Fear of being perceived as non-feminine

Of the places mentioned above in different parts of the city when we went to photograph them, women were not there. From Bars in relatively middle class residential areas like Mathikere, Cooke Town, Jayanagar, to Chai Shops in Shivajinagar  women were not present.Pan beedi shops in most localities , we failed to see women. Cricket and football grounds - no women. Off-limits places were everywhere.And they were off-limits because of one or many of the fears mentioned above.

What comes out is the fact that the entire public space is designed for men ( who have free access ) and where women are allowed in time to time to perform certain duties - only when she conforms to a certain set of rules. The severity of these rules varied from place to place and were  deep-rooted in culture and religion.

A woman is conditioned from her childhood to follow these rules and if she does not follow them she has the fear of a dire consequence in the form of a social retribution or violence instilled in her. Like Sita’s crossing of the Lakshman Rekha and subsequent abduction by Ravana the woman is ‘taught’ to never step beyond that line. What is even more distressing is that men from  the society often take up the role of the villain just to teach an aberrant woman a lesson.

I quote from a piece by Kalpana Viswanath - “As much as violence itself, it is also the fear of violence that controls women’s lives. The response to this fear has usually been based on a notion of “protection”. Women are told to be careful about when and where they move around, and how they dress. Men are exhorted to protect the honour and dignity of women.

This approach has several unfortunate consequences. First of all, it makes women responsible for their own safety. If something happens to a woman, the assumption is that she did not follow the rules. Equally important is the fact that it restricts women’s freedom and autonomy, and curtails their mobility and their ability to work and participate in social activities.

Ironically, this restrictive approach does not even make women any safer if anything, it increases their vulnerability by making them live with fear. Discussions on women’s safety must, therefore, begin from the recognition of women’s right to a life free of violence”

Question is what can we do about it. Firstly, we need to be patriotic. We need to stand up for our constitution. A country where freedom for men and women is understood.

Interventions need to happen in various localities to help this understanding. One must also not forget history and how religious and moral bigotry threatens freedom in our country and the world. We must all put forward the messages at all levels to address these issues. One must make sure that fear is not instilled among women from an early age.

Women should be fearless and men need to make sure they get attuned to this reality. Law and order should provide for every ones safety. All of these goals seem utopian in a country where  people get dragged out of a bar and beaten because  of their gender or in troubled valleys where people are asked to shoot women in the leg if they wear jeans. We need  to be optimistic and constantly fight against forces of fear and control.

Hangovers
Since the public spaces exercise was also meant to test notions of fear that were “perceived or real” some of our peg-points in initiating conversations were, asking people about the safety of space. In Shivajinagar, while mapping happened within Russell Market space, I spoke to some of the “rooted community members” asking them if women found it safe in ShivajiNagar (as opposed to a space like cubbon park- where the possibility of a rooted-in community was very little- Russell market stall owners were in here for the longest time) .

Subwalk links

The immediate response was that it was indeed a very safe space. They very firmly and passionately spoke of how the nights too are really safe for anyone to be walking around. 12 am, 2am, thickest of night times, the roads and spaces in Shivajinagar were safe.

I had to check this out with some friends. And yes, there’s a whole gang that concurs. They think that Shivajinagar is actually really safe in the night as opposed to the other bus and downtown crowded area, Majestic. Majestic was a reference made twice for its “shady behaviour” and unfriendly, over quoting auto drivers. The Shivajinagar auto chaps were definitely business oriented but not trouble causing. The night rides would cost you the usual legal after-hours fare but nothing more. One would most definitely find a ride to any other part of the city one had to reach.

Story of Vera (19TH Jan 2009)
The bus stop stood large, looming and unconquered. It was the next space, the next intervention area. I was happy and a bit tired with the morning, and wanted to go home. But then, I also was drugged with this new high of rediscovering spaces…

Enter: Stop

Also, as an artist who was interested in movement and discovering the body “tool”, I really wanted not to miss the bus stop testing exercise. Vera was going over with her students to poke the space around a bit- poke it gently with body, tap and test its tolerance. My first impulse was to ask her to be sane and call it off. Public spaces and appropriate behaviour in India always meant no provocative physical moving whatsoever. Making the body invisible was rule of the land.

I have always felt really free and very at ease while I traveled…to whatever part of India or outside.
I have traveled to rural spaces and other urban spaces and have done so with gay abandon. There’s something easy to do when you don’t belong to a space. There’s freedom to move as you would wish…
The other times I’ve felt this is while I performed. The liberties to move within a legitimized performance space keep my sanity. My moving around within an artist’s safe zone identity takes my limits away. It frees me. So there’s mental and physical freedom of movement.

Vera’s exercises had the potential to be used for self awareness (how do I function in a space; how does my body conduct itself?)
and also provocative (I will break the unsaid pattern and agreement of public conduct. I will move, sometimes against the tide…)

Questions in brackets could be statements both real and perceived, and could rise in either party concerned. These “tension point statements” need to be exchanged as feedback through dialogue. Dialogue in this case could also be done with the body.

The students were asked to make small challenges to the flow in the space, ways of holding body, to imitate other bodies and figure permissible ways of how inhabitants of the space held their body…
This was to feed into a planned intervention where Vera would possibly be choreographing movements and have the group utilize the tool of body at the bus stop space.

Intervening Subway (22nd JAN 2009)

Shivajinagara walks

A locked, foot passenger subway runs across the main road and into the Bus stop at Shivaji nagar. People wanting to safely get to bus stations or cross the street (filled with a mad rush of buses entering or exiting the station) may choose to do so. Only, the subway is locked and grilled and the intestine of the subway now sees an office space for BMTC services.

The intervention began when all met at St Mary’s Church (up the road) and shared the flow and sequence of events. Cell phones, text msgs and sonic technology were to be used as information and update channels, and to document the happenings.
The sequence went something like this…

Word for woman

The first thing to do was to gather names and terms that meant “woman” in different languages: ways of referrals, dialects, slangs etc. This was then to be said out loudly at the entrance…as chants rather.
What this would be followed with was a

what was that?

miming/mimicking/mirroring exercise at the gated end of the subway channel. The officers had not objected to the activity fortunately (permission letters were produced perhaps, I’m not aware). The group would be within the enclosed side and would “gently” mimic crowds that passed. If any connection was made to an individual, no word was to be exchanged. Rather, the mirroring would continue until connections broke or verbal demands were made by the subject. Following this, an actual mirror would be held up as a sign or symbol or abstraction of the self and the other…
The last parts involved running out of the subway space, and vigorously shaking out of the body and its restraints- and to challenge the space. Then, one was to run up to a dirty bench, clean it with a towel thoroughly and offer a glass of water to anyone around willing to engage. (If someone could elaborate on the train of thought that led to this bit: responsibilities of cleaning public spaces- would make interesting read)

chant chant

The chants got negative attention. One of the booth managers came up and asked the group to retreat. He then vented his actual anger on the locals by yelling disrespectfully at some spectators. Was intense.
I was tense myself. Provocative interventions call for intense calm from executioners and additional tools/ or set up to dialogue. They cannot be left hanging in space, having entered a community one doesn’t belong in. I was worried about the interpretations, more misconceptions of “the other” setting in, ideas of the intent of activity etc. So that’s what I thought I would work with. I would feign being another passerby and ask people around me what was happening. I would pretend to not be a part of the group. This led me away from some of the other activities that followed, but it allowed fruitful dialogue in a different sense.

I have stuff to say

I spoke to two men who were glancing at the artists group in a quasi-intrigued fashion. When I asked why these women were doing this; they said that perhaps they were tourists and this is how they “enjoy”. When I played devils advocate and asked if they were ok with outsiders creating a ruckus in the name of enjoyment, they didn’t react much. I then threw the question: What if these women were expressing the needs, anguish and desires of the feminine in spaces like this? Are these spaces safe for women?
The trigger word “woman” made the man spill some seemingly personal stories. He seemed to speak with controlled anguish, pain and frustration. Domestic frustration. His story was about how women from low income groups have high expectations within families. They aren’t too satisfied with the husband’s financial returns. And they don’t have the skills to financially help out…and he said that the women were choosing divorce. I was quite surprised. Here was a man who was talking divorce as accessible solution for a woman of lower economic stature (he obviously knew folks connected to this “case/s”, directly or indirectly). When I quizzed him further, he said that his wife actually earns some money through her sewing machine skills and services, so I wasn’t sure if this were his story.

subwalk peek-a-boo

The other intervention bit began…the group had gone underground and was heading to the grill gated passageway. I stood on the other side trying to observe and capture crowd reaction on camera. The crowds were responding. Many of their actions were being mimicked. Some chose to “safely see” from a distance…people were taking notice and drawing their own inferences of what was going on. When I quizzed some, there were bizarre answers. A young man thought the mirrors were held to reflect light or building structures so my camera (on the other end of the road) could capture things effectively. When I briefly told him the intent and my perception of what the mirroring and mirrors probably meant, he was intrigued.

He lamented that many are really shy to be curious and initiate dialogue in public areas. They would assume and leave- rarely clarify and stay to know more.
The crowds were a bit frenzied with so many of these foreigners doing weird mimicking things. So when I reached there with

street "coffee shop" chat

my camera, I got a group of young hawkers all upon me. This turned into a rather interesting conversation. The boys started commenting on how I was this rich man and that my clothes and camera were an indication. They did start in a semi-mocking confrontational tone but I gently refused to latch on to confrontational mode. I instead gently challenged their notions of who they thought I was. As a child, I had lived around in the cantonment area so I told them that. They were stunned. Then, I told them I don’t wear branded clothes as many had just accused me of. I showed them my jeans and T- labels-these were local. This turned into  a long and elaborate exchange of do’s and daily lives. Sharings like porn being a regular thing in their lives and internet as easy access to porn came out in confessional fashion. When I asked if the internet could be used for alternate purposes, they didn’t know what else could come out of this medium.

star

The highlight moment was when this young man, who worked at  a butcher store, took off his shirt to prove to me that his meat eating habits brought him the abs and muscles. He said I needed to eat meat to physically be like what he was. He then detailed his local gym programme (push ups -100) and advised me to do at least the surya namaskar (a yoga salutation using the body) as my workout routine.
He also told me I should soon start eating good wholesome meat 

I of course missed the “shaking and cleaning benches” bit due to this rather intriguing cross class boy-to-boy exchange. Richard’s sonic recordings of the indianscape playing out in loops down below (in the subway passage) and the red halo smudge of the walls reflecting sunlight made for a super chaotic meditative effect. I left.
I walked up the street and saw a bakery with those unique “shivajinagar stuffed onion” samosas. Just then, an old man approached me for some money. I decided to buy him samosa and bought two. I then decided to munch on one myself.
I ate a whole samosa. Just when I was done, a friend loomed out of the bakery stall stating that those mutton samosas were pretty good

Deepak

deepak@maraa.in

Pictures: Pallavi

We have now finished all of our public interventions.  It was an exhausting but quite exhilarating process.

On Day 6 of the project we set up on the sidewalk of one of the backstreets behind Commercial St, in front of a closed shop.  A cow almost barged into the table as we were installing, but luckily we were able to divert her!  We had a nice crowd of people, especially a mother who embroidered a beautiful lotus flower and her two daughters, all of whom stayed for a long while.

Day 7 we tried to install at the Mota Arcade Mall on Brigade Rd but were told immediately that we needed a permit.  Of course the manager was out to lunch so we had to move on, and we were able to secure permission quickly to set up at the Monarch Plaza.  Since we were set up on top of a short flight of stairs, we actually had to go to the sidewalk and try to entice people to participate…something which up until then was not necessary.  One of the participants told us of a very dangerous place for men or women, in his opinion: “Only murders take place there, in Jallahalli! Can’t even think of going there alone.”  A pair of young women who work in a shop on Brigade Road told us that they´re simply not allowed anywhere by themselves, and much less at night.

The next morning,  Day 8, we set up at 7 am on the walking path of Ulsoor Lake where we had quite a few joggers as well as many curious onlookers who were on the other side of the fence.  After a couple of hours it became too hot and sunny, so the joggers disappeared and we decided to go to shady Ganja Park (Rest House Park), where we actually ran into two separate groups of school boys who had also participated in Cubbon Park a few days earlier.

Day 9, the last day, we requested permission to set up inside Safina Plaza, but the manager was not there that day, so we took our chances and tried the sidewalk outside the mall, where we were told very quickly to move.  I find it very sad that a mall can “own” the sidewalk in front of its property, which in theory should be a public space.  We packed up and tried our luck at Spencer´s on MG Road where we were told that we had to pay 5000 rupees in order to set up there, even though we weren´t selling anything!  We had much better luck when we just set up in front of a construction site on MG Road.  It´s there where we had perhaps one of our most diverse crowds, ranging from shoppers, other Srishti students on their way to Indian Coffee House, street boys, people selling things on the street, and a couple of police men who almost participated!  In particular, a man selling maps of Bangalore was particularly interested in the project and contributed various symbols to the map.

We look forward to your participation, and to hearing your stories and opinions about Bangalore on Wednesday night at 1 Shanti Road!

Ruben Christopher, a youngster shares his idea of Bengaluru
map intervention after effects

Two spaces within the same locality stand explored
Populations, communities, communication in “un-totality”
Nagara means township, community

Two interventions- very different in flavour
Bringing in moments to talk, communicate touch share

Did you make connects, did you share?

Part 1

Liz used her map at Russell market the other day (Monday 19th Jan 2009).
Located in Shivajinagar, looking straight out of a Indian pre-independence film set and smelling of all things from heavenly flowers to fruit to not so heavenly fresh meat, its quite a sight-o-sonic for even some “used to” types like me.

I walked in with an apprehensive Ekta. Ekta has a severe critical eye for any community based exercise. She will not gulp it down if it smells of yet another elitist take on art and community and I knew her critical glasses were high-on-up-the-nose.

No one in sight at the entrance, no curious crowd in sight, no crazy artist group, no map…

As we walked straight in and when the brighter outsides & darker insides worked to balance my vision and the surrounding space out, I saw straight ahead, by the end of the corridor, some light, some people and the map.
A few people were standing around, curious. One or two stitched up designs on the map. The rows of shops I had walked through didn’t seem much affected by the group’s intervening. The space was calm but the spaces were separate. The new group was welcome, it co-existed, but it didn’t matter much to those inside. I wondered what they were thinking this was about. But they didn’t give me the “curious energy” either.

As we went closer, I tried to strike up a conversation with a few curious-energy-but-scared-to-ask types. “Hindi, Kannada, Tamil (tamil and hindi were big here) ?” “What’s happening here?” “What do you think is going on?”

They say, “Don’t know” Smile
Me: “This is a map, do you know what a map means?”
They: Smile.. “No”

Me: “Well, if you were on a plane or helicopter, or you simply were able to fly high, where would you be and what would you see? Where would Russell Market be? Where would your home be? Where would Shivajinagar be? How would it look?”

“What if I said that what one would see (if one could see all of Bangalore from the top there) is shown here, on this cloth?” (used “this could be ulsoor lake” often…people immediately understood what the white sheet on the table was)

Some: oh!
Some others: “Aah yes, Map, map. Now I know”

Me: “So what you can do is, perhaps find your home…where is home?
“Coles Park, ShivajiNagar, ummm…”

“So find your area and you can then mark it, and then stitch a symbol for home- some symbol that will make you feel this is your home…”

…this communication then being handed over to the student artists

Community art, community exercises, togetherness. To foster togetherness

In South Asia, we have many community rituals. Many of these have turned mundane. They don’t spark off interactions that are fresh, out-of-context of running into “the other” type.
Simple, non-provocative, and yet, leading to ripples of interactions and levels. Neutral cross community exercises like this one worked differently.

Some questions need answering again and again and need to fully “come in” to awareness…
These flicker with an answer and then disappear…so we need to stitch them together on our mental maps

1. Was it the art intervention exercise by itself that worked? What sort of an intervention was it?
My answer: The map exercise is certainly a great tool. But what about the component of communicating and dialoging with community? Language, trust and participation eliciting seem to go hand in hand. Such an exercise in south Asia (particularly India) should bring about an opportunity to articulate.

2. Why is articulation important? What are the forms of articulation?
My Answer: Articulation is important because when you are trying to articulate a certain exercise (in this context, verbally) , and try to make connects and fill gaps, you are truly filling gaps for yourself and for a collective. And this sharing brings and resolves external tensions and internal conflicts, while the art intervention has been an “excuse” to be able to talk outside of our minds, outside of our usual social circles.
Forms of articulation: In this case, there were the map navigators (once they knew what it was about), there were the “map stitchers or mappers” who quietly stitched away, then there were the folk on the periphery, happy to be there and use the context and idea of Bangalore and mapping the city to talk about the community. I spoke to a group of store owners, four muslim men and one hindu man who were the 3rd or 4th generation store owners. They spoke of the Bengaluru’s religious communities and their uniqueness. They claimed that their area was the most “secular”. Shivajinagar saw temples and mosques and churches stand together, with people of either faith using each space of worship and festive occasion as their own. They even had blurred boundaries of religious practices and spaces…Russell market playing “guest house” during church feasts- how they shut business down to be able to host Christian visitors and devotees during St Mary’s feast.

Part 2 shortly…

Deepak
deepak@maraa.in