This performance was about the
darker shade of society. We are constantly bombarded with socio- political and
religious issues in India. Every day we are bombarded with news of rape crime
and even now when I am writing this the new rape case shown in News and might
be even when I am performing some rape might be happening in any corner of our
country every minute. Every day we are
left with feeling of helplessness with situation this news keep on circulating
in one form or other form and we feel entangled with such unpleasant and insecure
life with no hope for any good future.
Visually I wore black mourning
dress with face covered with see through black mirrors that reflects audience face;
simultaneously I could see audience, though audience could only see their reflection
in Black. I have chosen black costume, to mourn, to show dark feeling and wound
which has grown like black patch/reflection of society. I had conceived this
idea keeping in mind the capital city New Delhi, since the news of Nirbhaiya,
there had been no change in social security of women and especially girls and we
have been seeing only an alarming amount of crime rates day by day in the
villages, town and major cities in India. I really don’t understand why there
is such a rise in such crimes may be because those who break laws and who does the crime don’t have any more fear to be caught and
punished, may be also due to decrease in moral values and respect to women or
should we blame Bollywood items number and vulgar songs for this? We need to
question and also seek out for answers about like what kind of mind set of
people in the society is? Why women are not secure in India? Once known for its moral and ethical values.
The performance was done in highly populated area with migrated population from
villages around and African population in Khirkee Village, Delhi and I used multiple
audio receivers to interact with people in public space. The attempt was to bombard
news to my audience just like News channels to a level of intolerance, to make
them react and become sensitive towards issues of security and respect to women
and voice their concern, rather than being passive to situations, I wanted my
audience to react and become sensitive to issues rather than neglecting it as
it has become a common news.
This performance was well
received by people, some with very strange reaction they wanted me to pay to
hear the audio and some seriously indulging in issue and inquiring whether I am
activist or social worker etc., there were some more strange reaction since one
audio was to calm them but they thought it was Bollywood music and tried to
find out what song it was about.
Dimple B Shah
2013
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