jasmeen patheja
Blank Noise:
Blank Noise is a volunteer led community arts collective that builds public discourse towards the issue of street sexual harassment; ‘eve teasing’.
The idea was initiated in 2003, as a final year diploma thesis project at the Srishti school of Art Design and Technology.
Everyday experiences led to need to form a collective that would address ideas related to fear and the city. As an art student I was also deeply interested in exploring ways in which artists could work with society/ with communities /with public.
Over 60 all girl students were asked to make a mind map with the term ‘public space’ and it resulted in a series of associations such as ‘fear, strangers, discomfort, anonymity, groping, stalking, whistling, crowd, hands, staring, vulnerable, hide’. This gave the basis to propose a project. In its first phase began with a series of workshops that explored the public and private identities of nine young urban Indian women. This collective participatory experience evolved into Blank Noise.
Blank Noise is now a growing community of volunteers both male and female, from across the globe with chapters in over 7 cities in India. These groups conduct meetings, events and public interventions, street actions, presentations at colleges etc. We work actively on the internet- on communities such as blogger, facebook, orkut, googlegroups.
In its current phase Blank Noise takes the form of a public conversation. We build testimonials of street sexual harassment and disperse them back in the public. We try and engage the 3 groups ; the spectator, the survivor and the potential perpetrator while stressing that the 3 roles are interchangeable i.e. the perpetrator is a victim in one kind of view etc. The Internet is a medium that allows us to tread on this territory.
We seek to establish street sexual harassment as an issue that concerns male attitudes as much as it is a woman’s issue. Blank Noise also seeks to define boundaries between wooing ,flirting, harassment, violation. There are Blank Noise blogs that invite spectators, survivors and men to share their understanding of street sexual harassment.
links
http://blog.blanknoise.org
http://bnguy.blanknoise.org
http://twitter.com/blank_noise
http://actionheroes.blanknoise.org
http://spectators.blanknoise.org
http://flickr.com/photos/blanknoisethisplace
