Blank Noise project
Blank Noise is a community-public art project that seeks to confront street harassment, commonly known as eve teasing, in India.[1][2] The project, initiated by Jasmeen Patheja in August 2003, started out as a student project at Srishti School of Art Design and Technology in Bangalore and has since spread out to other cities in India.
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[edit] Activities
Blank Noise is completely volunteer led and run. A core team team of volunteers both male and female work, from across geographies and age groups work with the collective. Blank Noise seeks strategies to trigger public dialogue on the issue. Conversations range from collectively building a definition of 'eve-teasing' while also discussing boundaries of 'teasing', 'harassment' , 'flirting'. The collective builds testimonials of street sexual violence/ harassment 'eve-teasing' and disperses them back in public thereby creating public debate.
It addresses women's fear based relationship with their cities via direct street actions and public interventions that ask women to be 'Action Heroes' by being 'idle' in public. 50 % of Blank Noise has male members who are celebrated as Blank Noise Guys. Blank Noise works towards an attitudinal shift towards 'eve-teasing' and involves the public to take collective responsibility of the issue.
Though Blank Noise was founded in Bangalore, it has spread to other cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Calcutta, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Lucknow etc. It tackles notion of shame and blame through campaigns such as "I NEVER ASK FOR IT" (ask to be sexually harassed) when on the streets. A major notion that it seeks to dispel is that women get harassed because of the clothing they wear. Through street actions and dialogue, Blank Noise hopes to achieve its aims of achieving a safe and free environment for women on the streets, and enable society to become more egalitarian towards women in general.
The project has undertaken actions (called interventions) such as spray painting messages recording the testimonies of victims of sexual harassment in public places, and printing T-shirts with anti-harassment messages on them. It has also staged demonstrations, sticking posters on the walls and writing slogans on the pavements.[3]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ One night stand on the streetsThe Hindu, Metro Plus Bangalore. July 12, 2005.
- ^ Women take to streets to stake claim to their rights The Hindu, New Delhi. September 17, 2006.
- ^ A night out on Capital pavements to end eveteasingIndian Express Delhi Newsline. September 17, 2006.
