Serendipity Arts Festival 2022/ Artist in Residency
Integrating recorded conversations, sound, light and installation, Aabshaar considers the cityscape of Delhi through the exploration of public spaces and the ideas of collectivity, ‘loitering’ and gathering. The act or practice of ‘loitering’, especially amongst women, attempts to destabilise notions around socially accepted forms of occupying space, where the artist seeks to find new entry points into exploring themes of gendered space and activity.
Sound Design : Neelansh Mittra
Lighting Design Input : Manav Bhargava
Watch here: https://youtu.be/TvW__2fR8DU
Loitering is an act of waiting at a place without any purpose.
This space of ambiguity can be powerful. Since the very act of being in public without purpose is considered as unfeminine, loitering enables new ways of imagining our bodies in relation to public spaces. The loiterer, by carving her own dynamic personal map of pleasure, has the potential to create a new sense of embodiment. (Excerpt from the Book ‘ Why Loiter : Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets)
While observing our public spaces in Delhi, I was in look out for gatherings of women
loitering and just being, in parks, “chaurahas” and streets.
Instead, I was able to find women waiting at bus stops, metro stations, working on
mending parks, jogging, accompanying their children to and from school and
accompanying children of others from their school. During afternoons, I would often
observe women napping in parks, only to notice that they did so, on the ground, and
not on benches like their male counterparts, while
at night, I saw women on bus stops, in cars, in marketplaces and malls.
Had my search for loitering women failed?
How could I gauge that a women was in fact loitering?