Sign Up!

BLANK NOISE PROJECT will intervene on the streets of Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai between the 3rd and the 10th of Decemeber

Are you ready to be a Blank Noise Action Hero?

Email us at blurtblanknoise@gmail.com, with your, ' city name/ Action Hero'.

Mumbai will have two events over both sundays.The first event is on Sunday, Dec 3rd at Andheri Station, 5 pm sharp.

Participants include: 1. Pallavi Sen 2. Nisha Chandwani 3. Varsha Chandwani 4. Riya Kartha 5. Suparna 6. Sowmya 7. Rajvi Mariwala 8. Deepa 9. Aurina Chatterjee

Bangalore: Dec 10th.

Delhi: Dec 8th. Blank Noise partners with Jagori.

(Hyderbad & Chennai to be announced)

Who is an action hero?
A Blank Noise Action Hero is a super woman who has dealt with street sexual harassment by not ignoring or avoiding it but through confrontation and by taking agency.

One Night Stand-( Bangalore)

shoo












Location: Bangalore
Site: Brigade Road
Nature: Cosmopolitan/ Market/ Crowded.Busy/
Actors: Blank Noise Action Heroes
Date/ Time: 12th Nov- 5 pm to 7 pm


How would you react if you were walking down the street and saw women just standing, hanging around, and not waiting.

How would you react if each of these women looked at you, and it was not an invitation?

Women present on the road were handed a letter that bore a testimonial of street sexual harassment. The letter was also an invite to participate in the Blank Noise intervention, ‘One Night Stand.’

One of the letters said:

Dear Stranger,

Who we are, where we go, what we wear, how we sit, stand, talk, walk in our very own cities. When we demand the need to make our cities non threatening , I don't expect anyone to think of me as their sister or mother, but to really look at women as citizens who have every right to be out on the streets, without any explanation. Sometimes we just love to walk, stand around, hang around, without looking 'available.'

If you know what I mean, come and stand with me by the railing between 5 30 and 6 30 pm.

Sincerely,

A girl


Some women responded and we gradually saw the nature of the street transforming as more they joined in.

The public passing by gradually took to notice that ‘something’ was going on. The Action Heroes re configured themselves by standing closer and looking at every passerby,

Soon they were looking as a collective and being looked back and looking at being looked back.

Towards the end there was a crowd watching the Action Heroes watch. Ofcourse, some present in the public could not but help feel and show that they were challenged/ threatened in the eye game.

Not a word exchanged. Who ever said, but it was only a ‘look’?


Action Heroes report:
I thought the action on Sunday night was a terrific success. When we lined the railings in front of the arcade, most people who passed through noticed the change. They may not have realized exactly what was going on, but they could at least tell that something was different. Men in particular would often look back two or three times with a confused glance. I liked the subtlety of that -- no big signs or posters, but a noticeable shift in the gender dynamic of the area. I also personally enjoyed the freedom of staring and glaring back at the men who passed. And while standing in the center of the sidewalk passing out letters, I enjoyed being stationary while other people had to shift around me. I hadn't realized how much I normally skirt around men -- to make room for them and avoid colliding into them -- and it felt good to force them to move around me.- Sujata Bhat

As an individual I must say that it definitely helped. I don't know if I'll be able to go back there tomorrow evening and do the same thing that we did yesterday. But what I do know is that I can afford to have a little more faith in mankind. Because even as I stood there, between two guys, they did absolutely nothing. I got a few stares, sure, but I realised that men will look. It's how you react to it that matters. Am I going to look down and let it get to me? Or am I going to stare right back and let them know how exactly it makes me feel? I've realised also that we don't need to go around beating up men for staring. All we've got to do is let them know that they don't scare us, and that we don't like it.- Sanjana Janardhan

Since it was my first time, it was a mixture of a lot of things... the project was extremely interesting and it felt good to stand up for our rights and do somethin bout wats not right instead of just criticising bout everything thats wrong with the world!- Shreya Sajankila

Blank Noise Project thanks

• Radio One and Anjaan
• Radio City and Vasanthi Hari Prakash/ Anjana
  
• Midday
• Smriti Chanchani for taking the photographs

action heroes include:
shashikala, Nishanthi Makkam, Parineeta, shreya, krutika, Payal Kamat, Nisrin Aziz, Yamini Deen, Ratna Apnender, Manju Ramanan, Kadambari Kapor, Anupama Vadnagra, Soumya C Shekhar, Smriti Chanchani, Archana Srinivasan, Sujata Bhat, Tharuna Balan, Madhurya Balan, Anusree M Jois....

Dev Sukumar, Krishanu, Kris, Prasad, Rama Krishna, Abhiji Rai, Kailash Jodatti, karthik subbaraman

WOMEN WANTED IN BANGALORE. SUNDAY NOV 12TH

Who we are, where we go, what we wear, how we sit, stand, talk, walk in our very own cities. When we demand the need to make our cities non threatening , I don't expect anyone to think of me as their sister or mother, but to really look at women as citizens who have every right to be out on the streets, without any explanation. Sometimes we just love to walk, stand around, hang around, without looking 'available.'

Blank Noise Project Bangalore calls for women/ girls/ ladies/ of all ages, languages, colour, and shape to be participate in a street intervention on Sunday Nov 12th. Venue: Brigade Road. By participating you will be celebrated as a BNP Action Hero.

We guarantee that this action won't ask you to be acrobatic, but to be yourself, and experience the site you act upon transform. Be the stimuli, be an action hero.

To know more and to participate call us at 98868 40612.
(This street intervention will be approximately 1.5 hours)

List of participants here:

1.Ratna Apnender
2. Yamini Deen
3. Soumya Chandra Shekhar
4. Payal Kamath
5. Anushree M. Jois
6. Vrinda Maheshwari
7. Sujata Bhat
8. Nanjami
9. Shakuntala
10. Akhila Vasan
11. Leslie Ziani
12. Sanjana Janardhan
13. Manju Ramanan
14. Kadambari Kapoor
15. Sashwati B
16. Ritu
17. Chitra Badrinarayan
18. Nisrin Aziz
19. Tharunya Balan
20.Jyotsna Mandana
21. Shreya
22. Alka Shankernarayan
23. Smriti Chanchani
24. Shweta Jagdish Chellaram
25. Archana Srinivasan
26. Aishwarya
27. Krupa Jaganath
28. Monica Gupta
29. Anupama Vadnagra
30. Shyamli Panda
31. Sunaina Suresh
32. Sneha Singh
33. Arundhati Sanat
34.
35
36
37
38
39
40.............

(Male volunteers are welcome! )

Dev Sukumar, Rahul,Vivek, Thomas Abraham, Rahul

I DARE- EVERYDAY

Savita: age 22 - I was walking down the road. Unknown hands ‘accidentally’ brushed against my crotch. Time 9 pm.

Mohini: age 25 - A stranger man in his rubbed his erect genitals on me. Time 3 pm.

Farah: age 16- I shouted at a man who was making sounds and looking at my breasts and the public started laughing at me. Time 12 30 pm

Sujata: age 13- I was waiting for my mother to pick me up after school. A man in a car stopped "How much for an hour?" Time 1 30 pm

Pinky: age 11- I was taking the bus to tutions. A hand up the back of my skirt. I was numbed. Time 4 pm

Sonal: age 13 - On the scooter with Appa. Two boys pinched my breasts as they speed by on their bikes. Time 8 20pm

Piya: age 27 2 men above the age of 50 passed comments about my breasts. I spat at them and hit them with my chappal. Time 5 pm

Niti:age 18. an unknown groped my breast and disappeared in the crowd. The hand is yet to be identified. Time 3 pm

Jaysree: age 19. I was walking home and a guy in a car tried to pull me inside.
Time 6 pm

Garima: age 16 was stalked for 1 hour and had to hide in a phone booth. Time: 7 pm

Laxmi: age 37 I was constantly ‘accidentally’ elbowed in my breasts by a man in front of me. Time: 4 pm

Alka: age 9 - A man I don’t know whistled at me when I was going to school. My mother did not let me go to school that day. Time 8 .05 am

Nupur: age 32 I was waiting for the bus. 4 cars with men stopped by and asked me to come with them. Time 8 15 pm

Radha: age 50. I was enjoying my daily morning walk until I saw a van kept following me and asking, how much? Time 7 am

Priya: age 17 . He held me from the back and tried to drag me into a lane. I bit him and ran away. Time: 6 45 pm.

Meetu: age 7 was getting inside an auto. A man put his hand between my legs.
I am speaking about it after 20 years. Time 5 pm

Gayatri: age 53 I was getting inside a bus. A man put his hand between my legs. I reacted. I slapped him hard. The public also joined in. Time 6 pm

Anusree :age 21 Man on a bicycle rode past and spat on me. Time 6 35 pm.

Mansi: age 17 Anonymous man kept mumbling, whispering that he wanted to 'fuck me'. Time. 4 45 pm.

Sushma: age 31 A man squeezed my breasts hard and disappeared. Time. 9 pm

And you?


( These testimonials are of bloggers who participated in the Blank Noise blogathon conducted in March 2006. The blogathon was an online mass catharsis, with over countless number of bloggers building testimonies of 'eve teasing' online. Private has collectively become public , with people from all over the world testifying, speaking, debating, screaming, sharing their experience with the issue of street sexual harassment/ ‘ eve teasing’.In May this year Rehaan Engineer collaborated with Blank Noise to produce a sound peice from the blogathon.

We announce the start of a webspace/ a blog where you can come and share your testimonial of street sexual harassment. The testimonials blog space will be constantly building itself with your participation. If you would like to share your experience, let it out! mail us at blurtblanknoise@gmail.com

Thankyou!

The Blank Noise Team

I REPEAT

I DID NOT ASK FOR IT. YOU HAVE NEVER 'ASKED FOR IT'. WE WANT 1000 TESTIMONIALS TO SAY IT LOUD ENOUGH SO THAT THE WORLD CAN HEAR IT.
THE BLANK NOISE PROJECT NEEDS YOU TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN.
I REPEAT. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ASKING FOR IT.

(To send in testimonials of clothing please email us at blurtblanknoise@gmail.com and we will get back to you. ) Come along! Participate and be our Action Hero!

About the project: Did you ask for it?
Blank Noise wants you to discard your clothes worn at the time you were eve teased (sexually harassed) on the streets. This collective building of an installation of clothes seeks, primarily, to erase the assumption that you 'asked for it' because of what you were wearing. That you are to blame and only 'provocatively dressed', and therefore 'immodest' women are eve-teased.
We hope to gather clothes across different cities as testimonials of eve teasing and install them on the streets. We hope women will stop blaming themselves, your body, your clothes. What Blank Noise hopes to do is bring together 1000 clothes, install them on the streets, in public spaces and collectively question the notion of 'modesty' and defy the assumption that we ' ask for it.'
Over the last couple of months our volunteers, both male and female, have been collecting garments from people they know, home, family, colleagues, friends. You could volunteer too and work towards making this happen. Thankyou

Good press is good press. Bad press is really bad

I enjoyed watching Rang De Basanti. It was entertaining, had a kind of spirit to it that touched many people.

A couple of months later DNA reported that the Blank Noise Project ‘started’ as an off shoot of Rang De Basanti?

Anyways…the Blank Noise Team laughed it off…it was not hurting us anyway.

What got to all of us here was a report by IANS about the Blank Noise Project’s Night Action Plan. Chinmayee, Knownturf and Hemangini defend it.

We are grateful to be supported by the press in so many ways. The project has reached people beyond the blogosphere, thereby widening our base of participants who go on to become the Blank Noise Action Heroes.

1. Blank Noise is also focusing on how to say instead of making everything a slogan. What is the message? What is the strategy we are adopting to communicate?

2. Blank Noise has worked through performance, thereby creating an experiential realm. For us, a headcount of 5000 is not as important as the ability to build an experience, depending on the strategy adopted. A night ‘march’ is different from a Night Action Plan, Blank Noise is currently engaged in the latter.

Blank Noise Project is not as much about action reaction but about probing, delving, experiencing, empowering and translating.

Thankyou!

The Blank Noise Team

Some More Noise: Blank Noise Project. Delhi

('panga nahin lene ka' is hindi for 'don't you mess with me')

Some More Noise was a sound and performance intervention that took place in the South Extension subway. 30 Blank Noise Action Heroes showed up and built the event.

The Action Heroes ( women) confronted the public by simply standing in the subway and maintaining eye contact with passersby. An intimate situation would result in the action hero giving a letter to the stranger. The letter bore a testimonial of street sexual harassment starting as ' Dear Stranger'. The letters were both in Hindi and English.

( these letters are various people's blog posts from the Blank Noise Blogathon conducted earlier in the year.)

Male action heroes stood outside the subway distributing pamphlets

A sound piece enclosed the space and filled it with noise.

The event was supported by Khoj, as a part of their public art residency programme. Thanks to all at Khoj, Pooja Sood, Aastha Chauhan, Manoj, Hemant, Rohini Devasher, Arun and Ramesh.

Delhi: Some more Noise

image1+2 are of the participants a couple of minutes before the public intervention in Delhi's South Extension Subway.

30 Action Heroes met an hour before the event to discuss the plan of action.

There was a new set of action heroes this time- The Blank Noise Action Heroes Team included students from Lady Sriram College, and members from the youth team of Action India.

Action Heroes: Abishek Baxi, Abigail Crisman, Amit Kendurkar, Anna, Annie Zaidi, Atreyee Majumdar, Geetanjali, Ekta Muktiar, Naveena, Priyanka Varma Sonu, Samvedna, Sujata Sarkar, Rahul Bhattacharya, Yuvraj....

Video Documentation by Astha Chauhan. Photos taken by Ambar Sharma.

Video documentation coming up.

Intervention in Delhi - Oct 8!

Let's meet up this Sunday in Connaught Place. Meet at Barista, N-Block CP (Outer Circle) at 4:30 PM.

Pallika and CP are just screaming for intervention!!! Email that you are coming so we know how many people to wait for!

Email is: bnpdelhi@googlegroups.com

Bangalore intervention

It was on August 6th, so follow the link pasted up above and leave us your thoughts!