Reading the Pulse

Students of Ambedkar University captured current worries, including demonetisation, through dramatic performance pieces

A FEW weeks after demonetisation was announced, Deepti Victor, a post-graduate student at Ambedkar University, went around her campus seeking donations for an orphanage located in Delhi’s Civil Lines. She approached students, teachers and strangers for two days. Those who turned her away were asked to write their reasons on little paper hearts. One major cause for their refusal was — “Change nahi hai.” “We are short of cash at the moment.” “Having only 200 rupees”. “No money! 500/1000 notes only.” “Currency problem.”

“I said they could give Re 1 or Rs 2 but most people didn’t want to part even with coins. This did not come as a surprise, given how precious cash has become after November 8,” she says. She raised Rs 2,800. What nobody guessed was that Victor’s fundraising was a work of performance art, titled Donation. The student of the Materiality in Performance Art course has displayed the little paper hearts on the gate of the popular hangout, Vinay’s Canteen.

Donation was a part of a student show, Shall We think Again, which included another scathing critique of the government’s economic policy. Tulika MS, 23, filmed the long queues at banks and ATMS. She slathered white paint on the wall on which the film was projected. “The act of whitewashing stands for wiping out but it can also mean that a wall is being prepared for another work,” she says. Once the wall was entirely white, the artist picked up a brush with saffron paint and made a series of bold strokes. The performance ended with an image of a “24-hour ATM”, ironically, with its shutter down screened on a saffron surface.

From the economics of living in Delhi in Roti Kapda Makaan to the culture of consumption in Eat Sleep Follow Repeat to censorship in The Taboo Dress Shop, works drew their inspiration from the sociopolitical and cultural fault-lines. Kavya Mishra wore religion on her body, from images of gods to marigold garlands to smoking censers, in The Burdened Believer. Over Slept invited the audience to sleep on sheets of newspaper.

Kimberley Rodrigues named her work The Show and presented a disturbing look at the “struggle of an artiste that people don’t see on stage”. A professional singer, she performed live to body percussion. “My inflicting pain on my body by beating it to create sounds was a way to show the struggles that every artiste goes though before reaching the stage,” says Rodrigues, who was performing without warm-up for an audience for the first time in her life. “You did hear my voice break and that was a part of it. You did hear me cry and that was also a part of it,” she says.