Проект «Пустое Шумное Пространство»: Борьба с уличными домогательствами в Индии

Indian community project

Blank Noise is a community/public art project that seeks to confront street harassment, commonly known as eve teasing, in India. 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.

Blank Noise is led and run completely by volunteers. A core team of male and female volunteers from across geographical locations and age groups work with the collective. Blank Noise seeks to trigger public dialogue on the issue of street sexual harassment. Conversations range from collectively building a definition of "eve teasing" to defining the boundaries of "teasing", "harassment", "flirting". The collective builds testimonials of street sexual violence, harassment and "eve teasing" and disperses them back in public, thereby creating public debate. 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. In December 2012, following the brutal gang rape of a young woman in a moving bus in Delhi, Blank Noise started the Safe City Pledge, an initiative urging citizens to pledge ways in which they can make cities safer for women. The project has undertaken actions such as spray painting messages, recording the testimonies of victims of sexual harassment in public places, and printing tee shirts with anti harassment messages on them. It has also staged demonstrations.