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Phase: Research Missions: IDENTIFY SUCCESS STORIES

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

It addresses women's fear based relationship with their cities via direct street action and public interventions, which ask women to be "Action Heroes" by not being idle in public. They are referred to 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.

Photo of Mansi Grover
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Influenced by feminist artists of the seventies and eighties, particularly the Guerilla Girls, and artists such as Marina Abramovic, Suzanne Lacey, and Sophie Calle, founder Jasleen Patheja began with a series of mind mapping exercises around the theme of “public space” and soon discovered that subjects who participated in interviews or focus groups tended to associate a host of negative terms, such as “aggression,” “stare,” “vulnerable,” “groping,” and “feeling sick inwards,” with a concept that should be linked with positive civic participation and cultural interaction.

Read more about their techniques and campaigns here: 
http://blog.blanknoise.org/2007/09/interventions-and-techniques.html

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Photo of Blank Noise

Hi Mansi. Thank you so much for recommending Blank Noise!

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Photo of An Old Friend

Thanks for sharing, Mansi. I know that the main focus of this post is to show how art brings awareness about women's violence to the public. While I was listening to the video, however, I started to thinking about women's violence and it's relationship to online presence and chat rooms. Many of victims that were mentioned were found through the internet. I have always thought of the internet as a tool to empower people in impoverished countries to come together and make change. I never considered the dangers that women face in online. This could be an interesting angle to develop in the ideas section.

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Photo of Mansi Grover

Hi Lauren! Sorry for the late reply, was super busy in my exams. I'm glad this post was able to give you a new thought starter.

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