Blank Noise is a

community A community is a social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given g ...

public art Public art is art in any Media (arts), media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and phy ...

project that seeks to confront

street harassment Street harassment is a form of harassment, primarily sexual harassment that consists of unwanted sexualised comments, provocative gestures, honking, wolf whistles, indecent exposures, stalking, persistent sexual advances, and touching by stra ...

, commonly known as

eve teasing In India, eve teasing is a euphemism, primarily occurring in Indian English, used for public sexual harassment or sexual assault of women by men. The name "Eve" alludes to the Bible's Creation myth, creation story concerning Adam and Eve. Consi ...

, in India. The project, initiated by

Jasmeen Patheja Jasmeen Patheja is a human rights activist in India and was born in Kolkata, West Bengal. She graduated from the Srishti School of Art Design and Technology in fine arts. She is a former Ashoka Fellow and works towards gender sensitization. S ...

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.

Activities

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. 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. INAFI-WIKI 01

Though Blank Noise was founded in Bangalore, it has spread to other cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Calcutta, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, and Lucknow. It tackles the notion of shame and blame through campaigns such as "I never ask for it" (ask to be sexually harassed when on the streets). 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 Spray painting is a painting technique in which a device sprays coating material (paint, ink, varnish, etc.) through the air onto a surface. The most common types employ compressed gas—usually air compressor, air—to atomize and direct the pa ...

messages, recording the testimonies of victims of

sexual harassment Sexual harassment is a type of harassment based on the sex or gender of a victim. It can involve offensive sexist or sexual behavior, verbal or physical actions, up to bribery, coercion, and assault. Harassment may be explicit or implicit, wit ...

in public places, and printing tee shirts with anti-harassment messages on them. It has also staged demonstrations.A night out on Capital pavements to end eveteasing
''

Indian Express ''The Indian Express'' is an English-language India, Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932 by P. Varadarajulu Naidu. It is headquartered in Noida, owned by the Indian Express Limited, ''Indian Express Group''. It was later taken over by Ramnat ...

'' Delhi Newsline. 17 September 2006.

References

External links

Blank Noise Blog

Blank Noise Action Heroes - blog documenting testimonials of responding to 'eve-teasing'/ street sexual violence

Dialogue on a lonely stretch

Taking back the city

Cleaning Up Rapist Lane
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blank Noise Project Public art Sexual harassment in India Feminism in India Culture of Bengaluru Rape in India Works about sexism Violence against women in India Mass sexual assault

Activities

See also

References

External links