UR/Unreserved- a 30 day arts project on trains

Idea

In 2012, there was wide coverage in the mainstream media about the exodus of people from the Northeast living in Bangalore. The images and stories of women, children and men fleeing in thousands on trains, with their hurriedly gathered belongings, was the starting point for the idea of UR/Unreserved.

The incident itself created a marked dent in our understanding of identities. We began actively looking at how our individual journeys in search of identity are also collective journeys. Several questions emerged: How are identities shaped? Is the formation of identity largely based on negation? For example, to be a man one must not ‘behave’ like a woman. Why do identities stick and persist? Should identity be limited to frameworks of conflict? Are there other ways to read it?

UR/Unreserved is a quiet resistance. A gentle defiance of the single story, a refusal of the stereotype. Our wish is to find different perspectives of and around identities and share them as widely and publicly as possible. Our tone of inquiry will be gentle and playful, yet provocative.

artwork by Parmita Mukherjee

Journey as Identity

UR/Unreserved is a 30 day performative journey on trains, that will lay a special emphasis on ‘playful’. Our work will be infused with games, tricks, and songs that will be performative in nature - designed to create a space for conversation that does not easily dissolve into binary confrontations.

Bangalore-Dhemaji-Srinagar-Irinjalakuda-Bangalore

Eight performer-facilitators travel through 12 sleeper coaches, 4 unreserved compartments, and reaching 10,000 people for 30 days across the country. The attempt is to engage fellow passengers, TTE, vendors, cleaners in a sharing of stories. Stories, that re-imagine individual journeys of identity- one that is both universal in understanding and deeply personal in experience. 

Platform 1

 Platform 1 is a sharing of the learnings from each leg of the train journey. At each of our destinations we will engage with a local art organisation, to collaboratively host Platform 1 in public spaces. Inviting members from the local community and students, Platform 1 will be in the form of installations, podcasts, short films, sketches from the journey and short performance pieces directed by Anish Victor. Our collaborators are Macbeth Drama in Assam, Help Foundation in Kashmir and Innerspace little theatre, Irinjalakuda.

 Travelling Exhibition

 The idea of the travelling exhibition is to take learnings from the process to different public spaces. It is an effort to continue reflections from the journey, after the last Platform 1. The exhibition will be a basket of ideas - publication, short films, podcasts, sketches, maps, photographs curated to strengthen and deepen our engagement with students, artists and the general public.

Outputs

We envision UR/Unreserved to have a diverse reach across students, artists, academics, activists, theatre-practitioners, students, workers and the general public.

1. Recordings of the peoples’ thoughts and feelings around the issue of identity.

2. A minimum of 12 Platform 1 events in four locations comprising of performative pieces, films, narrow-casts, and sound installations. The event will happen in public spaces/domains.

3. A travelling exhibition to schools and colleges featuring films, archival footage, field recordings, sketches, maps and photographs.

4. Publication/Book that will include notes from the journey, experiences of Platform 1s, reflections from travellers and the project team. It will also contain resources used on the journey - songs, poetry, scripts, improvisational processes, magic tricks, etc.

5. 8 performer-facilitators trained in processes of theatre facilitation.

Appeal

UR/Unreserved has by far brought together theatre practitioners, visual artists, animators, film makers, dancers, writers, musicians. We started work on this project back in December 2016 and will run through March 2018. The core team has by far sustained through peer-to-peer contributions from friends and family. Although, India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) is funding a part of our work and our friends have come forward to help us in kind, we still need to raise 65% of our budget.

Your contribution will help sustain 14 people’s efforts of over 15 months on this project. The Rs. 4 lakhs will be used to cover the production costs of the project.

About Maraa

Maraa is a media and arts collective based in Bangalore and Delhi. Founded as a charitable public trust in 2008, our work is centred around a political yet creative practice across three domains - strengthening people-centric media platforms, democratising usage of urban public spaces and deepening rights based campaigns. For us, the dimensions of labour, gender and sexuality, caste and class cut not only across but also deeply inform and shape all the work that we do. To know more please visit http://maraa.in

About Anish Victor

Anish Victor is theatre worker currently residing in Bangalore. His work has been guided by the belief that the arts can go much beyond its own sake. He has designed and facilitated theatre processes for diverse people and contexts – ranging from children, teachers educational institutions, lawyers, and even a radio station. With UR/Unreserved he deepens his association with Maraa, a Bangalore based media and arts collective. To know more please visit http://www.quietrivers.in/

To know more about the project visit our website http://unreserved.in and kindly like and share our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pg/comeunreserved/

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