Interventions in Karachi: about the performances
Karen Mirza and Brad Butler, 2009
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Our performances in Karachi came out of discussions around the issue of 'The Body, Social Space and the Aesthetic of Resistance'. These talks grew into actions where we improvised situations that disrupted the alignment of public space. Strict space boundaries divide Muslim society into two sub universes: the universe of men (the Umma, the world of religion and power) and the universe of women, the domestic world of sexuality and the family. But this is not a rule, it is an improvisation between those who hold authority and those who do not, and we asked ourselves how women might reclaim this space, how women might imitate, accelerate and "own" an encounter in these spaces. Thus in many of these performances the private became public.
Two of these gestures were documented and are presented here. The first action by artist Adeela Suleman [sound scenario] invited the gaze. Her clothing in some of the scenarios is subtly inappropriate, but her claiming of the space through a simple action comments on her physical [in]visibility. The second intervention [in Sunday bazaar] turns the intimate and personal act of reading into a public gesture. These book stalls presented an opportunity for the repetition ad escalation of an action where Urdu and English language could be used as both a provocation and as a form of intimacy.
Months later, this press release from the Women's Action Forum [click for a pdf] replicated the issues we were discussing in its call for direct action.