Touch IV

The idea of TOUCH IV developed while listening to a sex worker and her perception of touch but she was not sure how to participate in TOUCH 1,2,3. Her interest and faith in open communication about her experience of being in a profession not considered respectable in the social world moved me. My question was how desirable touch could lead one to an intimate situation and undesirable to repulsive. After considerable research and coming across a play ‘My Mother, The Gharwali, Her Maalak, His Wife’ at Prithvi Theater where I met the actors (sex workers) and Meena sheshu a senior social worker at Sangram) the idea moved further during my visit to Sangli to meet and discuss with them, the concept.

Process was complex as it is not easy to surrender one’s subjectivity entirely but I as an artist did not take up a position of a head and was willing to listen, learn, and get challenged by the individuals, community I was interacting / negotiating with. The process within which “all the participants can speak, listen and respond” individually, collectively with the artist and between themselves could become possible in time in Sangli, we could develop a framework within which to listen, speak and critique became possible with the realization that our existing subjectivities don’t dissolve automatically upon contact and neither always resolve conflicts with difference.

I believe that an artist cannot view an individual or a group; s/he is working with, as an idle material to be appropriated or altered. There are approaches in which position of artists within the interactive encounter could get reinforced. With that consciousness and mutual consent, the project began, sharing with them the entire shot footage and stages of editing by being in their environment in Sangli was a mutual decision. When they witnessed their individual stories narrated by themselves they were more critical and powerful as a group and got energized, I myself experienced simultaneous creative energy. We spoke about the context in which the work is produced and its relevance to another context.

Queries / questions related to terms - ‘Subaltern’ ‘marginalization’ ‘representation’ and, aesthetic practices that engage with social issues were further discussed between audience, sex workers, artist, cultural theorist, and a sociologist, as participants and then viewers during a /conference in the e space where Touch IV was installed in Mumbai in December 2010.