Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Sitting around a peepal tree and talking about death is an excerpt out of a philosophical novel, one would imagine. However, at the Indira Gandhi National Centre of Arts, the auditorium behind the tree was dedicated to an avant garde engagement of sorts. Called Last Minute Exercise, the performance-installation involved conversations and exercises about death. A project by Hannah Hurtzig, a Berlin-based curator, these discussions were between volunteers in the audience and specialists in the fields of biology, medicine, law, performing arts and religious studies.
Each participant in the audience was given a headset, with four radio channels and an opportunity to interact with the experts one-on-one. In the auditorium, there were three sets of conversations simultaneously. Pinki Virani, social activist and author, spoke about Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse who was sexually assaulted by a sweeper and was left in a vegetative state. Virani has campaigned for passive euthanasia in India. Ravi Nandan Singh, a sociology professor at Hindu College spoke about crematoriums in Varanasi. “People who work in cremation grounds know the dead, work with the dead and have a palpable sense of ownership with death,” he said. Amitesh Grover, a performance-maker, game designer and professor at National School of Drama, discussed how the idea of death is presented on stage. He recited Hamlet’s famous soliloquy indicating that characters often use the idea of death for sleep or to dream.
Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram
