Laidback Kochi gets a taste of surveillance, Kashmir-style

KOCHI

: " Do you know I can get you arrested for this," fumed a police officer as Saquib Bhatt and Hina Arif made him place his walkie-talkie on the ground and patted him down at Uru Art Harbour, one of the venues of the

Kochi-Muziris Biennale

, on Thursday. Those who came in after the policeman too were frisked thoroughly, though most of them submitted to it wordlessly. Too late they realised that the 'frisking' was not to check for weapons or banned substances but to see how easily people let their guard down.


'Srinagar Biennale' was a 12-hour performance on the Kashmir conflict curated by Veer Munshi, and the mock frisking, Bhatt and Arif pointed out, only goes on to show how 'normalised' some people and cultures are with respect to surveillance.

‘For others it may be offensive, for us, surveillance is normal’
For us in Kashmir, this is something deeply embedded in our whole existence. For others it might be offensive but for us this is normal,” said Arif, who experienced frisking of school bags and even lunch boxes as part of security protocols while growing up.

The duo was also whimsical about whom to let in and who not, rejecting some people without assigning any reason, a normal everyday event at security checkpoints in conflict-ridden Kashmir. Occasionally, there was resistance.

“There was this guy from France who pushed me away as I began frisking, saying he has never experienced this before and we had no right do so,” said Bhatt.

Architecture too is central to ‘Srinagar Biennale’. A structure shaped like a Sufi dargah takes up the central space, where Munshi lines up several baby coffins filled with papiermache bones and skulls painted in a style similar to traditional Kashmiri handicraft.

The project has works by 14 artists from both communities who have been affected by the Kashmir conflict. Munshi himself moved to Delhi 30 years ago because of the conflict but more than bitterness he felt a pain which finds its voice through art. "The Sufi shrine is quite significant for any community in Kashmir, a common place where all could go and pray. It is what Kashmiriyat is all about, but that space has been marginalized in the last two decades," said Munshi. The valley witnessed burning of several such shrines in the recent past.

‘Srinagar Biennale’ documents the migration and alienation faced by polarized communities and the stress they have to live with. Hope is only a footnote here and it appears in one of the corners of the dargah in the form of bottles of spring water collected from Anantnag, home to several natural springs.