Five Million Incidents | Conversations
Act the Victim: Family Audition

By Paribartana Mohanty

Tuesday, 10 – Saturday, 14 September 2019
Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi

Tuesday, 10 September	18:00-20:00
Wenesday, 11 September	18:00-20:00
Thursday, 12 September	18:00-20:00
Friday, 13 September	15:00-17:00
Saturday, 14 September	14:30-16:00

Schedule: Act the Victim: Family Audition schedules a series of meetings with select members of the artist’s (Paribartana Mohanty) family. Here the artist's attempt is to understand ‘family’ as a political unit and its relevance or value in the present time of identity extremism: Nation and संघ परिवार (the family union). How do we understand patriarchy, relationships, emotions, hierarchy and vulnerability in a family condition, or kinship? In the process, Paribartana will engage with his family and relatives in different performative modes or actions such as conversing, reading, writing, playing games, model designing and roaming with them in his migrant-home-city, Delhi. These meetings are partly formal, of which Goethe-Institut / Max Muller Bhavan is one of the temporary host of some of these incidents.
 
Considering the improvisatory nature of the larger project Act the Victim, the artist is fully aware of the high stakes and the dangers of hammering the kinship and other symbiotic relationships.

Paribartana sees these meeting-performances as minor incidents, which will occur several times during the course of the Five Millions Incidents. The series of meetings are neither intended to be spectacular nor a solitary moment in the artist's imagination.