Cultural Vulnerability
No Kiss
Performance, Mumbai
No Kiss
Performance, Mumbai
NO KISS is a site-specific performance enacted in the public space of Mumbai, a city where physical intimacy is culturally regulated and expressions of affection are largely confined to the private sphere.
After living in the city for a month, observing its rhythms and social codes, I became interested in testing a simple yet charged gesture: a kiss. What would happen if intimacy appeared where it is not expected? And more importantly — what would happen if this intimacy was not performed by a tourist with cultural immunity, but shared with a local participant?
Standing close, maintaining eye contact, speaking softly, smiling, behaving as lovers might, and kissing — not theatrically, but insistently — I occupied public space with an act that resisted neutrality.
The action was repeated in three locations:
— along a main road populated by workers, passers-by, and beggars;
— in a more affluent, bohemian area near a restaurant;
— in the same district, beside a bookstall and local vendors.
— along a main road populated by workers, passers-by, and beggars;
— in a more affluent, bohemian area near a restaurant;
— in the same district, beside a bookstall and local vendors.
Fear of Intimacy
i. inner
My partner was a stranger — someone I had approached under the pretext of participating in a photographic project. As the action progressed, the performance shed its experimental framing and became real. I realised I was not acting. The body reacted first: stiffness, hesitation, a moment of refusal. Intimacy with a stranger revealed itself as foreign, even threatening. It took time for the body to re-enter the action, not as representation, but as presence.
ii. outer
Audience responses varied but were never neutral. Some viewers turned away abruptly, refusing to witness. Others stopped their rikshas and stared out of them. Several asked us to stop, and even leave.
The kiss functioned as a disturbance — a small act that exposed the fragility of social tolerance and the unspoken agreements governing public space.
My partner was a stranger — someone I had approached under the pretext of participating in a photographic project. As the action progressed, the performance shed its experimental framing and became real. I realised I was not acting. The body reacted first: stiffness, hesitation, a moment of refusal. Intimacy with a stranger revealed itself as foreign, even threatening. It took time for the body to re-enter the action, not as representation, but as presence.
ii. outer
Audience responses varied but were never neutral. Some viewers turned away abruptly, refusing to witness. Others stopped their rikshas and stared out of them. Several asked us to stop, and even leave.
The kiss functioned as a disturbance — a small act that exposed the fragility of social tolerance and the unspoken agreements governing public space.
What is there in a kiss that no one can pass neutrally?
In NO KISS, intimacy becomes a social test, and vulnerability is shared between performer and audience. The work reveals how the body, when placed outside cultural permission, becomes both a site of resistance and a mirror — reflecting collective discomfort, desire, and fear.
