Talk on ‘Notes Toward a City Without Sorrow’ | HUPA Chair on Urban Poor and the Law

NLSIU’s HUPA Chair on Urban Poor and the Law is organising a talk titled ‘Notes Toward a City without Sorrow’, being delivered by Rahee Punyashloka.

About the talk

The question of a city that is free from the shackles of caste lines is an integral aspect of anti-caste creative expression at least since the work of Ravidas, who imagined Begumpura, literally, the city without sorrows, as an artistic response to the strictures of the caste system in the 15th century. Drawing from this framework laid down by him, my multidisciplinary, research-based project, fieldnotes from begumpura, tries to speculate what such a city may look like in the current (and future) modernity. Drawing on this project, as well as the work of several anti-caste artists, my talk tries to delineate how modern cities continue to carry systemic, casteist legacies laid down by Brahminism, and the brief glimpses of resistance from oppressed caste communities against them.

About the speaker

Rahee Punyashloka (b. 1993, Bhubaneswar) (they/he) is an artist, writer, researcher, and experimental filmmaker based out of Bhubaneswar and New Delhi. Working across disciplines, he seeks to illuminate the vastly unrepresented/underrepresented artistic history of the anti-caste struggle and the Dalit identity. His works have been exhibited in numerous venues including Pulp Society (New Delhi), Latitude 28 (New Delhi); International Film Festival Rotterdam; Athens Video Art Festival; Tribeca Film Festival (New York); ARKIPEL (Jakarta); Ishara Art Foundation (Dubai); KHOJ (New Delhi); Museum of Art and Photography (Bangalore); Arts House (Melbourne), among others.