BENGALURU: No matter what one has gone through, everyone has experienced the need to say something but haven’t found the right words to do so at least once. Questions like what if they don’t understand or what if I sound stupid stop us from saying things which bottle up inside and harm us from within. Listening to Voices, a unique art installation open to all at the Bangalore International Centre till March 5, is an attempt to give the city’s residents a safe space to let it all out.
“The installation is based on something called the Wind Phone, a concept from Japan created by Itaru Sasaki who built it after the 2011 tsunami, to allow space for people to mourn and grieve,” says Anmol Tikoo, the project’s coordinator.
Moving to Bengaluru four years ago to seek healthcare for a loved one, Tikoo found the city to have a unique space in terms of mental health.
“Seeing the kind of institutions and infrastructure Bengaluru has for mental health care, I decided it would be important for me as an educator and artist to understand this experience, not just from my personal perspective, but to dig into the city through this lens,” he says.
He secured an India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) under its Project 560 programme with support from BNP Paribas India Foundation to delve deeper into the subject.
“I spent the last two years collaborating with different people. What we have done is try to look at mental health, not just from an individual perspective but connect the individual experience to the larger social dimensions,” says Tikoo.
The installation consists of two distinct booths. The Listening Booth has a varied range of audio stories for visitors, including themes like Kannada cinema’s depiction of the mind and the evolution of mental health care since India’s early independence era. The Speaking Booth has sounds from different green spaces of Bengaluru like Hessarghatta so that people can be surrounded by these sounds of the last remaining green spaces.
“There’s an old rotary phone with the line to nowhere and people can reach out to someone who is no longer in their life for whatever reason, or they can say something that they feel is unsayable,” explains Tikoo.
Significantly, the booth also includes a toll-free number for those seeking professional support, emphasising the importance of accessible mental health resources.
Tikoo highlights that the visitors found themselves intrigued by the installation.
“You could see there was a moment of visible emotion and charge when people used the phone,” he observes, hoping to introduce these booths across Bengaluru.
“We had more than 100 people show up for the talk which clearly shows an appetite for these kinds of conversations,” he says.