Collectives, Networks; Relatedness.

This video work explores public space as a mis-en-scène of unequal thresholds, where gender, class, and purpose govern access, movement, and visibility. Set in the industrial urban fringes of Sonepat, Haryana, the film positions the marketplace and its surrounding neighborhood as layered spatial texts—sites where the performance of everyday life reveals deep-rooted exclusions. The camera captures the rhythms of loitering, surveillance, and bodily negotiation, foregrounding how the female presence in public is often conditional, purposeful, or relational, while male bodies move unmarked.

Traversing from the bazaar to the neighborhood interior, the work examines how shared spaces—parks, streets, thresholds, and courtyards—are co-constructed by their inhabitants and shape spatial mobility. These spaces do not merely reflect social hierarchies; they actively constitute the public imaginary, defining who belongs, who passes, and who remains on the margins of urban visibility.What, then, makes space truly public—and for whom does that visibility unfold?

Collaborators: Rhea Jaiswal, B.Arch, 2020