PARALLEL CITIES DELHI 2013
A project curated by Stefan Kaegi and Lola Arias, PARALLEL CITIES DELHI, as part of the 15th Bharat Rang Mahotsav invites artists to devise interventions in public spaces that exhibit parallel existences.

PARALLEL CITIES DELHI 2013
interventions in public spaces curated by Stefan Kaegi ad Lola Arias
9 – 18 January 2013

An interactive performance part of the 15th Bharat Rang Mahotsav 
Presented by Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council and Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan.
PARALLEL CITIES BROCHURE (PDF file) 

PARALLEL CITIES SCHEDULE (JPEG file)
Introduction
After Berlin, Buenos Aires, Warsaw, Zurich and Kolkata, Stefan Kaegi and LolaArias bring PARALLEL CITIES (CIUDADES PARALELAS ) to Delhi. In each city, this portable festival is re-contextualized and staged with local performers.
Shopping malls, libraries and campuses... these are functional places, not usually thought of as interesting. They are to be found in every city, and they are what make cities inhabitable. Their ubiquitous, parallel existences the world over mean these places are instantly recognisable, each modelled on similar rules but displaying a local face.
For ‘Parallel Cities Delhi 2013’, Stefan Kaegi and Lola Arias have invited several artists to devise interventions in these omnipresent public spaces. Four artists have each chosen a location in Delhi as observation stations for urban phenomena. As observation stations, the project makes a stage out of public spaces, and seduces the viewers into staying inside that space long enough for their perception to change.
The pieces vary in form: You can listen to some of them, while others you can read or feel. The performers include a singer, others writers, passers-by and the audience themselves.
Via headphones, Ant Hampton and Tim Etchells whisper to us over the silence of a library reading-room.
Mariano Pensotti turns four authors into literary surveillance cameras who describe scenes in a campus hub as they happen. The viewers read the texts as a novel unfolding live on large screens over the heads of its real-life figures.
The Ligna activists choreograph their listeners in a shopping mall, turning their movements into a conspiratorial radio ballet.
And, late in the evening, Stefan Kaegi invites you to a roof with a view over the city to review all these experiences with a blind musician. Rewinding the experiences from his perspective you find yourself wondering what you will remember of the day.
The project makes theatre out of public spaces, and invites the audience to subjectively experience places built for anonymous crowds. Parallel Cities Delhi 2013 offers four perspectives on one city. A festival, that doesn’t transport stage sets or companies of actors but ideas.
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Library 
The Quiet Volume 
Ant Hampton, London and Tim Etchells, Sheffield / New York 
The National Archives of India Library, Janpath, New Delhi
The Quiet Volume is a whispered, self-generated and 'automatic' performance for two at a time, exploiting the particular tension common to any library worldwide; a combination of silence and concentration within which different peoples' experiences of reading unfold. Two audience members / participants sit side-by-side. Taking cues from words both written and whispered they find themselves burrowing an unlikely path through a pile of books. The piece exposes the strange magic at the heart of the reading experience, allowing aspects of it we think of as deeply internal to lean out into the surrounding space, and to leak from one reader's sphere into another's.
Dates: 9 to 11 & 14 to 18 January 2013 
Time: Every 20 minutes from 12 noon to 6:00 pm
Duration: 60 mins
Venue: The National Archives of India Library, Janpath, New Delhi 
Language: English
Entry: By registration only 
(For registration call: +91 +919582297249 (from 10 am to 6 pm) / email: parallelcitiesdelhi@gmail.com)PartnerThe National Archives of India / www.nationalarchives.nic.in<//a>:
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Meeting Point 
Sometimes I think, I can see you 
Mariano Pensotti, Buenos Aires
With Indian writers Amrita Tripathi, Asif Haider Ali, Divya Guha and Rajesh Tailang.
National School of Drama, Mandi House, New Delhi
A festival hub. Four authors observe the space from various perspectives. Typing into their laptops, they write live on what they see in the campus and other things, too: private observations, things they make up, or historical information. Every word they type is projected onto a large screen, a separate one for each author.
Like surveillance cameras recording anonymous individuals’ every movement in the vicinity, each writer transforms the spontaneous progress through a public space into narratives conveying what is going on – or might be going on – inside people’s heads in parallel with the bustling life of the surrounding area. The viewers and chance passers-by become part of their narrative. One glance at the screen reveals that they have become figures in the process of being invented. Over the space and the time they share with the authors, the viewers are able to influence the fictionalization, and become part of a collective story.
Dates: 10 to 13 January 2013 
Time: continuously between 5:30 to 7:00 pm and 7:30 to 9:00pm
Duration: 90 minutes
Language: English and Hindi
Venue: National School of Drama, Mandi House, New Delhi
Partner: National School of Drama / www.nsd.gov.in
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Shopping Mall 
The First International of Shopping Malls 
LIGNA, Hamburg and Berlin
Select CITYWALK, Saket, New Delhi
The shopping mall is a utopian place. An entire city is assembled in ideal-typical form below a glass roof under which time would appear to be frozen. Tropical plants create a paradise-like atmosphere. The wares displayed in shop windows patiently await their future owners. Apparently, they possess no more life of their own than the mall as such. Architecture and merchandise alike seem mute. And yet, they do possess a voice. The stories they could tell if they wanted to! The floor-tiles, for instance, that remember the footsteps of every shopper who walked across them without even noticing what was under their feet. And the consumer goods on sale have first-hand knowledge of people’s futile attempts to find happiness in them.
The Hamburg-based activists Ligna have been developing radio-ballets as interactive forms of radio-plays – in which audiences almost unconsciously turn into subversive crowds – in festivals around the world. For Ciudades Paralelas they focus on the shopping mall as a form of parallel city.
DELHI – SELECT CITYWALK 
Dates: 14 to 18 January 2013 
Time: 6:00 pm / Duration: 60 minutes 
Venue: Select CITYWALK, Saket, New Delhi 
Language: English / Entry: By registration only
For registration in advance call: +91 +919582297249 (from 10 am to 6 pm) / email: parallelcitiesdelhi(at)gmail.com) OR
register on the spot 15 minutes prior to the performance.
Note: Please carry a valid ID card to participate and arrive 15 minutes in advance. The audio piece for the performance is pre-recorded and in English.
Partner: Select CITYWALK
JAIPUR – PINK SQUARE MALL 
Date: 12 January 2013 
Time: 6:00 pm / Duration: 60 minutes
Venue: Pink Square Mall, Janta Colony, Raja Park, Jaipur 
Language: English / Entry: By registration only
For registration in advance call: +91 +919582297249 (from 10 am to 6 pm) / email: parallelcitiesdelhi(at)gmail.com) OR
register on the spot 15 minutes prior to the performance.
Note: Please carry a valid ID card to participate and arrive 15 minutes in advance. The audio piece for the performance is pre-recorded and in English
Partner: Pink Square Mall, Jaipur 
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Review 
Stefan Kaegi
Sagar Apartments, Tilak Marg, New Delhi 

On winter nights roofs become living spaces. Halfway between the distant street noise and the thick, urban-glow above, the audience meets somebody who spent his day in the city without seeing. Blind people orient themselves with the help of smells, the sounds of cars and the pavement's edge. What the audience has seen during the festival is reviewed and mapped onto the acoustic image of an invisible city. What remains in your memory?
Dates: 9 to 14 January 2013 
Time: 5:00, 6:30 and 8:00 pm
Duration: 60 minutes
Venue: Sagar Apartments, Tilak Marg, New Delhi 
Language: Hindi and English (5:00 pm in Hindi / 6:30 pm in English / 8:00 pm in Hindi)
Entry: By registration only. 
(For registration call: +91 +919582297249 (from 10 am to 6 pm) / email: parallelcitiesdelhi(at)gmail.com) Partner: RK Global
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Partners
Local partners:
Bharat Rang Mahotsav XV
Goethe Institut Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi
Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council, New Delhi
Global partners:
HAU Berlin
Kulturstiftung des Bundes
Zürich Schauspielhaus, Zürich
Teatr Nowy 
Goethe-Institute Warschau 
Goethe Institut Buenos Aires 
Pro Helvetia - Swiss Art Council, Zürich

Venue partners:
National Archives of India Library, New Delhi 
National School of Drama, New Delhi 
Select CITYWALK, New Delhi
RK Global 
Pink Square Mall, Jaipur
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Registration Information:
Free registration passes available at NSD from 7 January 2013 onwards. 
For registration enquries call: +91 +919582297249 (from 10 am to 6 pm) / email: parallelcitiesdelhi(at)gmail.com
Parallel Cities is a coproduction between HAU Berlin and Schauspielhaus Zürich, in collaboration with Goethe-Institute Warschau, Teatr Nowy and the foundation of Teatr Nowy. Commissioned by Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council and Goethe Institut Buenos Aires.
www.ciudadesparalelas.com 

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