Iddddd (2023)
Iddddd (2023) is an installation and performance in which the artist and four dancers attempt pickpocketing techniques on unsuspecting museum visitors. However, instead of stealing, they discreetly “gift” an object. The work turns theft into a delayed, uncertain encounter: visitors may only realise later, while checking a pocket or bag, that they have been drawn into an act of intimacy. At its most precarious, the action results in a performer being caught; trained by a viral TikTok logic of de-escalation, they look into the visitor’s eyes, dance, or say, “I’m just trying to make a living.”
A scenography of works spreads this action through a busy transitional museum space, creating isolated pockets in which attention is diverted by passers-by and a catchy Hindi music video. Five acetate etchings on the back wall of a glass elevator mimic grocery-store wanted posters, showing security images of the performers alongside their sex and race. Above them, a bright LED screen resembling a train-station information display loops a Hindi tune about love and trust. At unpredictable moments it freezes on “ATTENTION,” while a disembodied voice calls “attenzione” and “gifters”.
The work draws on a viral Italian meme of a far-right-associated woman who “warns” Venice tourists about pickpockets. Disassembled machinery, acting as a “fence” for the gifters, dispenses a facsimile of a University of Dhaka identification card for Dr Shahidul Zaman. A mystery. Multiple cameras surveil the performers as they prowl, offering glimpses. In Iddddd, surveillance, vulnerability and performance unsettle the line between social contact and violation: the political battle may be dismantled, but the war over intimacy has not.