1134- Numbers not Lives

It is said the poorest, the weakest pay the price. In the morning of 24 April 2013 the huge garments factory collapse proved the saying word by word leaving around 1136 people dead and couple of hundreds badly injured and even 127 totally lost under the rubble.

The capital city of Bangladesh and the adjacent areas are full of garment factories like mushrooms. Since 1980 village girls start to come to Dhaka to earn their livings. Their biggest dream of life is to meet the bare necessities of lives. This doesn’t match our biggest dream of reaching to one of the highest remittance earning countries or the sudden socio-political change by the presence of the rich garments owners.

This collapse was these fallen lives’ pointed fingers towards our collective ignorance and negligence and selfishness.

The performance came from the guilt of being the witness of turning humans into numbers. These lives are card numbers, salary numbers in life and DNA number after death.

At Pathshala rooftop in that afternoon among all our known unknown audiences I wanted to share this harsher reality where we are the witness of such big murder.

Pathshala South Asian Media Academy
22 April 2014
Mediums: Camphor, Rose Water, Kantha, Match Sticks, Blood Infuser, Human Blood, Tiffin Box, Body, Black Costume and Words
Duration 90 min
Photo: Atish Saha