“You’d be surprised as to how common most of everyone’s fears and dreams are,” Deb shares. “We are so contained within ourselves that we don’t see what really brings us together…and I’m trying to bring that out through the installation.”

Connecting through secrets

Co-presented by Indian Summer Festival and Boca del Lupo’s Micro Performance Series, Tell Me features audio recordings voluntarily submitted by the public. Deb has put out a call for audio files responding to four prompts: “Tell me your dreams,” “Tell me your fears,” “Tell me what brings you tears” and “Tell me your secrets.”

“Most of it is very relevant to current times,” the artist shares. “A lot of people are not talking about fears for themselves, but more about their family, about losing someone or being alone.”

The call for audio files allowed volunteers to submit recordings in any language – an intentional choice that reflects Deb’s roots in India. The experience of hearing ten different languages just by walking on the streets of Mumbai has stuck with the artist.

“You don’t have to understand what someone else is saying, just the act of listening will bring you close to someone,” she shares. “I feel language is very political in a lot of ways. And to sit through and still listen, even though you don’t understand, but are trying to comprehend, makes a big difference.”

For Deb, the audience is the director of this experience. It is their responses to the exhibit’s visual cues that decide how the experience unfolds. Participants will enter the exhibit alone and speak into a mic responding to visual cues projected on a screen. The visual cues are the same as the prompts for audio recordings, creating a conversation between strangers.

“I have a corpus of 100 secrets and based on what you speak and how you speak, the voice is analyzed,” she explains. “And that triggers the audio bank to spit out stories of the participants from before.”

Returning to conversations

The roots for Tell Me first transpired in 2023, as part of Deb’s art studies at the University of Montréal. Her research focused on examining the relationship between people, public and space.

“[My research was] trying to figure out how do you create a space? And what makes a space?” she shares. “And if conversations could serve as a medium to build a space.”

This work culminated into the interactive exhibit, Dis-Moi, which premiered in Montréal as Deb’s graduation project. Designed with Montréal’s inhabitants in mind, Dis-Moi resembled “a confessional system” – one that is reminiscent of the city’s historic relationship with the church.

“It was very, very catered to the metaphor of a confessional,” the artist recalls of Dis-Moi. “Confessionals felt like a very interesting space in terms of it being a public, yet private space.”

For Deb, the core principles of the installation have remained the same: it focuses on community building through conversations. The exhibit’s aesthetics, however, has developed. It now focuses on “secrets” – a bonding mechanism between people that highlights their shared humanity.

“Spoken word has a lot of value to it, and if that can be translated in their daily life, I think I would have done some good job with my project,” she shares. “Being able to make some conversation with genuineness – that holds a lot of weight in terms of forming anything and anywhere.”

Audio submissions for Tell Me will be welcomed until July 1. Indian Summer Festival returns July 4 to 13, showcasing South Asian arts and artists through the theme of “Borderless Solidarities.”

To contribute to Tell Me’s audio corpus, see https://form.jotform.com/251376788858277

For more information on Anamika Deb, see www.debstudio.co

For more information on Indian Summer Festival, see www.indiansummerfest.ca