“We are post-purity,” observes Arushi Vats, a Delhi-based writer and inaugural fellow of the Momus/Eyebeam Critical Writing Fellowship. Rooted in field research and expanded through poetics, Vat’s text Exit the Rehearsal: A Body in Delhi, published by Runway Journal, is a precise yet capacious meditation on our “epoch of waste”— ecocide, legacy waste, and the Anthropocene in which Vats suggests that what we waste is “highly proximate, right under your skin, in your gut, and there is something radical in accepting that this is a part of your lifecycle.” In this interview with Lauren Wetmore, Vats discusses building a text from both a bodily and civic curiosity, and why sometimes, when writing about culture, it is important to leave the artworks out.

Arushi Vats is a writer based in New Delhi, India. Her essays have been published on online platforms such as Alternative South Asia Photography Connect (Asap Art), London School of Economics’s Department of International History, Critical Collective, Scroll.in, Mint, and The Quint. Additionally, she has authored curatorial notes for Galerie Mirchandani Steinruecke, Mumbai. Vats works as editorial manager at an arts foundation.

All our thanks to Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer), and thanks especially to Arushi Vats for her contribution to this season.

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