In this double channel video work, shot in Abidi's quintessential style that hovers between fact and fiction, “Reserved” explores the absurdity of official routine. An entire city comes to a halt in expectation of the arrival of a state dignitary. Projected on adjoining screens, we witness minor rehearsals of state power—children waving paper flags, an auditorium filling up around seats reserved for VIPs and people anxiously awaiting a red carpet arrival—play out on one side, while the spectacle of the motorcade takes place on the other. The title refers to front rows in auditoriums which are always reserved for VIP's. The video however, explores those who are excluded from these spaces of privilege. Included in this work are everyday characters such as policemen managing traffic, a street vendor selling balloons and the state dignitary himself, who is never seen but whose looming presence is always felt in the form of his speeding motorcade. Over time, the reception committee gets more anxious and the people waiting in the street grow more impatient. The traffic jam becomes an allegory for many types of waiting, and the closed streets and heaving metropolis become a source of spectacle and frustration. Waiting becomes a major feature in how we experience power. Drawing upon her own memories of growing up in Karachi, Abidi reveals the universality of the banal, yet life halting senselessness of power.