I really don't know what to make out of my defense. Over the 45 minute conversation between myself, Keller and Eeva, the thesis seemed to be just be another piece of work that was to be finished and submitted to the the School of Architecture. You may rightfully judge the above statements as dry. But I really dont know what was dry - the overall thesis, the panel comments, my mood or in general the environment of the space in which it took place.
I reached fifteen minutes early to the space I scheduled my thesis and organized the messy room - aligned the chairs to the edges of the table in the center, pushed the extra ones to the walls of the room. I took out my laptop and kept it on the table, opened my thesis pdf, pulled out my notebook with a pencil and kept it besides the laptop. I set up the entire space perhaps like how Frank Lloyd Wright would! I imagined first to be-seat myself on one of the side chairs, but then changed it to sitting at the head of the setting. I was hoping that Keller and Eeva would occupy the immediate seats on the the sides of the table.
"Are you going to present something on the screen?" Keller entered and exclaimed sensing the formal set up of the class. I immediately cleared that there was no presentation I aimed to give. She occupied a seat two spaces away from mine. And while we waited for Eeva, I asked Keller if my thesis was too late a submission. I had just handed over my final draft to both my readers merely 5 days before the defense today. She replied in a negative, and quipped that she reserves all her readings to her Metro North train journeys between New York and New Haven. To this, I added how mobility always makes wander, pulling my eyes to the passing landscapes outside the train window. I told her how I am never able to do any readings while traveling on trains. Keller had an interesting point to make on this. She pointed how the windows of metro north were awkwardly high - in her rhetoric she meant how they did not make watching the 'outside' a pleasant experience. I was immediately drawn to compare the experience to my train travels in Mumbai. I told her how the windows of suburban trains in Mumbai were low, and that you could rest your elbow against its broad edge. Adding to this, I mentioned how windows of trains in Mumbai were openable, unlike the Metro North that were fixed due to the air conditioned coaches...
And Eeva arrived on exactly this statement, suffusing our dialogue. "I am sorry to keep you waiting..." - she said. And grabbed the seat right opposite to Keller on the other edge of the table. Both, Keller and Eeva where thus three spaces away from me. I could see their faces above the opened flap of my laptop screen. In making a short personal conversation, Eeva mentioned to Keller about some presentation by a colleague to be made on Friday, and they went over it briefly until she realized that she was there for my defense. She sweetly apologized, and Keller briefed up the small talk for me by giving it a preface. It was hardly required since I was not into their conversation at all, and Keller's summary made no sense to me. I smiled and nodded in ignorance.
"So it has been a long journey, and the way we do it is we ask you to summarize how you went about your project, and then we can go over our comments," Eeva stated. I was to go over a journey of two years, briefly and open the conversation to the readers. I find the brief summaries annoying personally - I feel I am never convinced with them since I curate the narratives differently each time for a different audience. I always read multiple themes in my past, and I am never sure which theme makes the most sense in what situation. I rambled thus, something that I had not prepared for. I mentioned how the material was collected over the first two semesters, and was strung together into a larger theme by the third semester. The fourth semester was more about settling and consolidating the work. In mentioning the limitations of the project, I said that the format of the book was constraining and that it made the research very linear. I would have liked to rework, or take up the project of the design of the book itself which makes multiple connections and becomes more interactive. I suggested that I thus wanted to operationalize the object of writing itself. I also added that I would rather have this work as an exhibition, where the spatial layout of the contents of this work could create more amorphous and rhizomatic connections with each other.
It was here that I decided to stop and pass over the dialogue to the panel. Keller was the first to respond, since she was the reader for my thesis. She went on to say that the way of the first-person voice developed over the entire project was interesting, and that it compelled her to look at Mumbai as my reading, through my eyes. It was certainly a story that was specific to me. She mentioned that I inserted myself in the narrative in very strategic ways, and made the thesis read as "this is not a proof," rather my own journey through the material. She brought out that such a strategy helped me to question myself, the tone of not being sure added to the reception of the work as a journey. In terms of the content, she mentioned that the 4 terms (ref. the 4 chapters themes) that took for analysis 4 different kinds of artifacts for research (namely publications, people, films and buildings) respectively, she understood the first two, but wasn't clear of the last two. The last chapter "leakages" did not mention clearly what exactly leaked, and how. She brought up the concept of Masala (from my film chapter, referring to the masala film) - a concept that occurred to me quite late to explore in its totality for the built environment. I was glad she mentioned that the conclusion could have reflected, rather should have reflected the constitution of itself for the built environment. In this line of thought of the undetailed concept, she said that the conclusion almost fell flat. Where she expected more things to come out of the conclusion, she felt as if it was almost written by someone else. I would go on to agree with her.
She pointed that the theory of hybridity that I was proposing kept on polarizing the image transfer into east and the west, to an extent that she felt irritated. She mentioned how the thesis introduces a multitude of players and is not limited to transfer of images from the west to the east, rather a more nuanced borrowing. She mentioned that in her reading of the thesis, after a point, she said - "Stop using that word" - hinting that it was not just about the West...Lastly, she added that in this light, there was not a "systematic" way of reading hybridity that I had discovered through the thesis, which I claim in the conclusion, rather, I had found a certain kind of instrumentality in some words that allowed me to engage with the hybrid built environment. "'Systemic' is a very different thing" she said...
Eeva took the conversation forward in highlighting certain things about the writing. She found that there were certain things about the pace of writing that kept varying along the reading. There were some aspects which successfully created a vivid image of the place I was talking about, but at certain places, it didnot work, in that, they were a bit detached from the visual. On the other hand, the feel of "processing" or "looking" - the inquisitiveness of certain portions of the thesis should shine in the introduction too, she felt. Eeva had made elaborate comments on the document which she was happy to hand me over afterwards. I had anticipated a lot of comments that Eeva had for my work - one of them also being how it would have made a successful reading if the reader did not need to make any reference to the images that appeared at the end of the thesis while reading the text that was in organized devoid of images in the first half (this format was as specified in the M.E.D. reader).
I mentioned that the observation was legitimate, and it reflected the fact that I was not able to visit the field over the last two years, which would have allowed me to make closer observations. A lot of these observations were restricted to merely the photographs, and you can only explain that much with the photographs, unless they are strategically taken. In that, I mentioned how I had to put in so much extra effort in explaining to my family who were helping me source pictures of buildings that I was talking about. For what they considered almost everyday, was something novel for me... and this communication lag in itself was a signifier of how the hybridity in the built environment has become so pervasive that people hardly questioned it. Perhaps, as the thesis suggests, this is what brings out the willingness of people to mould their identities.
Keller accepted, and encouraged me to take the concept of 'masala' ahead. She told me to make a case why this is the way we should be looking at the built environment and how it gives these buildings another status. It was quite an interesting way to think about sharpening the thesis.
On the other hand, Eeva brought out that there is a lot of anecdotal material that I bring into the thesis - be it a conversation with a family member, teacher, professor or even Charles Correa! The anecdotes, she said, were a powerful instrument used throughout the thesis, and underlines the random nature of the built environment. "As if the buildings were predetermined to happen that way..." she said in clarifying her point. The cast of characters bring out the inconclusive nature of the thesis, a certain kind of invocation. And thus the discussion went on, where Eeva pointed out an exhibition "Transformations in Modern Architecture" that took place in MoMA in 1975 - which she felt did something similar to what my thesis attempted to do.
After pointing out a bit more fine issues, I was asked to leave the room briefly and close the door so that they could decide about the evaluation of my work. I left the room and was called back in five minutes. Eeva announced that the work was acceptable, and that I was passed. Although she asked me to work on comments she had put on my thesis, and that I had enough time to rework the conclusion.
I am not good at concluding things - and they always open up more things than I originally thought of. These themes frame my view of my work, and I will need to find a way to push it in the thesis this time, for I have substantial time to discuss again with Eeva and get it sorted...
And as I began to leave the room, I overheard Eeva confirming to Keller: "Did you hear that Arjun Appadurai's wife passed away?" Keller perhaps nodded, to which I didnot pay heed. Although this is by no means a way to end this post or even bring up this news of someone else's misfortune, and I must state that I am merely stating, I think it was interesting. It left me wondering what meaning to make out of it, for my thesis was based on Appadurai's theory of globalization...
I quietly stepped out of the room to (re)enter my own numbness...
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The grammatical fallacies of this text have last been improvised on 2nd May 2014. These would keep happening on every subsequent reading, a habit induced by the two year training in writing through the MED program.
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