RIP Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid at Yale during 2013, talking of her works.


The World Beyond Ideas

The Hastings Hall was full, so we had to move to the overflow area. I still remember - people queued up for long, and many still didn't manage to get a seat. Her talk was defiant, plain and direct. She kept flipping through her works without delving much into their process. It was all about the "experience" - leaving the audience with the potential of what architecture can achieve, as she says, beyond ideas.

A colleague from Yale once discussed, "I think she is depressed"
I asked, "really?"
She said, "Don't you think so?"

I felt it was an interesting proposition. Zaha was exceptionally different. When she moved around the studios at Yale, even the air around her would be under her command, but as if, she has made private friends with her own environment. From a distance, she seemed warm but guarded. Perhaps, it came from her own history - her being an iraqi woman architect. All these three identities constructed her into a distinct figure.

Anyway, I am glad I was able to see and hear her in person. It is always inspiring to see confident and famous people talk. You know the environment they command and create. And you also know how it makes you feel, and how you would want the world to feel around you.

Understanding Goa

It has been a month now since we visited Goa. This post may be quite late. It has become difficult to think of what exactly to write of trips? Unlike what popularly is perceived of people to do in Goa, our study trip to Goa with a group of 40 architecture students was very different. The trip looked at documenting traditional as well as contemporary architecture of Goa - panning a good radius of the geography. 

Unlike relaxing at beaches, indulging in pleasure or spending laid back afternoons, the 10 days of the tour were spent in rigorous work - shuttling from one site to another in the eight sites found after some amount of handwork. Divided into groups of five to ten, students split themselves to document buildings designed or otherwise. We were fortunate to have gained access to some excellent contemporary works including those of Dean D’cruz and Ini Chatterjee, along with Charles Correa. Much of this work can not be published due to reasons of privacy.

In the first two days, Rupali and I, along with Rutu made some surveys of the place, in order to choose the final list of buildings that can be considered for documentation. Goa is not a place that can be easily travelled through public transport. It is expensive to shuttle distances in rickshaws, and buses are quite infrequent. Bikes are a good way to move around, however, if you aren’t aware of the skill, you may be left with only expensive options. Thus most people have their own private means of transport.

One thing that I constantly remained confused of throughout my travel is about differentiating between the Mandovi river and the Arabian Sea. I wasn’t able to figure when were we facing the river versus the sea. The relationship of land to the water is not lost most of the time, however, as one goes to the interiors, the landscape is taken over by fields and greens. 

The experience of time in Goa is quite different. People respond slow, and work only enough to keep themselves in pleasure. Restaurants open late for the evenings, and may be happy to shun you off if you have arrived early. Postponing scheduled things is not considered unprofessional! Such is the work life in Goa!

The only artist Goa knows of perhaps in Mario Miranda. You will find Miranda sketches everywhere - in shops, museums, forts, marketplaces, book stores and so on. This is not to say that Miranda does not pick the pulse of the place in his work. His cartoons capture the spirit of the place quite sharply. I wasn’t able to see any thing else artistic that could speak of the culture of Goa. 

One of my biggest drawbacks was my vegetarianism. I wasn’t able to indulge in sea food at all. As Pankaj (Joshi) said - Goans don’t know how to cook vegetarian food! I wondered if this was the reason I enjoyed Goa less then everyone else. In one of the conversations, I ended up admitting that I couldn’t see myself in Goa for long - where everyone else was planning to retire here! 

The Goa Library, from where the images have been shared in this post, was quite informative. It was very encouraging to see a modern state of the art library facility in Goa. We browsed through books, periodicals, manuscripts, maps in an excellent environment. While the building wasn’t impressive, it was quite functional and spacious. It offered good environment for quiet study and engaged research. Looking at the collection, I was reminded once again of the libraries at Yale, and the way in which such environments foster writing and reading. 

The book I took photograph of records the physical, environmental and urban aspects of Goa. The sheer simplicity of talking about what existed and what transformed in this place helped me orient to two thing - first Goa as a place; and secondly to the age old benevolent form of reportage. I think just putting down all facts as they are for others to interpret and avail for a further analysis is a noble task. It creates a landscape within which more discussions can be inscribed. I like this idea of putting information together. I present here some bits of this data, spoken about with much care and effort.

Remaining stories of Goa when time comes!

The Practice of Learning

Every Friday at SEA, we hold an "Assembly" where we discuss current issues with the entire school. The topic is generally chosen a week in advance and two or more people are appointed to frame the context of the discussion. Often, readings are circulated - including articles, news, essays or other material in public domain. Students are expected to participate and respond to the issue at hand. Yesterday, we were to discuss Dr. B R Ambedkar's "Annihilation of Caste", written as a paper in 1944, however never presented. Students were not prepared (much like always), for they had not read the book or looked topically upon the subject. The dissatisfaction of the faculty rose to an extent that it ended up in setting up rules for compulsory readings as well as summary-writing for everyone, per week, for a session that was otherwise more voluntary and discursive in nature.

Pro-active students opposed, and debated the imposition. These were also students who were more attuned to current political affairs, were good in verbal and written expression, well trained in English. Amidst a gathering of about 80 students, the number of these students could be counted on fingertips. It was strange to see these students talking for the rest, loud and clear, while others seemed to have already submitted to both - either the opinion of their vocal counterparts or to the faculty who had just announced a strong imposition. Their eyes down, faces with blank expression or even the self imposed silence was worth observation.

Let me make the situation more vivid - the faculty's intrusion of this silence didn't seem appropriate, for it made him more and more agitated. Struggling to understand and at the same time remain with the students' restraint, he kept making allegations and suggestions: "Why don't you all read? Can you not read 20 pages in a week? You can certainly write 5000 words in 10 days. You people do not have any capacity to sit for one hour in a place and read. Do you realise that you all can not read any thing beyond fiction? (shouting) You have to make it a practice to read..."

Perhaps the students did not register the essence of any of his questions. Instead, the faculty's rising voice, as well as temper created an environment of intimidation. It did not allow the students to reflect and speak out, but silenced them further. Rather, his laments were received as instructions - "you have to read, you have to write, you have to increase your stamina to absorb..." Any rebuttal or attempt to argue personal difficulties by the student would have been engulfed in his anger and thrown back at him/her. It happened - when the so called vocal group refuted to the idea of writing, they faced strong back lash. Eventually the faculty realised this perhaps, and in wanting to cool down, began to divert the discussion into a more productive one - engaging the students in the kind of topics they would indeed like to discuss over the coming 10 weeks, ascertaining students who would head the seminars for SEA Assemblies.

Yet, I had an intrusion within the above drama - much earlier, trying to open up a dialogue (otherwise SEA Assemblies turn out to be monologues, with only the faculty speaking). I strongly believe that one can not begin to absorb instructions unless a prior experience has deeply affected, influenced and motivated a certain necessity for one to open oneself up to a particular kind of knowledge.  For example, unless one has personally experienced discrimination of any kind (body, gender, caste, class, etc.), he/she may not be able to relate to the discussion on minority politics or other-ing. Unless one has faced adversity, one may not realise how deeply economics is related to one's outlook (socio-economics) of everyday actions. Most middle class students, like I was, are fairly insular to these debates. They are socio-culturally trained and coated in a thick layer of perceived moral values which become the default mechanisms through which they rationalise actions in their life. Ready social acceptance of such acts within their own circles reinforces their conviction in these values, and prevent them from either interrogating the validity of their ways of seeing, or even allowing them to step in another's shoes to look the situation differently. There are no stakes involved, and such kind of moral coding also sets up their (unquestioned) ambitions - fairly linear with narrow ideas of a "successful" life.

While I would like to keep the frustration with the narrow moralities of the middle class lingering at the background of this writing (and not keeping myself out of this category, but looking at it from a skeptical lens), I would go back to the classroom, to put myself in the shoes of these 18/19-year olds by diving back into my own history.

I have to confess that I am still not very well versed with history, politics or political history. I was just a bit more averse and worse to these subjects when I was 18 myself. I had no idea about the world, no interest in global politics, no awareness about everyday happenings in the country or city. I could not stand news channels - for me they were monotonous speeches which I could not take in. I would listen to them with a deaf ear. I could register nothing, for I had no background of history to pose it against. Further, I wasn't able to relate to it and make it amenable for my own life in any way. I would ponder, for instance - How was the news affecting me? How was I a participant in the global affairs? What could I have possibly done for the world? Am I even important? These questions, in hindsight, had dual tendencies - on one hand, they repelled me from engaging in current affairs, but on the other hand, they kept getting stronger in opposition to what was going on around me - I was constructing a giant wall (of questions).

The fear of being ridiculed on my unawareness of basic facts kept me back from discussing my personal ambiguities with any one else - precisely that what can I do for the world? The question of one's relationship to the world (one's  "immediate" environment) is a deep one - for one is constantly trying to find methods to interpret, engage and connect to reality around them. However, instead of enabling learners with methods, questions like the above are often posed with more rhetorics. To look at my own situation back then might help relating to the students here (for they seem to have gone through the same education system). As a sufficiently bright student, I couldn't retain facts in my head for nuts. I couldn't remember capitals of countries, geographies of countries, leaders of the world, years in which events occurred, and so on. If one told me poetries and metaphors, I could build ideas upon them; but facts seemed utterly useless - they did not have any potential expandability, they did not offer any food for thought. Rather, one had to mobilise facts to make them useful. My inability to throw facts within a given discussion kept be back from even participating in any. I had not lived the facts in the first place, and since I had not experienced them, I wasn't ever able to trust their validity. After all, it wasn't as if history just had facts, but also that facts themselves had histories.

Memorising facts, or even concepts in the manner of facts (think of how we were taught Newton's laws of motion, or Einstein's laws of relativity, or theorems in mathematics) seemed important. These would enable one to participate in discussions. I tried hard - but much like a weak bond, I could never retain facts and information in my head. Memorising is a method that I attribute to a middle class pedagogy. The thrust of such pedagogy is to prepare pupils for the purpose of passing examinations. In this view, to remember is almost sacred. But the logic of remembering is almost never elaborated or discussed.

History is not a science after all, although historiography is. But while the "rationality" of science can be experienced universally, the "causality" in history is an act of individual experience and interpretation. I clearly remember the extent to which teaching in my environment was focused on "how to memorise". We were prescribed several methods to memorise -- "speak loudly so that you can hear your own words", "write the answer 3 times - two times by copying and the third time without seeing it", "get up early in the morning and read when your mind is fresh", "focus in silence, two hours everyday, keep reading". These unsolicited (or sometimes asked) advices were constantly received from parents, elders, teachers, and every person who was apparently involved or concerned about education. However, the concern of education was easily and often lost to the idea of scoring more marks - for that's how you could prove "good" education. This is precisely what my childhood was like, and I tried all of the above methods of memorising blindly, for I wanted to be a good student. It helped topically and momentarily, but as time passed, all things painstakingly memorised were forgotten and left behind, just to create fresh mental space for new stock coming ahead.

In the process of memorising, emphasis was on digesting the answer, not savouring it. (Do you remember the Digests you read from in school days?). Education unfortunately has been made functional by our system, moreso by our teachers. But in this process, what I had almost lost was my love for language. Years of practising memorising techniques had failed me in language - both English, Hindi and my mother tongue, for it was about knowing the arrangement of words and not their meaning...I couldn't ever connect to history because there were far too many conceptual terms that I could never go beyond. Terms like "reform", "revolution", "renaissance", "movement" - and hundreds - those that I had only understood in the context of science, did not make any sense in history. In addition, remembering names, dates, events and places took a toll on me. After all, I had no historical experience of any of them...I couldn't have articulated this problem back then, and even if I did, I wouldn't have possibly bothered to ask anyone - I don't think I related in an intellectual way to any one in my childhood (if one was to accept that there is an intellectual in the young mind). Since the emphasis was on how much the mind could retain, the method one adopted was mugging up. If one didn't mug up, one couldn't champion the normative social discussions, or the race for being a "good student".

However, that language could play an important role in deciphering knowledge was never acknowledged or even understood. I often accepted words without getting deeper into their meaning, usage or etymology. When I had nothing to associate the words (and their meanings) to my everyday life, I would just remember them as new words. I would refer to the dictionary, but it was a cumbersome affair, and interrupted far too much in the flow of reading or learning. I still could not situate a word in the context of the paragraph. Sometimes, I also associated a deviated charge to the word's actual meaning. I carried this on until much later when I was introduced to a book on vocabulary (Word Power Made Easy, by Norman Lewis) by my cousin, who identified my leanings to writing. It was this book that initiated in me a slow process of revisiting my entire education. While I moved forward with vocabulary and word-building, I kept going backward to reclaim all my time and knowledge lost in mugging up some of the most beautiful concepts, writings and ideas in humanity.

Yet, I was not prepared to take in history and politics because they seemed to be embroiled within each other so strongly that I felt intimidated. One had to know so much more to understand a single ongoing act of politics. To an extent, I was losing patience in going through tons of information. Every act had a long history, every history was deeply entrenched in ideologies and every ideology had several perspectives. This multiplicity of history, yet again was interesting, but kept me from sharpening my focus and thereby my position for any event at hand. It took great amount of  courage to fight the world who judged me (and perhaps still do) for not knowing a lot of things (facts/ideas/concepts). Such judgements can be demoralising and discouraging, but one has to still put in effort to be able to make it relevant for oneself, after which one is ready to have one's own reading of history.

I pulled this conversations back to history because we were talking about "Annihilation of Caste" - the designated reading that spurred this post. I am not sure if we are going to talk about it any longer. I read through the first few pages of the book which archives the undelivered lecture. It is interesting to read several succeeding prefaces by Ambedkar himself, emphasizing upon the multiple times the book has been published after its first print. Also, it was extremely fascinating to go through the letters that Ambedkar exchanged with the organizing committee - the inclusion of those letters conveyed a certain kind of immediacy, and made the reading more engaging and involving. I couldn't read through it further because of lack of time, but it is surely going to be on my reading list soon.

I would now like to divert this discussion to some points that this writing (which I have been writing over two days) made me think this morning. In writing the details of this incident, I have opened up to myself the self-initiated enterprise of learning. It is important to identify the processes and the methods in which one is able to learn, rather teach oneself. The question of "how do I learn" is an important one to ask. The emphasis on the 'I' is to draw attention to the subjectivities involved in the process of learning. Not that no one knows about it. But perhaps this aspect often slips off our mind. Moreso, in mass education, these subjectivities of learning are bound to be overlooked, hence lost.

Self-learning can reclaim the pleasure of savouring education. Self-learning involves much effort in identifying one's peculiar methods of accessing knowledge. Learning is thus a practice that one has to constantly undertake. The practice of learning shall open oneself to one's own interests, desires and disposition. This may help in constructing more confident and secure individuals, contrary to the ones that mass education systems produces.


(Perhaps the last two paragraphs are not exactly the way I wanted to bend this discussion. However, I will take the liberty of this blog as an experimental writing space to let out this work in public domain, and perhaps get more feedback to prepare a refined discussion)

Untitled

Have you every imagined how freesprited little children are? They do not have any biases, fears, inhibitions. They are confident, in taking their actions. Undisturbed by the impositions of right or wrong, they are assertive in most things they do. Little things make them happy. They find ways of keeping themselves engaged and busy in the world. The entire world is, for them. And the entire world for them is something to be engaged with, amenable and understandable like a toy. It is to taste, hear and smell, feel, see and play!

We kill it all in bringing them up - all sense of freedom, confidence, liberty, free thinking, curiosity - almost everything. Constantly subjecting them to fit the social codes of moral, behaviour, gender, sexuality, hierarchy, and everything controls being alive. We trap it, and then ask these very grown ups to fight for it. It's a shame.

I have many examples to demonstrate - those from my own family, things that I encounter everyday. Thoughts that are extremely sexist, conservative, bigoted - words from a family that thinks that it is progressive. The more I live in my home, the more I cringe - it is not the place. It is no longer my place.

Family is a disastrous institution - one that is busily knitting a trap, filtering all kinds of true expression, unwilling to accept dissent (seen as disrespect) and forever offering you an illusion of security. This security makes you weaker day by day, unfit to face the real world independently, failing you within a nest of bourgeoisie moral standards that prevent you from looking a world beyond the individual needs. The ambitions of a middle class family are so narrow that they may suffocate you for dreaming grand.

Yet they take pride in your so called ambition, the moral high order you set for yourself. A family in the contemporary conservative india is a failed institution. It produces babies and detaches it from all the values one is born with - those that essentially define one's ego. Those that need to be respected in an individual, those that make one an "individual". The family demands to fit into the social order, consume and succumb to a hierarchy. It kills babies, by killing its values. They dont bring up individuals, they kill them. They kill them to produce social robots - those that will forever feed into the never ending insecurities of their very own survival - survival of the body, their stinking morals and their long bygone outdated ethics.

If Heart was a Place

The last set of SEA interviews for its management seats were conducted through a drawing test, where applicants were asked to submit a drawing of a "Secret Space". While some attempted to draw physical spaces, many attempted to submit ideas more imaginative. To our surprise, more than 40% of the applicants submitted drawings of heart and the brain as secret spaces.

The "heart" as a secret space manifested in multiple forms. Two of the most dominant expressions were in the ideographic and the scientific drawing showing biological details of the pumping organ. Both such representations, essentially abstract, were seen as spaces, more specifically, places (for candidates spoke of them to be their own hearts). However, instead of the organ being inside us, this time humans were introduced within the organ - within the leaf-like boundary, or the arteries and veins of the heart. Both such drawing types suggested a navigation towards finding the secret space.

The "secret" found dimension in the supposition of heart as an irrational, unreasonable organ. Secrets are kept because they may not find acceptance within the normative everyday. While legitimate to oneself, secrets struggle to find place outside the self and hence remain close to the heart. The heart was clearly posed against the brain, represented as a maze (coinciding with its biological representation), or a fortress or closed and complicated entity. Nevertheless, one wonders how the imagination of heart as a place, as if it holds, contains, receives emotions became available so easily.


The Heart and The Secret

It is clear the the popular media became the agency to  manifest the keywords "secret" and "space" together into the figure of the heart. After all, numerous Bollywood songs articulating expressions of love and emotion use heart as an recurring ingredient. Song like "Zara si dil mein de jagah tu", "kabhi kahi mere dil mein khayaal aata hai", "dil ke jharokhe mein tujhko bithaakar" or those using phrases like "dil ki girah", "dil ki tijori", "dil ki khidki", "dil ka darwaza", "dil mein mere" -- and the numerous eternalized compositions clearly became an easy material for candidates to dwell upon for their drawings. Some of the above phrases frequently used in hindi songs clearly equate "dil" (heart) as "jagah" (place). Others songs imagine the heart as a space too in more metaphorical ways, within which you can call, allow, bring, host, rest or keep some one. The heart is even personified to experience emotions, feel situations and so on. Further, it also is understood as an assemblage of architectural elements like doors, windows, etc. that encapsulate a space.

That the heart is a "tijori" (locker), or parts of it can be closed "khidki" (window), "Darwaza" (door) hint at its domestic nature. It is clearly imagined as an entity that is more personal. It is here that the idea of secret manifests within the space of the heart. In their explanations, for applicants, the immediate categorisation  was the mood of the drawing to be happy or sad. This also concluded in the fact that such emotions are often to be kept to oneself - further that being sad is not a socially accepted emotion, that one (must) like to be alone when sad, and those feelings are only known by the heart...Such belief is sufficient to firmly link the heart with secret. And we now know clearly how the heart becomes a mediating diagram for secret space. If that is not enough, even some of the hindu deities are popularly depicted as such. The picture of Hanuman with Ram (and sometimes Sita) seen in his heart are quite accessible.


The Importance of Heart

Perhaps for the living body, heart is the force of life - it pulsates the body with rhythm and thus a sensation. It is the organ that physically makes us experience the life wave from within. In some sense, it orients the disposition for experiencing a phenomenon. In such perspective, the heart creates an environment. It prepares the condition for registering an event around us. However, does it itself become one?

In several media theories, the heart could probably become a conduit of emotions. Philosopher Marshall McLuhan in his sociological understanding of "hot" and "cold" media says that any media that signals out more data or information creates a sense of excitement and anxiousness which makes our heartbeat go faster, hence increasing the temperatures of our body. Such information is understood as "hot" (think of hot news, more popularly, news that sells like "hot cakes"). On the other hand media that slows down processes and takes you closer to observe your own sensation, in a phenomenological sense is "cold" - implied in the way in which your body eases out, relaxes due to the pacifying heart (eg. trans music, slow silent songs, etc.). Not only information, but even people in the way they respond, create space and operate are classified as hot or cold using similar analogy. If information is brought into consciousness (as well as expressed eventually) through the body though the vehicle of the heart, then it becomes a legitimate entity that even defines people and their characters. In such a scenario, we do reside within our hearts!

Plato, in expounding upon his theory of love emphasizes upon the feeling of "lack" of something, where the individual attempts to complete it. Once again, if the heart is assumed to mediate this lack, it becomes the container for love, fullness and well being. Culturally, the heart has remained an important part of folk tales, folk songs and expressions.


The Heart in Architectural Imagination
The Location of Heart

For many modern architects and planners, the biological understanding of the body became a framework through which cities could be imagined and designed. Corbusier, in planning Chandigarh, thought of placing different functions within the city through an idea of the body. The green spaces became lungs, the secretariat and high court became the brain (hence head) - and so on. The position of the heart - in a city plan - held the symbolic as well as central position. Efficient circulation of people, like blood through the heart (and thus the body), was believed to be the essential factor for efficient cities.

On the other hand, places located in such central locations within regions often become nodes for primary development. Delhi, the capital of India is often referred to as the heart of the country. Co-incidentally, it is also located in the centre top - superimposing with the heart of the figure of Bharatmata. To cheesily add, Delhi is colloquially pronounced as "Dilli", and by-lined as "Dil-walon ki Dil-li" (Dil = Heart).

The "heart" of Mumbai has always kept shifting. Presently, Dharavi, one of the largest informal settlements in India (and South Asia) is considered to be the heart of the city. It has become a nodal region which connects the south and north of the city. It is also a key connector of the east and west of Mumbai. It's centrality is as crucial as the heart - to be dealt with careful and thoughtful understanding. Every country has a heart thus, and so does every city and smaller neighbourhoods. While most of the above explanations come from popular perception, I am sure these could be substantiated with deeper cultural and historical documentation.

I think this discussion has helped understand both, heart and place as metaphors - both inter-mutable, both that affect and inform each other. However, this is an instance where both become lived metaphors - one inside the other, and vice versa. There is a dialectic relationship between the heart and a place. The suggestion of considering heart as a place attempts a possibility of evading the physicality of surroundings. It invites to find one's home within oneself, instead of the outside. If heart was a place, however, we may want to investigate what is its ecology? How does one care for it, how does one keep it and how does one occupy it? These are questions pulled from the interplay between the metaphorical and literal understanding that emerged within the drawings of secret space. Perhaps the questions themselves frame the place of heart, which may take time to find reveal their secret expression through a more sustained inquiry.

Conversation over a Card

Dec 31, 2015

As you reflect upon the year that has gone by, here's wishing you lots of new experiences to come. 

Happy 2016. 

Anuj

--

Jan 1, 2016

Thank you. like the upside down image. The world is topsy turvy now.

Lazarre Simckes

--

Jan 1, 2016

Indeed so.

The beauty of your message is evident in its pun.

Like the upside down image, the world is topsy turvy now

and

(I) like the upside down image. (My/Our) world is topsy turvy now.

But in the spirit of your message, would you say, reflections turn the world upside down? And does the act of reflecting then turn the world upside down, topsy turvy, or into an illusion?

Should one be engaged in reflection then?

Anuj

--

Jan 1, 2016

Well said and asked. The trick is to live in our reflections.

Lazarre Simckes

--

Lazarre Simckes is an award winning playwright who housed me for a year during my stay at New Haven.

Learnings from 2015

Below is a growing list of quips, quotations, thoughts by my colleagues / engagements that made me think deeper about my own practice and work. One must post a feedback for more context around the statements.


What is your relationship with environment?
Prasad Shetty

We are a culture that learns by listening. Reading and writing doesn't work for us.
Archana Hande

You can not know everything. You need to know one thing so well, through which you can understand everything.
Ashok Sukumaran

In order to work with something, you have to assume a certain disappearance of something.
ie. you need to hide something in order to engage with that thing.
Ashok Sukumaran

Words are dangerous things. Sometimes more than the things themselves.
George Jose

Apple products make you value technology.
Kalpit Ashar

आई  काय असते ? फक्त  abstract  असते! नाही तर ती फक्त एक बाई असते!
What is a mother? Mother is abstract. Else she is just a woman.
Prasad Shetty

Do you change everyday? If you don't change, you should be put in a museum. (because) you are a relic!
Prasad Shetty

Innocence + Arrogance = Stupidity
Prasad Shetty

"Architect" has become a soft identity in the present times.
Madhusree Dutta

(But) Politics is not a bad thing (if used constructively).
Rohan Shivkumar

Pratap Morey at Tarq

measure | decipher
A Review

Mashed-up images of development trapped within webs of urban visions define geographies of Pratap Morey’s perspectival landscapes. Morey assumes the dual role of an architect and a surgeon in crafting the tumultuous landscape of Mumbai. He demonstrates in his works the nature in which erasure of old urban fabrics is brought about by simultaneous processes of imagination and operation - an imagination of the “clean” and “beautiful” often projected through perspectival visionary drawings by architects and developers on one hand, and the surgical “removal” of the old & “resurfacing” it by the new built form on the other. In doing so, the pinched protruding beast-like building forms on the flatly imagined cityscape almost announce an organized war, bulldozing and consuming the older neighbourhoods.

The tension between the old and the new is primary to all of Morey’s works. Metamorphosed photographs of emerging buildings seem to engulf the fragile outlined memories of older environments. In another series, a web of perspective fabric entraps hallucinations of perpetual construction activity. In yet another, scaffolds, reinforcements, unfinished framed structures inscribed within the ordered perspective create a fractal-like space, at once lending the ungraspable process a measurable dimension. Such overlaps reorient the coordinates of former living conditions.

One particular image within the polyptych, ‘Superimpose V’, is extremely poignant – it shows the outline of a man seated in his older space overlapped over an unfinished metamorphosed building skin. Within the logic of artist’s current work, the viewer is compelled to read the narrative of the replacement of the older domestic setting by new standardized spatial products. However, on another view, the outlined man seems to be trapped within the dilemma of the old and the new, literally as if the building-skin was a cage. Further, the man could also be working out his wilful transition into the new environment. It is the ‘wilful’ that finds little place within the heuristics of Morey’s works. The city seems to be an imposition within the antithetic vocabulary of black & white, order & disorder, drawing (unfinished) & photographs (finished), clean & busy, or on the other hand then & now, before & after. Narratives of several lives that inhabit the in between space of aspiration, creation and even appropriation of the ‘new’ and ways in which the city gets owned yet again shall lead to the loosening of Morey’s perspectives, perhaps resulting into an abstract sensuous medieval cartography. 

Landscape and the City

Landscape and the City
18^th December 2015

Concept Note

It may not be incorrect to say that all cities came to inhabit a landscape – a setting that was a given, a space that was to be tamed and a resource that was negotiated for productive purposes. The historical response of cities to their natural settings has undergone many shifts – influenced by the evolving social, political and economic forces. The relationship of a modern city (as a phenomenon) with (its) landscape is worth a close examination. Modern processes lent cities the confidence to reorient the course of nature and landscape. These “natural settings” were thought of as entities that could be reconfigured within the imposed logic of the city. Thus, cutting off hills, redirecting rivers, reclaiming waters, erasing forests, altering terrains and reimagining geography was merely an exercise in the process of city building. These aggressive moves were always looked upon as permanent solutions to immediate crisis.

Landscape’s centrality to growing urbanity has come to be realized and emphasized only in the recent past, triggered by the dissatisfaction in the environmental leveling that urban environment has attained with respect to its natural resources. In the case of Mumbai, this new leveling is seen in several scenarios – whether it be the leopards invading and attacking human settlements, the flooding of the city in 2005 rains, the changing patterns of fishing along the coasts, etc. It is clear that these events have brought to the forefront, time and again our carefree handling of the urban natural settings. We are at a juncture where several physical alterations are being imagined for Mumbai: the proposal of coastal road, the redevelopment of the Eastern waterfront to name a few. The discomfort with the present “equilibrium” has brought us to critically consider these new imaginations, this time, with landscape as priority.

The recent Chennai floods, or the not-so-old Sabarmati overflow hint to us that more or less, every city is now facing an environmental crisis that is embedded in the question of how cities have engaged with their landscapes. In other words, it may be possible to find some directions to reimagining urban life in considering questions interposed within the theme of “Landscape and the City”. This seminar aims to address the mediation of landscape by cities, and vice versa. In this exchange, we aim to contemplate what are the channels through which a landscape practice can be streamlined within city processes? What are the attitudes through which issues of the city can be approached through a landscape perspective? Further, how do we find methods in which such attitudes can be instilled within our everyday living? Through the individual expertise of our panelists, and their past engagements, we aim to gain an understanding about what challenges lie ahead of us if landscape was to become the primary framework through which we intervene within our cities.

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This post shall be detailed soon over later posts.

Poster Design: Anuj Daga

Shilpa Gupta & the Roundness of her works

presented at Colloquies, Art India
for Abhay Sardesai's curatorial theme
This city reminds me of another

Most of Shilpa’s works turn semiotic relationships imagined in objects upside down. The spinning doors never close, they perpetually keep opening. The microphone itself doesn’t speak much, but almost completes its story through the photograph. The electronic LED signage equivocally announces one’s east as another’s west. The fragmented queues queued together into a reel merely combine many people. The safety airplane straps don’t tie one down, they bind themselves into a ball that may freely roll on. This conceptual and often formally observed circularity that Shilpa employs in her works essentially emphasizes her dialectical method. It allows us, rather, pushes us to turn the questions back to the objects (and their materiality) that they would otherwise pose us.

The everyday of a city is phenomenologically experienced in its roundness. In its repetition, revolve and regularity, the urban environment embroils us within a structure of the round. (To be sure,) did I not do today, what I exactly did yesterday? Woke up by the alarm, swung the door and stepped out, queued up before the travel, walked the same journey along the shop-lines…and all again in reverse until I am back home? Shilpa’s works in fact seem to question this ritualistic roundness of city life by ceasing the objects from encrypting their performances within our bodies and lives. In her reconfigurations, she challenges the memories through which objects we encounter regularly end up driving us.

It is perhaps in this physical winding and the conceptual unwinding through which new spaces are perceived and habituated. The dialectical play constructed by these objects shift and slide us into multiple geographies, physical or mental, reminding us about our experiences in different places we may have been. While these phenomena and objects define the experience of most cities, the carefully configured rearrangements loop us into a process that triggers a comparison between one geography versus the other. It is through these instruments (apparatus) that one city reminds me of another.

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Shilpa's works:

http://www.shilpagupta.net/Public/Work/157/2652-1

http://shilpagupta.net/Public/Work/215/Untitled

http://www.shilpagupta.net/Public/Work/205/Untitled

http://www.shilpagupta.net/Public/Work/180/Untitled

http://www.shilpagupta.net/Public/Work/97/100-Queues

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Abhay Sardesai invited me to respond to Shilpa Gupta's work recently for an art event organized by Art India at Jindal Mansion. The program for the curatorial theme "This City Reminds me of Another" was jointly organized by the University of Warawick, UK and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. The event aimed to look at works of five different artists whose works intersects with the above theme. I was a respondent to contemporary Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta's work. Other artists amongst the presenters were Sudhir Patwardhan, Gieve Patel and Tushar Pandey. Hema Upadhyay who was also invited wasn't able to make it.

The event aimed to challenge the conventional setting of a panel discussion through which art often gets discussed. For yesterday's evening, Abhay interfused artists' works with poetries and structured responses. About two poetries and two respondents were put together with each artist's work. The respondents were from different backgrounds of art (Sahej Rahal), architecture (myself), anthropology (Rashmi Varma), literature (Brinda Bose), film (Anjali and Jayashankar Monteiro) and social sciences (Shekhar Krishnan). One got to listen to different views on the artist's works.

It was a treat, as always, to listen and observe the works of artists Sudhir Patwardhan and Gieve Patel, as much as Shilpa Gupta. Sudhir showed a series of paintings, and perhaps one of his new works trying to extract the idea of the "other" within the city. Showing his series of paintings on Ulhasnagar, he went on to say, "The city can surprise you in many ways". Showing images of everyday environments being taken over suddenly by new developments, the city brings to us a surprise. This change makes you experience otherness. Sudhir kept on bringing paralles betweenthe imagery of his work with different artists in other parts of the world. For example, his invocation of Edward Hopper's work, Canaletto "Grand Canal" in Venice, Andrea Mantegna - all attempted to reinforce the theme of the talk. The impressionistic frames of paintings made by him and the other artists pushed him to imagine that he was certainly thinking of other cities (through his experiences of images) while producing his own works. Sudhir's third proposition was that the city surprises you in "its projection of the future". All such aspects of change, surprise and projected imageries make us experience otherness within our own city. He said that the fear that this city (in which you live) could become another place, is another otherness that one experiences.

While Anjali and Jayshankar pointed out in their response that Sudhir's work is gentle and yet seen through a non-sentimental gaze and if one could propose that Sudhir is performing a "critical radiology" (Jayashankar's take through his knowledge of Sudhir as a doctor), Sahej brought out that there was no "cinematic time" in his images. It is that in-between time which most of us have seen the city in. It is the city which we all experience in between our commute, while traveling, moving. The light doesnot dramatize or change the space we see, rather places us within it in a critical way.

Gieve Patel presented his works exploring the "street as home". One of his works captured two men standing against a wall with a blue patch behind them. The patch, Gieve mentioned, was meant to show peeling paint. However, what he got interested in eventually is that the shape of the patch looked like a map. This juxtaposition of the two men against a map of "no-place" gave another dimension to the thematic of the evening. Gieve showed his famous "Letter back home" speaking of the labour from Andhra who during those days of the '80s would ask the educated to write  their stories to send back home. He ended with a beautiful story/painting of a man holding a peacock. The story goes that the peacock must have climbed down the Malabar Hill over the night and landed in an office lobby at Marine drive by the morning. When the keeper of the office opened the door, he was pleasantly surprised to see a peacock in the office. He immediately called up his boss to say "Sir, there is a peacock in our office!" The boss's response was much urgent. He directed him "Call the Times of India" - and so he followed. The Times of India published in 1960s, a black and white picture of the man holding a peacock in his office lobby standing against the sea framed by the large window (as directed by the boss over phone!). Gieve's painting is merely a colour rendering of this picture/story, a story, which Gieve thought, would probably never happen in the city again!

Shekhar Krishnan and Brinda Bose responded to Gieve's works in unique ways. Shekhar, in the spirit of Jayashankar's spirit called for Gieve's paintings to be medical/biological poetry (again invoking Gieve's profession as a doctor).

Shilpa showed a lot of works, many that I was aware of, but hadn't included in my short review. She informed how the period of her learning art, between 1992-97 was a contested time in the history of Mumbai city - with the communal riots and the ingress and foray of new ideas and technologies during the period when liberalization began to affect the city and its people. Such politically sensitive environment finds poignant expression in Shilpa's works that uses different media to bring out several layers of meanings. Shilpa however explains that the media she uses is not central to her works, rather, the content of what she wants to express or evoke, is. I must appeal that people must look up her work online to get a better understanding.

It was followed by my response already shared in the beginning above. Rashmi Varma graciously added to my response reinforcing some points, and reading out Walter Benjamin, a quote that befit her works quite well but I fail to remember!

The evening ended with Tushar Pandey's performance. He explained that in order to think through the theme "one city reminds me of another", the relationship with that "one city" was extremely important. While the thematic assumed that everyone would have that strong relationship, Pandey said that he was not able to have a consolidate relationship with any city. Thus his idea of the city, and hence the other, itself is fragmented. This threw a new light on the discussion, but also encapsulated the spirit of the times we do live in - a city which is increasingly becoming a no-place, a city that is losing its memories to "surprises" as Patwardhan brought out...