Tuesday, September 20, 2022
Sunday, September 18, 2022
Wednesday, September 07, 2022
Spatial Mapping Workshop
for Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts
Conducted by Anuj Daga
Background
Maps are primarily used by a vast majority of the urban population for navigation today. Most of us use them through our phones to move across places, book our rides with competitive fares, find places of interest around us to hang out or eat, or even decide whether to venture out after checking the amount of traffic enroute our destination. While we feel these services by various free apps convenience us (which they indeed do), it is precisely our location in space and time that feeds in their system to generate the geography of congestion, leisure, occupation or rest. Thus, we get mapped into the very object we are consuming.
Cartographic maps - the ones you see on Google Maps or such other services - emerged during the colonial period during the 1700s as a way of accurately (read: scientifically) surveying the extent of land. However, until today, they have remained as the key instruments through which spaces are imagined, represented and reorganized for people at large. The instrument of the cartographic map has been institutionalized as a way of defining and redefining territory by most planning and design bodies across the world. While maps give information about an environment to its users, they also control the way in which we come to inhabit spaces today. The spatial turn of the mid-20th century brought many disciplines of the humanities to critically consider the role of space and place within the social sciences through the interrogation of cartography. Subsequently, it has raised the key concerns regarding who-s and how-s of claiming space within a city/region.
This workshop will open up the ways in which cartographic maps record spatial information and understand what it may disclose about the way we inhabit our space. It introduces the participants to different forms of map making practices across history and potentials and problems of cartographic maps. Further, through mapping exercises, we will make our own maps that will dialogue with institutional maps. What latent aspects of inhabitation can mapping reveal to us? How does space construct power structures that our routines get scripted into? Lastly, how can the knowledge of spatial mapping enable social scientists to interrogate or invent ways of thinking about space?
OBJECTIVES
The workshop will aim at understanding:
● How space is represented in/through maps
● How to read spatial information using maps
● How to make one’s own maps
● How to draw conclusions from a map regarding space and behaviour.
SCHEDULE
DAY 1 / 27th August 2022 / Sat
Cartography and the Spatial Turn
What is a map and how does it represent geography? This session will open up the map as a conceptual tool by bringing various perspectives of participants into conversation and steer towards a historical evolution of technical maps that we access today. It will establish the categorical relationship between space and its representation.
Session 2 / 11:30 am to 1:30 pm
Maps and Forms
What are the different forms of maps across time? What do they tell us about space and human relationship with their surroundings? How can these readings be used? This session will look at maps as active tools of interacting and intervening into space. It will ask participants, in groups, to identify ideas that they would like to explore/study by map making.
DAY 2 / 28th August 2022 / Sun
Making Maps
In this session, participant groups will workshop their data into the maps and prepare visual representations of space. The session will collate all data within a map and prepare grounds for speculation through this evidence.
Session 2 / 11:30 am to 1:30 pm
Drawing Conclusions
Each student group will present their findings to each other and open up new directions/questions for further inquiry.
Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Monday, August 08, 2022
Clinical Practice Today
Wednesday, August 03, 2022
Bodies Unprotected
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Bodies, un-protected highlights the unequal distribution of bodily protection from different artistic, historical and theoretical perspectives by bringing together experts come from a variety of fields of research and practice to engage with how we can use aesthetic, performative and discursive means to create visibility for diverse bodies and their specific protective needs. The project unfolds over the course of ten months and manifest itself in two programmes of public events in at the beginning of the project (November 2021) and its end (July 2022). In between these two phases, further events modules are taking place in an international context. They are a crucial part of the project that aims at opening up the discussion to different perspectives, practices and realities.
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Tuesday, August 02, 2022
Friday, July 22, 2022
Nagari Niwara Parishad, Goregaon East
The courtyards earlier meant as gardens have now been paved and converted into parking spaces for the cars, two-wheelers and bicycles. There is still enough greenery within the overall campus. Each building is a society within a cooperative model with three wings. Different buildings are interconnected by intermediate level bridges - an idea adopted from the earlier Mumbai chawls that housed equal densities of people. These intermediate bridges create spaces for play and pause for young and old alike, and offer a unique perspective of the space between the buildings.
Most layouts are one room, kitchen format with attached facilities for toilet and bath. The living room is around 3m x 6m, and the kitchen is around 3m x 2.5m - spacious enough for further divisions. Many residents have further subdivided the large living space into smaller study or private bedroom space for themselves. In some cases, the kitchen has been converted into a bedroom, while the cooking space has been carved off from the large living room. However, most of these living room interventions leave the remaining space with less light. Often these partitions are made up of glass in order to allow for light to pass through.
The entire project is made out of concrete - including the walls. This was a unique technique developed during the period which brought down the cost of construction drastically. Although, such a move causes the buildings to heat up excessively during the summers or get extremely damp during the rains. The task of using the walls to install furniture becomes difficult since it is not easy to drill holes in these concrete masses. Nevertheless, the layouts are very efficient and keep all spaces well lit and ventilated throughout the day. The sense of well being is maintained, and the common spaces are social extensions of the apartments.