November 9-16, 2010

In partnership with Khoj. With the support of Ford Foundation and the Norwegian Embassy. ‘KHOJ International Artists’ Association’ is an artist led alternative space for experimentation and international exchange based in India. Part of the global Triangle Arts Trust, KHOJ sees its role as an incubator for art and ideas, artistic exchange and dialogue in the visual arts.

The Urban Typhoon workshop invites artists, architects, activists and academics from all over the world to ideate with residents, grassroots groups and other users of Khirkee Village, New Delhi. The event aims at reclaiming the locality by collectively generating multiple ideas, visions and plans for its future.

During the week-long workshops all kinds of interventions and interactions will take place, stimulating debate, exchange and awareness. The workshop draws its energy and creativity from the involvement of local users, including business owners, housewives, children, teenagers, loiterers and other hoodies. It focuses on local participation and global engagement.

The workshop is documented throughout the week. The participants also produce all kinds of material, which is then uploaded on a user-generated Website. In addition, the output is translated into various installations, exhibitions, essays, festivals, architectural designs, urban plans and site-specific action, during and after the workshop. Its ultimate aim is to inform decision-makers on the aspirations and potential of Khirkee Village.

URBZ, has been conducting similar workshops in various places around the world including Shimokitazawa (Tokyo), Dharavi (Mumbai) and Galata (Istanbul).

The Urban Typhoon Khirkee (New Delhi) workshop is being organized in partnership with Khoj, a globally renowned artists collective based in that very neighbourhood. Khirkee is an ‘urban village’ in a city in fast forward mode, which may need to creatively reinvent itself if it is to preserve its identity in an increasingly alienating global context.

Khoj has operated from there for more than a decade and has initiated several projects, where artists have become urban practitioners projecting visions and revealing choices that formal actors may have overlooked.  In this partnership between Khoj and URBZ, we hope to organize an event that has a special significance to the world of urban engagement in which artists have a special role to play.

Participant Requirements:

The Urban Typhoon workshop is multicultural, multidisciplinary and a multimedia event. Students, urban planners, architects, designers, artists, sociologists, media artists, political activists, and anyone with a high motivation to work in urban spaces and willing to engage local communities for the week long duration of the workshop is welcome to join.

The objective is to produce creative alternatives for the future of a neighborhood threatened by limited official choices and imagination.

Please fill up the registration form, including a 100-word bio-note of yourself and a face-picture.

We will be in regular touch through e-mail after that.

Travel and boarding expenses are to be borne by the participants (so,don’t wait to make travel bookings! We will also make reservations at reasonable rates in local lodges and hotels to facilitate the process).

Sites: JJ School of Art and Architecture, Wilson College Neighbourhood, Chowpatty, Khotachiwadi, Crawford Market.

The MASHUP is an opportunity to visualize Mumbai’s oldest neighbourhoods afresh. This is important not only because these constantly evolving spaces are changing at a fast pace, but also because a little bit of imagination can help them do so without disrupting their spirit and the lives of their old and new residents. Your photograph, photo-shopped image, graphic, painting, poem, rendering, essay or anything else that you choose to express yourself with, will go a long way in giving direction to the ongoing make over of this part of the city. The MASHUP will work with Mumbai’s student and resident population together with international participants. We will explore these neighbourhoods, archive ongoing transformations, introduce thoughts, ideas and images from elsewhere and help visualize the future in a manner that does justice to both, the history and aspirations of these spaces.

Why leave this important task to politicians and the development lobby? Come – join the fun and take charge!

The MASHUP activities cover the oldest neighbourhoods of the city. Girgaum, where Khotachiwadi  – the much threatened and celebrated trophy heritage habitat exists, just a stone’s throw away from Chowpatty beach, another historic space for demonstrating free expression. A fifteen minute walk takes you to Crawford Market – Mumbai’s oldest and favourite shopping destination, facing its own challenges. In between lies a maze of dense streets and bazaars that testify the ability of the city’s numerous communities to make the city what it is, a city of shops, markets, factories, docks, artisanship, dreams and collective aspirations.

In this maze lie opportunities that provide newer definitions of what it means to be a Mumbaikar, through the many languages the city speaks in, the many cultural practices it invents, its changing and evolving built forms, its bazaars and markets that are as vital and dense as the air Mumbai breathes – making the question of its identity richer than anything the city officially celebrates. Way richer than the imagination of its political leaders and deeper than the possibilities framed by its most conscientious citizens.

Register now!!!

The neighborhood of Shimokitazawa represents Japanese counter-culture more than any other place in Tokyo. Indeed, this is probably one of the first places that young architects, designers, artists, djs, or activists visiting Tokyo are taken to by their Japanese friends.

The narrow and crowded streets of Shimokitazawa have a perfume of freedom and anti-conformism. In Shimokitazawa styled-up youth look alternative and lead alternative lifestyles. Indeed that is one of the rare places in Tokyo where counter-culture meets politics.

The constituencies of Shimokitazawa are diverse. With its unique character, the area attracts many students, artists and other creative types. Meanwhile, affluent homeowners have settled around its center making the development of luxurious department stores a very lucrative prospect for investors.

Thanks to the two train lines stopping through, residents are just minutes away from Shibuya and Shinjuku Stations, which are two of the major centers of Tokyo. Hundreds of thousands of commuters living in South-East Tokyo pass through Shimokitazawa everyday.

Recently, a plan dating from 1946 for a 26-meter wide road throughout the neighborhood was resurrected by Odakyu, a large railway owner and real-estate developer. The government of Setagaya ward, which includes Shimokitazawa, championed the new road plan.

Planning in Tokyo is characterized by strong top-down interventions mainly in the form of infrastructure investment. At the same time, Tokyo is often described as a city of villages, composed of small neighborhoods of 3000 inhabitants or less, known as “chou”. The chou however, serves typically at diffusing information and decisions coming from above to the local level rather than bottom-up communication. In Tokyo, it is very rare that local communities succeed in stopping or even changing the plans of the government.

Some grassroots groups have emerged in Shimokitazawa to oppose the plan and to propose alternatives. Their constituencies extend far beyond local residents. Many people, including musicians, architects, and academics, from Japan and abroad recognize the importance of preserving Shimokitazawa, with its rich urban subcultures and relaxed atmosphere.

Beyond the fate of the neighborhood, the urban policy of the city is in question. Many cities around the world begin to recognize that citizens must be involved in the planning of their communities.

URBZ will be part of a team affiliated to the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India that will conduct a course on the ‘Politics of Urban Space’ with post graduate students of the The Habitat School, Tata Institute of Social Sciences between January and April 2010.

The following are the details of the TISS Habitat Studies course

Title:  Politics of Urban Space

Faculty: Shilpa Phadke (SP), Matias Echanove (ME), Rahul Srivastava (RS), Sameera Khan (SK) and Shilpa Ranade (SR).

Objectives

* This course will introduce students to basic concepts, ideas and structures in urban space.
* It will explore and explain the way in which concepts to do with power and imagination work in urban contexts. The variables that will be used include gender, class, community, neighbourhoods, localities, the state, bureaucracy and ethnicity.

Basic concepts that will be discussed include: Urbanism, power, social construction of space, social imagination, locality and context, gender, class, community, safety, respectability, design, citizenship

Method of Teaching: Lectures, group projects, field work and discussions

Method of Assessment and Weightage:

Term assignments 100%

I. Introductory Session (RS, ME, SP, SR, SK)

In this session, we will broadly introduce our course, present its outline and discuss the research interests of the faculty and students.

II. Urbanism (RS, ME)

We explore the experience of urbanism in terms of historical and conceptual debates.

Historical: To question the tribal, rural, urban evolutionary framework and explore more complex explanatory tools.

Conceptual: Critically examine the binaries that are embedded in understanding urbanism – rural/urban, vertical/horizontal, primary/secondary, private/public, work/play, home/outside

III. The Production of Space I (RS, ME)

This section understands the concept of urbanism in terms of how all environments (with their imaginative and material dimensions) are constantly being produced by the active agency of their inhabitants. It will explore space in terms of its non-spatial dimension – for example economic exchanges, political expansion, nomadism, migration, movement of goods and ideas, the moment of the bazaar and the ability of information and communication technologies to expand and contract spatial contexts

IV. The Production of Space II (SP, SR, SK)

We explore the concepts and ideas around space, gender and power, interrogating the constructions of various binaries (private-public, respectability-unrespectability, safety-violence, risk-rationality) around them. The discussions will dwell upon understanding how hierarchies of age, gender, race, class, and community are encoded in domestic and public spaces. We also aim to problematize the notion of a neutral user of urban space and will focus on the role of built form as a mechanism of control. The notion that space is not a neutral background against which social processes occur, but is implicated in the production of these processes will also be discussed. Ideas such as the socio-cultural production of gender, gendered divisions of labour, notions of masculinity and femininity, will also be a part of this session.

Possible Class Exercises: ‘Putting People in Place’ or College mapping ex.

V. Power (RS, ME)

We explore how ideological interpretations of urban space shape choices with regard to contemporary urban practices

In this section we interrogate and analyze how a specific configuration – the‘city’ has come to dominate all discussions on urbanism and how it is connected to political and economic interests. We will frame these discussions in terms of specific and concrete examples in lived contexts.

VI. Sexuality, Respectability and Public Space (SP, SR, SK)

In this class, we will discuss issues of public sexuality, class and ‘reputation’ in relation to the issues of couples in public spaces, bar-girls, public soliciting, and the presence of women in public spaces. Through these cases we will raise questions of honour, consent, middle-classness, respectability and Indian-ness in relation to public sexuality.

We will also explore the creation of new ‘private’ public spaces using illustrative cases of exploring shopping malls, multiplexes, paid parks. We will use these to understand how both ideas of ‘femininity’ and ‘the public’ get constructed through these spaces.

Possible Class Film Screenings: Screening Freedom Before 11 (25 minutes), a PUKAR Gender & Space project film, and some clips from Chandni Bar (2001), dir. by Madhur Bhandarkar.

VII. Constructing Community through Space (SP, SR, SK)

We explore the ideas of locality, neighbourhood, ethnicity and community in the city. How do these issues come to play with regard to public space? When gender intersects with ethnicity, how does public space get constructed? When violence meets a community head on, does public space recede and are limitations then imposed on women’s movement? We look at some of the dynamics at work and play here, particularly with regard to minority groups.

VIII. Construction of Space and the Social Imagination (RS, ME)

We discuss how space simultaneously involves a negotiation of material environments and imaginative and cultural ones. The idea is to help develop a methodological understanding in which urban debates involve a constant awareness of the relationship between these dimensions when dealing with the urban space.

We will take specific examples of urban conflict from around the world and show how they emerge when the imaginative or the material dimensions of urban life are either ignored or over-ridden.

IX. Self and the Production of Safety (SP, SR, SK)

Anonymity, diversity and freedom that allows for nonconformity and experimentation make city living desirable, especially for those who are marginalized by gender and/or caste. But does anonymity really produce safety? And does being invisible mean that one always feels comfortable in the city? And if not, how do women then find their way through the city and produce safety for themselves. Students own experiences of public space will be discussed using this as a means of understanding how access to spaces is not necessarily democratic.

Here we will discuss sexual harassment in the city, legal measures and women’s strategies to produce safety for themselves. We will also address questions of ideology in regard to “women asking for trouble” by means of inappropriate dress or behaviour.

Possible Class Film Screenings: Memories of Fear (60 mins), directed by Madhusree Datta.

X. Inclusive by Design (SP, SR, SK)

What are the strategies for a gender-sensitive approach to design?  We will explore the various aspects of gendered design including issues related to urban public transport, toilets and parks. Drawing on our earlier architectural mapping projects (PUKAR Gender & Space project), we will discuss how safety is materially produced (or not produced) in urban public space through the design of elements of the edge, skin, lighting, and street furniture.

XI. The Urban Activist (RS, ME)

This section will examine the emergence of the urban activist and new practices of engagement in urban politics.  In the same way urban space is both physical and conceptual, the urban activist’s field of operation extends beyond the physical realm. We will discuss emergent forms of urban activism, which situate themselves at the intersection of these dimensions.

XII. Re-Imagining Space: Risk, Loitering & Pleasure in the City (SP, SR, SK)

In this class, we will discuss the foregoing sessions and the ideas they have generated and focus on the inter-linkages between the built environment and the prevailing ideologies. We will try to use these to re-imagine spaces that are more democratic focussing on questions such as: Are separate spaces desirable? Are these separate spaces safe? At the same time, we will take the discussion forward and bring in ideas relating to risk, loitering, pleasure and citizenship.

The URBZ MASHUP workshop facilitates creative explorations and cultural exchanges between cities and people.

Dreams, myths and personal stories influence the destiny of cities as much as political choices and economic opportunities. They inspire architects and artists, stimulate activists and residents, and broaden the vision of the public and decision-makers.

This workshop provides a space of expression for practicioners in architecture, planning, design, art, media, creative writing and other creative fields. It is based on the idea that the best way to make genuine breakthroughs in the way we understand, experience and create our cities is to stimulate collective imagination, by bringing together people from all over the world and all ways of life. The workshop provides a space to produce new images, narratives and insights about cities and urban life, using online tools, digital technology, personal experiences and professional skills.

Cities

The first URBZ MASHUP took place in Tokyo, hosted by Temple University Japan, in the first week of July 2009. The second one will be held at Istanbul Technical University, followed by Mumbai in November. Other workshops are planned in Rio, New York and Amsterdam in 2010. Each workshop will remix and mashup the material produced in other cities.The dates are as follows:

Tokyo: July 1-5, 2009

Mumbai: Oct. 29 – Nov 1, 2009

Istanbul: July 26 – August 1, 2010

New Delhi: (See Urban Typhoon New Delhi)

New York/Toronto: June 2010

Rio: TBA

Amsterdam: TBA

Organization

The URBZ MASHUP workshop invites artists, designers, architects, urbanists and creative people who share an interest in cities and urban life to explore a city, debate, ideate, create fictions, photo-collages, music and videos. Each workshop lasts 3 to 5 days and can be followed by a seminar and an exhibition.

The mashup comprises a mix of international and local participants. The participants form small teams of 3 to 5 people and explore the city for the first 2 or 3 days.

Each group chooses a street or neighborhood and documents it using various media including drawing, photo, audio, video and text.On the third day, all participants get back to the workshop space and remix the material they have gathered in a free and creative way.

On the last day, the material produced is uploaded in an online gallery A selected number of pieces will be printed and exhibited at the workshop space itself. URBZ provides a virtual environment to exhibit what has been produced.

Click here to register!

Dharavi Mashup by Colé

MUMBAI MASHUP