Arts_Illustrated_-_February-March_2016

DIGITAL COPY ON MAGZTER

Arts Creative Interaction Centre (JACIC),

and currently with JCA (Jindal Centre for the

Arts), my personal belief has been to promote

interdisciplinary arts activity with a view to

support and develop appreciation of art and

culture. We have been active supporters of art

for more than 25 years and are associated in the

production of masterpieces from prominent

artists including Anish Kapoor, Shilpa Gupta

and Dhruvi Acharya, who have showcased major

installations with complete artistic independence.

From our perspective, it is both our pleasure and

our mandate to collaborate with artists, with no

infringement upon artistic freedom, in order

to facilitate and augment projects that might

otherwise be impossible

Work in Progress:

The City as a Landscape

of Interruptions

Moderated by Abhay Sardesai,

editor, Art India

A discussion that addresses the idea

and experience of rupture as one of

the principles describing, defining

and interpreting urban life, with

Matias Echanove, founding member

of URBZ; Sahej Rahal, artist; and

Prasad Shetty, architect and academic.

Matias Echanove: Urban Space in India is shaped

by many distinct trajectories. There is 

one strand that responds to global capital and

conventions of urban planning (which we see from

colonialism onwards) and another that is shaped

by very local factors that include community

(caste) configurations, medieval templates and

other traditional modes of living. The fact that

people, through community formations, can exert

an influence on urban forms is what makes things

very peculiar here. This is what actually provides

for structural and organisational elements which

make things functional, even though things appear

to be chaotic and monstrous and indecipherable

to standard conventions. Generalisations are

inevitable and sometimes necessary – but, at the

same time, a good urban practitioner is one who is

excited and enthusiastic about a specific place for

its own sake. The element of discovering something

new in the familiar is what an urbanologist thrives

on. That is why one has to make an effort to

understand the personality of a specific place at any

given point of time. Every urban space is special in

that sense.

Sahej Rahal: To me, the narrative of changing

urban spaces is a sort of shadow cast by the

persistence of history as it silently nudges spaces

into its breadth, all the while maintaining a tense

and monolithic aura of stasis, always adamant on

appearing singular and eternal... in the things that

I make, I’m trying to nudge back at it a little.

Prasad Shetty: One assumes that planning is capable

of creating city space or infrastructure. It does

not – it only nudges. Planning is located within

the politics and space of the city. The city creates

planning and not vice versa. The plan thus made,

has to work itself out in the city. This working out

is also not so straightforward. It may appear that

plans create space, but actually, it is the city.

We also assume that within the volatile world of

‘development’, there is no space for discourse.

Again, this ‘world of development’ is embedded

within the politics and space of the city. If one

considers the planning practice today, then, there

are lots of people who argue that there is no space

for discussion and participation. However, one

sees master plans after master plans – Mumbai,

Pune, Goa, Bengaluru, Delhi – there is a lot of

discussion. People seem to have been enabled by

new media to push themselves into the planning

process. This did not happen 25 years ago, when

plans were being made inside the planning office.

The city has changed and with it the planning

process. And finally, we assume that architecture

and built space are products of discourse alone.

There are parallel agencies that articulate built

space in the city. These emerge from the realm of

absurdities – desires, obsessions, trips of people,

and so on. Moreover, built spaces themselves have

agency. They have capacity to shape behaviour.

They become a part of the city. So, I don't see a

linearity in the relationship between city, discourse,

planning, ‘development agenda’ and built space.

They are all part of each other and shape each

other. One judges such shapings differently from

where one stands.

(^74) / ARTS ILLUSTRATED / FEB 2016 - MAR 2016 /IAF - Delhi Connecting Art