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Thursday, August 23, 2012
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Memories of Modernity
Mod or Not? is part of a larger inquiry on modernity and its interaction with space-time-politics. Pasted below is a rather nascent and early-on articulation of what the project idea was.
Mod or NOT? is an inquiry within this project that will be a series of trans-disciplinary interventions and field studies in Bangalore’s old commercial district ShivajiNagar, carried out by artists, academics and students. By combining artistic and academic approaches we expect to
1) explore innovative methods for socio-cultural inquiry, and
Through visually documenting the interventions we expect to disseminate the outcomes of the project to a wider audience. The format(s) of the final presentation is to be decided as part of the process.
The project will focus specifically on ShivajiNagar, which is one of the oldest commercial districts that served the former British cantonment. Today it has a thriving Muslim population co-mingling with various Tamil and Telugu speaking resident Hindus, Christians and trader communities. Religious times of the year like Ramzan, Diwali and the St Mary's feast also attract larger numbers of visiting communities from all over South India. The "area" (as most localities and neighbourhoods are referred to in Bangalore) is suspected to be the sore eye for the Right wing Hindu fundamentalists. The neoliberal "secular" IT employee of the city has probably never set foot in Shivajinagar due to shopping malls and far flung residences and also because of its currently undesirable aesthetics that challenges the IT City aspirational image.
A number of media and art interventions have taken place in ShivajiNagar over the years, but somehow, these have not managed to become sustainable community practices or discourses that speak for their space within the image of the city. By using those projects as pegs/starting points, and in close collaboration with the local communities, the project aims to explore how one can re-imagine media/communications for such spaces to challenge the prevalent city discourses on planning and habitation.
Memories of Modernity implies the
double perspective of looking back and looking forward at the same time: re-examining the many
modern states that have led to the fleeting present-past and forecasting the hyper-modern present-future in a postcolonial society like India. The first Memories of Modernity project, in Durban, South Africa, was successfully carried out in 2005-2007 as a collaboration project between Malmö
University’s School of Arts and Communication (K3), University of KwaZulu Natal, and Malmö Museum.
Its objectives were to combine artistic and academic research, to bring artists, academics
and students together in a joint project of artistic and academic research. Memories of Modernity II,
in collaboration with Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore, India, aims
at further developing the MoM concept.
Mod or NOT? is an inquiry within this project that will be a series of trans-disciplinary interventions and field studies in Bangalore’s old commercial district ShivajiNagar, carried out by artists, academics and students. By combining artistic and academic approaches we expect to
1) explore innovative methods for socio-cultural inquiry, and
2) develop communication and design strategies for social change and community
participation.
Through visually documenting the interventions we expect to disseminate the outcomes of the project to a wider audience. The format(s) of the final presentation is to be decided as part of the process.
The project will focus specifically on ShivajiNagar, which is one of the oldest commercial districts that served the former British cantonment. Today it has a thriving Muslim population co-mingling with various Tamil and Telugu speaking resident Hindus, Christians and trader communities. Religious times of the year like Ramzan, Diwali and the St Mary's feast also attract larger numbers of visiting communities from all over South India. The "area" (as most localities and neighbourhoods are referred to in Bangalore) is suspected to be the sore eye for the Right wing Hindu fundamentalists. The neoliberal "secular" IT employee of the city has probably never set foot in Shivajinagar due to shopping malls and far flung residences and also because of its currently undesirable aesthetics that challenges the IT City aspirational image.
A number of media and art interventions have taken place in ShivajiNagar over the years, but somehow, these have not managed to become sustainable community practices or discourses that speak for their space within the image of the city. By using those projects as pegs/starting points, and in close collaboration with the local communities, the project aims to explore how one can re-imagine media/communications for such spaces to challenge the prevalent city discourses on planning and habitation.
Poverty reduction, democracy, human
rights, freedom of expression, gender equality, sustainable development, are all core concerns of the ShivajiNagar district which also has lent itself to both academic analysis in practical fieldwork and practical implementation of
artistic, performative and communicative strategies.
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