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!!!

Dates: Oct 29 – Nov 1, 2009

Workshop Starts: Thursday Oct 29 at 10AM at JJ-School of Architecture

Exhibition & Party: Sunday Nov 1, 6-10PM at the Girgaum Catholic Club in Khotachiwadi

Sites: Girgaum (Khotachiwadi, Chowpatty Beach, Wilson College neighbourhood), Crawford Market and Chor Bazaar.

Objective: URBZ MASHUP Mumbai explores, challenges, subverts, questions and celebrates Mumbai’s ideas and practices of heritage enshrined in its colonial (pre and post included) architecture, arts, culture and politics.

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, one of  the city’s most popular for social dissent and free expression. A fifteen minute walk from there takes you to Crawford Market – Mumbai’s oldest and favourite shopping destination. In between lies a maze of dense streets and bazaars that testify to the city’s numerous communities who made the city what it is, a city of shops, markets, dreams and collective aspirations.

In this maze lie stories, images and ideas of a city 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 the city breathes – making the question of its identity richer than anything the city officially celebrates. Way richer than the imagination of its political leaders and much deeper than the possibilities framed by its most conscientious citizens.

The URBZ MASHUP welcomes participants from Mumbai, India and the rest of the world to use their skills and imaginations and dive into streets, walk into homes, converse, make images, play, then reinterpret, examine, and recreate newer imaginative frameworks that do justice to the city’s layered, dense and complex life.

Anyone is welcome to register. High motivation, initiative and creative mindset are essential qualities for all participants. The registration fee are Rs 300 for Indian students, Rs 500 for other Indian participants. $150 for international students, $300 for other international participants. Fees can be reduced or waved under special circumstances. Please do let us know if you would like to participate but cannot afford the fee.

Invited Team Advisers and Proposed Topics:

Art India Magazine (Abhay Sardesai & crew)
Topic: The art and craft of everyday life: JSS Road to the world

Stephanie Carlisle,  graduate student in Architecture and Urban Ecology at Yale University
Topic: Under the Flyover: a sectional exploration of contested spaces hidden beneath the map

Mustansir Dalvi, Poet, Architect, Teacher at the JJ College of Architecture, Mumbai
Topic: Taking the Inner-City Out of the Box – Girgaum, Nana Chowk and other areas.

James Ferreira, Fashion Designer, Khotachiwadi activist and life-long resident.
Topic: Preservation through change: Design strategies for an ever-young Khotachiwadi

Ranjit Kandangoankar: Visual Artist & Research Fellow-Urban Design Research Institute, Studying buildings owned by Charitable Trusts
Topic: Re-imagining collages through inner-city perspectives: Null Bazaar and other sites.

Geeta Mehta: Urban designer and faculty at Columbia University
Topic: Bazaarchitecture & historical preservation in Crawford Market & Chor Bazaar. How do you preserve a bazaar?

Kaiwan Mehta: Architect and writer (author of the book “Alice in Bhuleshwar“)
Topic: Real-time history of Bhuleshwar

Amit S. Rai: Professor of English Literature at Florida State University
Topic: Contemporary Movie going in an ancient Movie Theatre: Edward Cinema, Dhobhi Talao

Alison Reeves: Artist, Fullbright Scholar
Topic: Street-vendors of Girgaum: Portraits and stories of Mumbai’s most perennial population: the itinerants

Himanshu S.: Artist & crew
Topic: Dreamality and playful interventions: Girgaum seen from kids eyes

Yehuda Safran: Professor of philosophy of architecture at Columbia University & Harvard
Topic: Poetics of street life & moving habitats. 12 Scenarios for the mashed-up city

Sachin Yardi: Screenplay Writer and Film Director. (Wrote the screenplay of the movie “Traffic Signal“)
Topic: Street-life as fiction. Collective screen-play writing

Schedule:

Thursday 29: Workshop starts at 10AM at JJ-School of Architecture, close to Crawford Market (Entrance in front of JJ flyover). All the participants meet and form small teams of 2 to 5 people max. They decide on a location and an approach they want to pursue, with the help of the organizers if needed. After lunch the teams go to their chosen location(s) and start gathering data in the form of photos, videos, interviews, sketches, etc.

Friday 30: Data hunting-gathering in different locations.

Saturday 31: Participants gather at the workshop site and decide what they want to produce with their data and how it should be presented. Final output could be anything ranging from in situ interventions to design proposals and manifestos to video clips and art works. This day work until the output is ready (may mean an all-nighter). From Saturday 12-noon to Sunday 12-noon all the material produced is uploaded on the URBZ website (with the help of URBZ staff).

Sunday 1: The MASHUP Exhibition starts at 6PM. From 12-noon to 6PM, Participants prepare stalls with print-outs, models, performances, videos to showcase their creative production. Locally cooked food will be available. Party follows. This will take place at the Girgaum Catholic Club in Khotachiwadi. All are welcome.

Locations:

MUMBAI MASHUP View in a larger map

This is the time of the year when one of the most impossibly dense neighbourhoods in one of the world’s strikingly crowded and dense cities manages to squeeze more space out of itself in a miraculous way. Hundreds of streets reorganize themselves, divert the flow of traffic and the movement of people to allow the creation of sacred niches where shrines for the elephant headed god Ganesha become a reason for creating the most colourful, sometimes outlandish and mostly fun performances, shows, musical events, and installations one can imagine. It was in the late 19th century when a political leader and freedom fighter, Lok Manya Tilak, decided to transform a simple domestic ritual worhship into a public extravaganza in Girgaum Chowpatty to mobilize Mumbaikars so that they could unite against a colonial government. Since political rallies were banned, and ritual processions allowed, he converted one into the other. Since then, Mumbaikars celebrate the festival with gusto and it has become more politicized than ever before. For quite a few years, it has become a stronghold of the right wing parties and ideologies, though there is nothing intrinsic so about the festival. In many ways, the failure of the city’s left and progressive forces to harness moments like these was one reason they lost support. In fact, until well into the seventies and early eighties, socialist grassroots movements were pretty strong. But soon after, festivals like these were taken over by right wing groups and became the basis of mass defections in terms of ideoology and party affiliations.

Urban spaces and cities do not subscribe to linearities of any kind. And cities like Mumbai are even further away from any linearity. They embody within them the most chaotic of time zones and historical sensibilities. Their built-forms are a jumble of styles, both stylistically and historically. People themselves may occupy very different cultural sensibilities and not all of these can be reduced to political differences. It is important for many of us engaged and involved in the city’s public spheres to come to terms with these differences. It may be easy to simply dismiss the Ganesh Festival as a space that has already been co-opted by a right wing agenda. What would really more productive would be to reclaim that space. And there is a lot in the grammar of the festival that allows for such a reclamation. It is carnivalesque, it allows different groups and affiliations to find their own way of expressing their aesthetic and political values. It’s a great way to communicate different notions of urbanism through  the space of installations that the pandals (shrines) allow. This year, due to various factors the festivities have been low key. On an average year however, the skills and abilities that each group shows in creating images, futuristic fantasies, mythological constructions, is considerable. Maybe the year will come, when along with the pandals, the installations will become the space for transmitting different notions of urbanism through architectural models and constructed urbanscapes that usually lie around in architectural studios and offices!