City Housing in a Cultural Matrix

Sept. 19, 2019 - Jan. 19, 2020
Chicago Architecture Biennale

At Chicago Architecture Biennale

Internet assemblage on two monitors, sound. In three parts. + Online video and interface.
Software: Jan Gerber Commissioned by the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial

Ghar Mein Shehar Hone is now online . See more at At Ghar.with.CAMP

A collective of artists, filmmakers, software programmers, architects, activists and archivists, CAMP produces public art projects, films and electronic media that engage with cities globally. City Housing in a Cultural Matrix presents an interactive web-based film in three parts, that journeys through a history of housing and its context in Bombay/Mumbai.

The work narrates the social, cultural and political history of the “housing question” in Mumbai, by bringing together cinema, state-sponsored documentary, newspapers, policy reports and archives from social movements, among other source materials. These materials are assembled, via a hand-built web editor, into a new kind of "annotated film" that links to online archival sources. In the installation, some of these branching paths are seen in the second monitor. Drawing in form from the video lecture-performance style honed on CAMP's rooftop cinema and studio that takes its audience on dense archival journeys, the work examines a "poor man's colony" that was set up in the 1950s and destroyed twenty-five years later to make room for an atomic research facility in Bombay (Part-I: From Janata Colony to Janata Colony); a series of four organized responses to urban housing and slums triggered by a landmark court case, alongside a parallel cinema movement (Part-II: From Footpath To Flat); and contemporary, situated strategies in a very complex global environment (Part III: From Right to Information). The three parts are presented in this installation sequentially and will be released online in the same sequence during the course of the Biennial.

Ashok, Simpreet, and Shaina perform the housing histories trilogy live on 20 21 22 September during the opening week.

US premier - Housing Histories in a Cultural Matrix

Part 1. From Janta Colony to Janta Colony (imaginary to destroyed) via print and film, love and music, state propaganda and people's archives, five-year plans and Emergency.

Friday, 20 Sep, 2019 . 6:00 - 8:00pm

Part 2: From Footpath to Flat (via FSI) . through the Slum Rehabilitation Authority, Transferable Development Rights, Transit Camps, Monsoons, Rocks, Courts, and four institutional histories.

Saturday, 21 Sep, 2019 . 6:00 - 8:00pm

Part 3 :From Right to Information (Virtual i.e. Real landscapes)
via TDR, Cyprus, Speculative Housing, Capital Flight, GBGB Andolan, Multicam Stings, Drone Leaks, .pdf and .xlsx.

Sunday, 22 Sep, 2019 . 3:00 - 5:00pm

Links:

Related

Housing Histories Seminar
Sept. 8, 2018 - Sept. 11, 2018
CAMP Rooftop

"Ghar Mein Shehar Hona: City Housing in a Cultural Matrix, 1951 to 2020". Three evenings of immersive histories on CAMP Rooftop.

June 20, 2018 at KRVIA, Juhu

"From Janta Colony to Janta Colony" video lecture by CAMP, part one of a series, at KRVIA auditorium at 11 am.
June 27, 2018 at KRVIA, Juhu

"From Footpath to Flat (via FSI)" video lecture by CAMP, part two of a series, at KRVIA auditorium at 11 am.
From Bandra North to Khar East (Virtual i.e. Real Landscape)
Sept. 22, 2018
CAMP Roof

via RTI, TDR, Cyprus, Speculative Housing, Capital Flight, GBGB Andolan, Multicam Stings, Drone Leaks, Abu, Adarsh, Alyque, Naezy, Nayak, Rajjo, Tiger, .pdf and .xlsx.

Part 3 of our video-lectures on housing histories of Bombay-Mumbai 6:30 pm

Nov. 14, 2018 at KRVIA

The third in our series of archival journeys through housing in Hamara Shehar. Part 3: From "Right" to "Information", KRVIA Auditorium, from 11 am.
Nov. 21, 2018 at KRVIA

The Fourth in our series of Archival Journeys, "Part 4: From Bandra North to Khar East". KRVIA Auditorium, from 11 am.
A Journey through Housing in Bombay, Part I
Feb. 9, 2017 - Feb. 11, 2017

From Janta Colony to Janta Colony
(imaginary to destroyed)
Via print and film, music, love, bulldozers, state propaganda and peoples archives.
Part-I: 1950 to 1982

10th February, Friday 4pm to 6pm
The Centre for Urban and Policy Governance and The School of Habitat Studies
Room A2, Ground Floor, Academic Building II, New Campus, TISS, Mumbai

11th February, Saturday 8p, to 10 pm
Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Urban Design and Architecture
Max Mueller Bhavan, Library.

From Janta Colony to Janta Colony
Nov. 26, 2016
CAMP Roof

(imaginary to destroyed)
A Journey through Housing in Bombay
Part-I: 1950 to 1982
Tuesday, 29th November, 2016
6:30 pm to 9 pm

From "Shehar aur Sapna" to the Olga Tellis case. Via print and film, music, love, bulldozers, state propaganda and people's archives.

From Footpath to Flat (via FSI)
March 11, 2017
CAMP Roof

A Journey through Housing in Bombay/Mumbai, Part II

(1982 to 2004)

Through Transit Camps, the Slum Rehabilitation Authority, Transferable Development Rights, Rocks, Marshes, Courts, and four institutional histories: Nivara Hakk, Nagari Nivara Parishad, SPARC and YUVA.

110 minutes of film and video with live commentary.
7:00 pm to 9:00 pm Saturday,
11th March, 2017
CAMP rooftop



Events

Oct. 9, 2019 Propositions

Artist talk @ Beginnings with CAMP
Oct. 8, 2019 Workshop with CAMP

Workshop with Students of ERG/Artistic Practices and Scientific Complexity Masters/Kobe Matthys at Argos.
CAMP: Beginnings
Oct. 5, 2019 - Dec. 22, 2019
Argos Centre for Art and Media, Brussels

Beginnings is an exhibition tracing some of the conceptual and artistic origins of CAMP. At ARGOS, Brussels as part of new beginnings at ARGOS itself.

Sept. 27, 2019 Cinema at A Time of More Cameras than People

Artist talk: Shaina A at Institute for Comparative Modernity, Cornell University.
Sept. 24, 2019 The Neighbour Before the House

A film program at Slought, with Shaina Anand /CAMP about surveillance systems, critical documentary filmmaking, subjectivity and distribution, and a screening of Al Jaar Qabla Al Daar (60 min, 2011), followed by a discussion with filmmaker Shaina and Deborah A. Thomas.
From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf
Sept. 11, 2019 - Nov. 13, 2019
Dubai

At Body Building
Ishara Art Foundation

Aug. 30, 2019 Artifical Ecology

Ashok gives a part-biographical talk at the MMB, Mumbai, as part of the State of Nature series. Himalayan horticultural history, sewage-infused ice skating rinks, potato science and a series of proposals for art.
June 24, 2019 CAMP and Nikhil Anand host a discussion on a wet/ watery landscape of Mumbai as research method, with participants from Marine Life of Mumbai, IIT Bombay, SEA, TISS and UPENN
A Photogenetic Line: Experimenter 2019
April 13, 2019 - July 15, 2019
Experimenter - Hindustan Road, Kolkata

A 100-foot long branching sequence of cutouts drawing from the photo archives of The Hindu, a 140-year old newspaper. Cutouts here are a way of reframing existing photographs as new organisms and to create a new boundary or border for the image.

In Cameras Res at De Appel Amsterdam
March 16, 2019 - April 20, 2019
De Appel, Amsterdam

On three screens, a city-symphony filmed by automated CCTV cameras in Amsterdam pushing their optical and motor 'patrolling' capacities to an extreme.

All Events