City Housing in a Cultural Matrix

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

Gallery: Chicago Architecture Biennial
CAMP After Media Promises

Nam June Paik Art Center Prize

An exhibition of the "contextually rich, environment-shifting media works of CAMP".

Ghar Mein Shehar Hona part 1

Part 1 of the housing histories project, Ghar Mein Shehar Hona: From Janata Colony to Janata Colony (imaginary to destroyed), is online.

Film, Assembly and a Story

With Ashish Rajadhyaksha
On the occasion of the launch of
John Ghatak Tarkovsky : Citizen, Filmmakers, Hackers

7:00 pm, Saturday July 8

GHAR MEIN SHEHAR HONA - Part III

at de(Coding) Mumbai
With Shaina, Ashok, Simpreet
and Adarsh, Alyque, Naezy, Nayak, Medha, Sandeep, Rajjo, Tiger...

Ghar Mein Shehar Hona Part 2

Part 2 of the housing histories project, From Footpath to Flat (via FSI) is online.

Housing Histories Seminar

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

From Bandra North to Khar East (Virtual i.e. Real Landscape)

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

A Journey through Housing in Bombay, Part I

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

(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)

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



Far from Philadelphia

Five narratives developed in the class "Footage Films", that re-assemble archives of campus protest, Penn Museum collections, university weapons development projects, the Schuylkill river, a utopia called Shangri-La, and their intersections across time and place.

*Recalling Far From Vietnam, collectively-made essay film from 1967.

Asia Pacific Triennial

Machine Visions

On AI by CAMP

From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf

Screening and conversation in collaboration with University of Pennsylvania’s Cinema & Media Studies department and CARG. At old Slought/ new Public Trust.

الجار قبل الدار The Neighbour Before the House

Film screening, and conversation 6-8:00 pm

The Neighbour before the House

Geographies of Belonging

Visiting Artist Lecture Series

From Land to Sea

From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf

Vertical Integration

We are proposing this term to think more broadly about extraction, waste, dependency, rear-guarding, mediatic conversions, in- and out-sourcing, and other aspects of chains of translation and steps of decision and production.

Footage Films, Or Narrating a Dataset

with Visiting Scholars CAMP
(Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran)

We begin this fall semester's film class with a moratorium on audio-video capture.
100 days without your own images:)

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