JEHANGIR NICHOLSON ART FOUNDATION
The city and its thriving ecologies and urban systems is the most accurate map ever drawn. It is a lived-map constantly being made and unmade in real time-space. The act of producing the map is informed by the existing spatial productions of the city. With time, the lived experience insinuates the mapmaker to perceive a new map, not very different to the one already in use but modified to accommodate new rationalities without the elimination of its histories and fantasies. The map thus perceived, tries to keep out all past blemishes; concerns that were imagined, prevented the smooth and orderly functioning of the city. The new map is conceived to actuate a new built environment while continuing to bear resemblance of the earlier city and its ecologies. As the map attempts to be accurate and exact, equaling the lived experience of the city, it sets up an intense dialogue between ‘the map’ and ‘the process of map-making’.
To Map : The Map was once such a conversation around various map-types and their agendas while understanding the object of map-making, its effects and limitations, and methods / practices of mapping evolved through time. These conversations aim to discuss at large the role and impacts maps have on city life while simultaneously highlighting the innumerable influences that affect the space of the mapmaker. The usual practice of maps as a depiction or representation of an area or part of it, is to reveal relationships and networks between elements, to locate ecologies and pieces of history while also continuing to be an important form of making claims as property ownerships and demarcation of boundaries. The form and type of the map is not just produced to be static but has evolved in-time to become more dynamic and interactive representing the fictional and real realms revealing stories of territories and its people. It is like a photograph that captures the moment, a time passed or a prediction of a future occurrence . Since maps have limitless possibilities and forms of engagement with the world, is this multifaceted apparatus flexible enough to accommodate and easy for all to access? The Grids project at KRVIA conducted the documentation of the forest and its communities through various forms of mapping and recording techniques to help locate and reveal, different identities and rights of human and non-human lives in the forest, services and facilities accessed by individuals in the forest and the lived experience of the forest as against the definitions prepared by statutory bodies governing the region/city. The ‘Conversations at the Clearing’ will deliberate on these while realizing the impacts and influences of the map and on the modes of map-making.
Participants:
Dinesh Barap, Shaina Anand, Kareena Kochery, Samidha Patil, Lalitha Kamat, Aneerudha Paul, Shweta Wagh, Stalin Dayanand, Miriam Chandy Menacherry, Abhijit Ekbote, Maria Lobo, Deepti Talpade, Shardul Patil, Pratik Dhanmer,
Rohit Mujumdar, Sahej Rahal, Rhea Shah, Chitra Venkataramani, Aslam Saiyad, Aishwarya Padmanabhan, Hussain Indorewala, Ankush Chandran, Sitaram Shelar, Ginella George,
Neha Shah, Rohit Kudale, Rashmi Varma.
Hosted as part of the ongoing exhibition, ‘A Forest in the City: Living within Sanjay Gandhi National Park /Aarey Colony in Mumbai', A collaboration between JNAF, KRVIA and Pani Haq Samiti.
Education partner: Goethe Institut
