conference day 3

day 2 and the hunt for appropriate metaphors for modeling the transforming city continued. how do we imagine the periphery of the city? paul, yogita, prajna and rohit presented the vasai virar region, while sudhir patwardhan spoke of recording beauty. then prasad presented the strange forms of new work that seem to be emerging in the interstices of the economy along with anand and vijayawada stock exchanges and tamals stories from the fringes of film city. third session shekhar and the archiving and mapping of the city, and the in the last session the “culture industry”, the ‘traffic talk’, the everyday and the ‘erotic’, multiplexes and the ‘uncanny’ and kaushiks fantastic work.

there was an odd but interesting schism in the seminar, where the intensely technocratic and ‘field work’ heavy presentations sat juxtaposed with the aesthetic, presided over by theoreticians. as much as an odd mixture this was, it was great fun to watch as each seemed to find its own trajectory to follow all trying to find common ground. a need for a holistic model, as if there can be one, seemed to underpin it all. or on the other hand there is this urge to dismantle all defined forms as simplistic and reconstruct new images constantly to comprehend. through it all it was understood that we needed to diagram.

as enigmatic and seductive forms shimmered in the air the exact mode in which they operate always seemed just out of reach. as conceptual tectonic plates shifted and capillaries rose, the act of doing always froze them into a form whose much vaunted dynamism seemed inert. somehow we feel like we can work in the folding of these plates and constantly navigate in between. i dont know how.

but the dinners after were good. the first day at asiad with kaushik, mohua, ranjit, ninad.. opposite was the new prime mall all dressed up for the holiday season. blue lights made tree trunks into fairy tale jujubes and the floor was lit with little blue jewels.

yesterday at ‘blue water’ – which gyanprakash said is a space that all through the past two days we were criticizing. were we? below the huge scaffolding of a hoarding that seemed 4 stories tall, just opposite the new mall being constructed on link road near the proposed metro station, in the messiness of the sheds and galas of the small shops along the street, a sudden open courtyard through a cane canopy. inside water fountains and low blue rexene seats on white brick platforms and the usual constellations of stars around which groups revolved. the leftovers found the periphery and got suitably happy.