cinema city (some notes on the map)

Part 1

The term ‘cinema city’ cannot be reduced to the sum of its two parts. I.e. 'City’ within which cinema is seen/made, as if the city is somehow an empty container - a place where we live; or the ‘cinema’ as a space in which we imagine the city - the space that we dream. While these observations are naturally true we believe that the discourses regarding both of these can play off each other and lead to new ways of seeing the city / cinema.

The space of desire is what spans the space of cinema to that of the city. There is a displacement in both of these spaces where the two meet. A history of cinema and the city is the history of desire in the city.

As cultural artifacts we dream and live in both. In both we make ourselves anew. In both we find utopias/dystopias that we attempt to inhabit within the parameters that exist within the everyday- our bodies, relationships, networks, buildings, machines, institutions.

The mirror is the most rudimentary device/machine that enables self representation. Before it - there was the reflection in a pool. The technologies of cinema and the city can be seen as these mirror machines that exist in the realm of the everyday as objects. These technologies have enabled new ways of seeing ourselves over the years. Our way of seeing ourselves has changed accordingly.

From the very first films where local trains were shown entering a platform we have this urge to see ourselves represented- somehow it seems to make us immortal. Or the screen is a mirror through which we reconstruct ourselves. Comb our hair or tuck our shirts in. Parallel to this in utopian imaginations of the city created by architects, urban planners have also existed as methods of reconstructing the self and society. These ‘u-topias’ or ‘no-places’ exist as imaginations to reflect upon who we are and what we want to become. Architecture always imagines an ideal inhabitant. In these images lie whom we see ourselves as – heroic, ugly, beautiful, evil - through what we want to become.

The city and the cinema are both clumsy concrete assemblages through which we try to inhabit the abstract cinematic. The ‘cinematic’ is imagined as the plane that we inhabit as performers in our private and public lives. These assemblages are made with what is readily at hand and recycled, shuffled and remixed to make new meanings. These assemblages can never satisfy the desiring machine and there is always this gap in between what the assemblage can achieve and what is still left over. Often the assemblages themselves create their own vectors of desire to be addressed by many more assemblages.

Drawing – the architects tool - is such an assemblage. It has perhaps a similar relationship to the ‘real’ as that of the film. When the drawing is a map it is a slice of the ‘real’ relationships manipulated to see things differently. There can be as innumerable maps of a city as there are innumerable ways to describe the city.

When the drawing is a proposition towards change it is a reaction to what exists around. While critiquing it is involved in the act of making new imaginations. This drawing wants to be an image of a speculative space(that does not mean that it only portrays idealizations of beauty and happiness).

In architectural and urban history these reimaginations of the city have been found in countless examples of built and unbuilt proposals for the city. Architectural journals carry spectacular images of ideal homes, overflow with metaphors and images for understanding the city- from images of dynamic spaces of opportunity, to lamenting about the city as an ecological disaster, to being a disease that corrupts with its dark alleys and strangers, to neotraditionalist paeans to a long lost past that needs to be revived, to spectacular airbrushed images of becoming shanghai.

Both the space of cinema and the space of drawings are involved in making ‘images’. These images are an apparition we make to replace the real over and over again until it is all that exists. Simulation becomes reality. Reality becomes spectacle.

But these images do not exist and are not made or consumed in ether. They are part of the world of concrete ‘felt’ relationships and spaces. They are enabled only by the tangibility of their modes of production and consumption. The relationship between these needs to be explored- in the contemporary city (and through history)

The project aims to explore this relationship- between the space of desire and the space of everyday life as intertwining stories or as a terrain within which we can make our own paths.

To achieve this we intend to explore both as they exists in the city today and through history. The study is currently in two parts:

1. A timeline of the city and cinema is currently being created where we are paralleling the history of the city- places of living, work and play that emerge at different times- their architecture and the desires embedded within it. This is to be juxtaposed with the spaces where films were made and consumed in those times and the kinds of films being made- the spaces within, their language and themes. This will be done through archival research of architectural journals, planning histories and maps/ images of the city created through history.

2. We are also exploring the relationship between the real and represented in more detail within the current citizens of cinema city- those who are actively involved in the production and the consumption of cinema in the city. These are the spaces of preproduction/ production / post production/distribution/ display/ archiving. In these spaces too lie embedded myth and desire embroiled in everyday life. The intention is to be able to uncover these.

Both of these datascapes will be utilized in creating a ‘map’ of cinema city. This map is thus not only a representation of the city it is also an intervention - a reimagination of the city, a projection- an ‘image’ in which we dare to find us again.

Part 2

the map of cinema city
notes towards a topology of desire

making a map of desire

the question is how does one map desire?

if desire knows no space and time determinants
if desire has only form. vectors with no mass.
using a metaphor from deleuze and guattari let us assume that desire makes a ‘body without organs’
mapping this body is a project of capturing (for the sake of the map) vectors that transgress time and space- bits of a projected future, bits of a constructed past, nostalgias of a rural hinterland, longing for elsewhere, remaking the public / remaking the domestic.

form - topology / topography

the concept of topography is a measurable (in real time and space) projection
the other concept of topology can overcome this cartographic projection. a linear grid along which we lay down the world. topology is "qualitative geometry from the ordinary geometry in which quantitative relations chiefly are treated"

topology grew out of geometry and set theory, and is the study of both the fine structure and global structure of space

to map cinema city we need to be able to bridge the gap between the topographical and the topological. while the topographical can map spaces in relationship to one another on one plane (whether that plane is a spatial one or a temporal one) the topological allows us to transgress these. the topological though can runs the danger of being too amorphous.

locating the space of metamorphosis (where the city becomes desire)

the first step is to locate the physical intersection of these two. as in the real (on the topographical map) spaces where the city is transformed into spaces of desire. if one is to examine the process of film making the intersection lies largely in the spaces where the actual film is shot in the city- the locations / the studio spaces - spaces of production where the metamorphosis takes place.

here the city is read through what the space of cinema wants it to become. these re-readings are based on a combination of the ‘collective memory’ of the city and the phenomenological nature of the spaces. the gateway of india, marine drive, dharavi, rooftops, dungeons, homes all become fodder for the frame to remake.

archetype / typology

aldo rossi speaks of the collective memory of the city as housed in the typologies of the built form within it. a typology is the general three dimensional nature of the built form. these ‘types’ are generic. for example the chawl ‘type’ would be one with single rooms around a courtyard with common service facilities at the corners connected by a verandah. in these typologies are the collective memories of the city.

jung describes the archetype as the patterns from our collective memory that direct and shape our desires and behaviour in everyday life. some the tendencies that he proposes are -
static female / dynamic male / static male / dynamic female

when the city is processed within the narrative frame of cinema (or desire) do we read it through these vectors?

static female – the womb / shelter / claustrophobia home / nature /
dynamic male – the phallus / generator / destroyer /movement / power / clarity / progress
static male – order / systems / imprisonment / the grid / anonymity /
dynamic female - disorder / freedom / chaos

these are distillations of spatial phenomena as seen in the cinematic space.
are these the spatial archetypes of the city of desire?

the meanings of these spaces in everyday life are made through and are reinforced through films and other processes of manufacturing desire. these vectors shape the everyday life of citizens in cinema city.

the map of cinema city is therefore a superimposition of a map of the spaces where space is remade and the spaces of the lived - if cinema city is the city of production, distribution and consumption of cinema, and if the map is of the ‘sweat shop’ of cinema the map emerges in the following way

the desired city is the city projected and imagined- never lived. but it forms the base upon which we construct our everyday lives.

the lived city is one where we are perpetually- it is the only city we really know. all else is in some form speculation.


cinema city is a terrain of images of real / represented spaces forming a map of mumbai. in these we have layers of iconicized images and the cartographies of everyday life intertwined with one another. the ‘map’ can become an ever growing repository for desire in and of the city. they would include official documents / policies; writings; images ; cinema across time.
pieces of the future of dharavi as imagined by developers jostle for space besides the labyrinth of the slum of ‘no smoking’ and the spectacle of the slum from slumdog millionaire, along with the acting school in koliwada.

the images are organized through a geography of positions and movements. positions are bounded entities marked by a particular quality. these are the neighborhoods / landmarks / emptinesses/ boundaries / closed sets. vectors are the movements between these and out of the terrain. they are constituted by speeds / distances / directions/ tendencies.