Re-imagining Cities through Public Art

The Latent City
Director: Krishnendu Bose

Speakers: Claudio Maffioletti and Leandre D’souza

April 21, 2010 | 6.30 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

This program attempts to re-visit the changing dynamics of the two metropolitan cities of India though two public art projects, 48 degrees Celsius, New Delhi (2008) and [en]counters, Mumbai (2010) while looking at its cultural and physical fabric characterized by multi-layered historicity and urbanisms.

The Latent City (Documentary, 56 mins. 2009) directed by Krishnendu Bose captures India’s first public art ecology project, ‘48 degrees Celsius’ that took place in December 2008 in New Delhi. The objective of this project was to interrogate the teetering ecology of the city through the prism of contemporary art. In this project, eight politically charged spaces were identified to be excavated and be transformed by the artists from different parts of the world. It investigates the ongoing debate around the disabling of publics and public spaces and nudges us to re-examine the latent citizenry in a metropolis like Delhi. It also urges to re- imagine the future of our cities through the ‘eye glass’ of public art. The artists who participated in this project include Friso Witteveen, Haubitz & Zoche, Ravi Agarwal, Sheba Chhachhi, Vivan Sundaram, Mary Miss and Chrysanne Stathacos.

[en]counters is a public art project which took place in January 2010 in the city of Mumbai. The project was curated and organized by ArtOxygen, a contemporary arts organization whose endeavour is to bring the arts to new contexts and to stimulate the debate on arts practices in the city. With the objective to place artworks amidst the drone of the everyday, the project was an attempt to encourage five Indian artists including Bidyut Singha, MSC Satya Sai, Neil Dantas, Pradeep Mishra and Uday Shanbhag to question and explore Mumbai’s nature by carrying out site-specific activities. The five projects were then collected, transferred and exhibited in a gallery space. The artists investigated the opposing elements which define Mumbai/Bombay’s divided self and unique soul; they explored the contrasts which populate its daily life, between dream and desperation, excess and parsimony, democracy and anarchy. In doing so, each of the artists became an integral part of the site, integrating into its social dynamics and forming part of the daily relations created.