SubscribeI am back in Mumbai again. The inherent chaos of this city matches well with the ongoing chaos in my life, and so I like it here. Behind the euphoria that seduces dreamers and wanna-’bees’, there is an underbelly of constant struggle, a push-pull between creation and decadence. It keeps one occupied, but whether that occupation is productive or useful, is a question one dare not ponder upon.
Yet the most cliched question comes to mind – what would the city look like in fifty or hundred years. Would it be the future glam-town sketched by the candy-bar film Love Story 2050 (I haven’t seen the film, the trailer was sufficient)? Or a true-to-life depiction of bleak futures painted by many a sci-fi storyteller (such as Asimov in his ‘The Caves of Steel’, or even Bladerunner), a marked (walled) division is seen between ever growing ’slum communities’ and China-like SEZs (Special Economic Zones – such as Schenzen) with access-denied written everywhere?
A year ago, I saw a remarkable exhibition in Tate Modern (London) called Global Cities:
Global Cities looks at the changing faces of ten dynamic international cities: Cairo, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Mumbai, São Paulo, Shanghai and Tokyo.
Exploring each city through five thematic lenses – speed, size, density, diversity and form – the exhibition draws on data originally assembled for the 10th International Architecture Exhibition at the 2006 Venice Biennale. This unique show presents existing films, videos and photographs by more than 20 artists and architects to offer subjective and intimate interpretations of urban conditions in all ten cities.
One of the art installations was 3D stalagmite-like sculptures that mapped the wealth distribution in each of the above cities. Of all, Mumbai had a few spikes that towered above and beyond any of the others, making the vast difference in wealth distribution even more apparent.
But is the ‘flatness’ desirable? I wonder. In his rapidly growing photo portfolio, my photographer friend Matti tries to capture what a friend called, the ‘post-apocalyptic Mumbai series’. Through a combination of retouched HDR photography done through in duotones, he captures the essence of its madness, the chaos that is impossible in economically ‘flat’ zones.
More on his flickr page here. Ok, time for a stroll.
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Nice Site layout for your blog. I am looking forward to reading more from you.
Tom Humes
Well, technically speaking my aim is not to capture a post-apocalyptic sci-fi scenario here.
I like to see this series more in terms of ‘-dividualism’ – that which precedes the individual. “The -dividual city.” We have seen too many picture of smiling faces, or more specifially, too much photography of teeth. Of individuals. The National Geography imaginary of the exotic world.
For anybody who stays in Bombay for more than a few days will know that in such an enormous metropolis, most of the people we never can or will experience as individuals. Rather, it is the non-linear mass of collective movement, flows, moorings, accelerations, trans- and inter-actions that we experience. I am also interested in seeing a kind of an a-anthropocentric vision of the world; not seeing frozen moments, but seeing fluctuating frame-rates, seeing different timescales of existence from cars to people to buildings to nature bubbling in-between …