I want.........

During this hectic period, I feel like I didn't have the time to reflect and contemplate.I even couldn't look for or read articles that would help me to understand better the complexity of Dharavi. Therefore, drawing general conclusions is in my opnion a little bit dangerous and even impossible.Time to reflect and to deepen into the subject starts for me after the exhibition, when I have the time to sort things out. It's not so easy to get an understanding of a slum, no matter it's size, without drawing conclusions; we always tend to draw conclusions in order to get that understanding. Therefore, I cannot say that I understand completely the situation, that I know exactly what is going on.Rather I would say that I gathered some thoughts, ideas and made some remarks that could help me eventually. My intention to participate in this course was to broaden my understanding of slums in general. And of course, partly I required more knowlegde. But this knowlegde is more about what I need to do and what I need to read in order to get the understanding of such a complex body like a slum. I feel like the other part of knowlegde about slums, the hardcore information, need to be explored more under different circumstances in different countries. Hopefully then, I will be able to get a fully understanding of slums and their complexities.

Three stages of life

In his lecture about heterotopia, Lieven de Cauter talked about the three stages of life. Birth- maturity(adulthood)-death can be apllied to everything in life. The birth of Dharavi started some 60 years ago, when marshland was transformed by later habitants into a livable area. Since then, Dharavi grew and grew, attracting more people from all over the country to settle.Nowadays, the borders of Dharavi are about fixed; expansion is by law impossible, and inside the tissue free space is very rare. Not only by size, but also by economical and social power, Dharavi has become mature; able to particpate in the big play of Mumbai. With the plan of Mukesh Meta, the death of Dharavi as it is becomes clear and visible, as an announced suicide. Would Dharavi be mature enough to fight for an annulment of their death sentence? Or would Dharavi be reincarnated by this plan ?

transformations

Transformations: the changeability of space

Dharavi is one of the most densest areas of Mumbai. People are stuck together in a place where shortage of space is a common feature. And still, habitants find a way to create more space inside Dharavi's boundaries.Spaces with existing use are transformed in a multifuntional use. Sometimes forever, sometimes temporal. Like a street, that has been partly covered with a green cloth in order to create an altar for muslims. The street isn't anymore just a street; inside it's character is another function embedded that also changes and influences the appearance of the street. It transforms the street in something more. The normally thought fixed infrastructure appears to be actually very flexible, by inventing and allowing the multiple use it can contain. In some areas of Dharavi, for instance Yasmin Road, the street can be divided in layers, that each contain another use. Those layers are not completely fixed, since the use can change by night or day. Market stables are in some areas in the morning packed like big brown lumps, while in the evening they unfold and transform the pavement in a shop.Time of unfolding depends on the area; in other places its the opposite. Some places on the border become open space during sunday; the normally with cars occupied parking space changes in cricketfields and meeting places. A square transforms every time when it changes use, like playground or place to hang laundry besides circulation and distribution. All examples of the abillity of the habitants of Dharavi how to optimize space, without losing identity. In a certain sense, they are more developped then us when it comes to those hot items listed above. Forced because of a lack of space, they create spontaneus new places that enrich and change the topology of the space. Charles Correa was talking about the necessity of increasing the amount of land in order to create more public space and facillities to host more people. In a certain way, the people of Dharavi already applied his idea in a more inventive, complex way then I imagined at forehand.

hello who are you? where do you come from?

My frustration

Eventually, because things got out of control, we had to close earlier then expected. I felt very frustrated, because of the feeling that I couldn't give them as much in return as I wanted. Of course, the children had a wonderfull afternoon, but what about the elder people who didn't have the chance to react or to pass by? How would they feel about the intervention? I still agree with the idea of listening IS sharing, but to get people really into this thing, they probably should know you a little bit better. Knowing that you are there without any other interest then getting to know the people to understand their lifes and situation, to understand their complexity without any financial benefit. And of course, anything about my life is free to ask as well, but since there was a lack of trust and probably interest, almost nobody wanted to know. In a mutual relationship, this would be inevidable. To get to know somebody takes time, something that was lacking. More time in our area, Transit Camp, could perhaps improve the relationships and credibility, and with that the sincere participation. More preparation time and execution time for our intervention itself is also essential in order to give everybody the opportunity to express theirselves within a well organized frame. For example with the help of some parents, the children would not hit each other with cardboards and would understand the whole purpose of those boards. Now it felt like amateurism, something I think will not contribute to a more open positive attitude towards ' guru'.

the intervention

You speak, we listen

Charles Correa asked in his lecture the question: "what could I do to interfere in order to get a better understanding?" A better understanding depends on what has to be understand, in this case the people of Transit Camp because they ARE Transit Camp.But why should the people give the information we need if they get nothing in return? With a dictated method to extract the information we want to have, leaving no space or choice to the sources what they actually want to say. No matter if their information contributes to a better understanding or not; just the possibility to tell what they want to tell you. In our way, we wanted to give something back.Promises cannot be made, since they deceive; money cannot be given since we are not fortunate enough and might endanger the possibility to work for next researchers . Left alone the reactions they could evoke. All the time, we asked the habitants specific questions to get a certain information and knowledge. Now we would just listen what they want to say to us, without any goal or method behind. The people would decide in their way if they want and what they want to tell us. By just listening you empower the people, creating a base to be trusted and therefore willing to share the information required to understand Transit Camp. In the morning, with a big colourfull box, we walked into the little streets to see if people wanted to say, to share something. Lots of children made drawings. Some older people gave us little notes. We invited them to come later in the afternoon to the covered public space on Mahatma Ghandi road for a exposition and a little snack. To see their nagar framed with our eyes and camera's and read what the other habitants wanted to share. In the public space, that is frequently used for parties and weddings etc, we prepared our exhibition of Transit Camp. More then 200 colour pictures were hanged on the green walls of the space. In a part, we bound big white cardboards to give the people the opportunity to react on each other and on our intervention. Just a little bit before 5 pm. the children were squased against the fences of the public space, begging when they could enter.Finally, we opened the fences, and a real stampede of screaming children run into the space, directly occupying the white boards. We never expected so many children, so we had to buy more paper and crayons. Within their enthusiasm, little frustrations and aggressions towards other children appeared. Some started to fight over paper and crayons. The distribution of the materials didn't work out properly, since the children were unable to create a line and wait for their turn. Meanwhile, older people came in to see the pictures we took from their area. With attention they watched the photos, and we really wanted to know what they thought about them, but we coulnd't of course.If they wanted, they could approach us, or write something down, what didn't happen. And that is their right.

Transit Camp - part 3

A big street, fruitstables on the side, lots of people working and passing by. Children heading to school or playing games on the street. "hello, what's your name?" Two storey high buildings, sometimes three, always with ladders to reach the first floor. Houses form blocks, cutted by little streets that are no streets. Dark narrow streets at the back door of the houses create private atmosphere for washing and ventilation, although everybodies front door is always open. Narrow light streets with people, especially women, sitting in front of their houses paying attention to their children or are working because there is not enough space inside. Yet enough space for people to pass and continue their journey. And colours everywhere. From higher floors, you can hear the roaring buzzing sound of sewing machines. Several propellers try to ventilate young men, working with their upmost attention to create sublime embroidery while sitting on their knees all day long. Working, washing, sleeping , eating; everything happens on the same space. Outside lies an unknown world. Back on the main dominant street, where shops forming borders to the inner housing block structure. Especially groceries and garment stores struggle because of the competition; but they compete without a campaign. On the corners of the blocks, little buildings serve to get rid of little and big messages; sometimes even for free! Orange signs with an exclamation inform about the schedule of the garbage service that only takes away but doesn't clean according to the petrifying smell, leaving unmistakable stains. Turn right, into another bright little street. Cane decorates the sides of the street; they seem to welcome strangers with their bowing and bending bodies. Woman sitting on the ground, weaving baskets and brooms to be sold somewhere outside Transit Camp by sons and husbands, surrounded by their little (grand)children.With a smile they make within half an hour a basket for you, meanwhile talking about everything that comes up. Then for a change take left, back to one of the main streets for a spicy samosa or sweet biscuits. Suddenly incense reaches your nose. Over there; a covered part of a street has been changed in a beautifull altar that illuminates the whole street, but still IS a street. Again in between main streets and houses, shadow brings relief and silence. Walking inside the piece, till eventually you will end up in a broader busy street again. in out in out....

Transit Camp -part 2

Transit Camp -part 2

60 years ago, my mother came from Bijapur to Mumbai to sell her self-made baskets. Transit Camp didn't exist yet; there was only marshland here. Then the BMC came to fill up the land for construction, but my mother already lived here in a hut.Now she lives in a house with me and 20 people from the family. Only 10 years ago, we were still living in huts. But the conditions were very poor and unsafe; lots of dogs entered our homes. This is the best place to live because we are very close to the train stations. That is really important for our work; we make brooms. But my oldest son works at the BMC; he also needs to travel a lot.

Mumbai?? I never go outside Dharavi.Here the children can play, and it's safe, because I can keep an eye on them and they know the place.

Transit Camp -part 1

Inside Dharavi, nested between Mahatma Ghandi and 90 feet road, more then 60.000 people live in a nagar called Transit Camp. From the map, the grid structure of streets with housing blocks gives the idea of a structured area. But streets are not just streets, blocks are not just blocks and in between happens something that is related to changeability and identity.A part of a street becomes a temple, streets become a factory for a certain product, open spaces change every time by desired need. Hindus, muslims and christians peacefully live together, spread out over the 12 blocks originally planned by the Bombay Municiple Cooporation some 30-40 years ago.Meanwhile, a 13th block has been attached to the former grid, lacking the apparently clear structure of other blocks, but with more open public spaces inside. The nagar has a history with people coming and going; perhaps that's the reason why it's called Transit Camp. And still, workers in the zawira and garment sector come from distant places in the north to work here for a couple of months and then return to their families. Others, like the ' monkey ' people from the south, made a transition in profession inside the camp in order to survive. As the close(d) community of Transit Camp distinguish theirselves from the rest of Dharavi, 3 classes can be distinguished inside the nagar.The classes can be directly related to their position in the real estate, where in the lowest class consists of households that do not own a house, but pay rent.

Yasmin road

Heading towards an unknown area of Dharavi in the night to examine the activities and flows of a street might not be such a good idea. We all had the feeling of insecurity raised by the first sight of our street, Yasmin Road.This area seemed not only more precarious in a certain way, but also the attitude of the people was different, more hostile. Or perhaps they expressed their awareness and curiosity in a more hostile way then we were used to.Anyway, the research in the night was not recomendable, since the behaviour of especially children and men made it difficult to focus on the work without being rude.I still can't completely put my finger on it, but would really want to know why. We wanted to map the activities of people related to entrances and streets of Yasmin Road, aswell the division made by activities of the pavement itself.Interesting was that ON the street, houses, shacks and little shops were build, and most of them not for temporal reasons.On a certain part of the street, were social housing ruled in vertical way, little shacks have been placed against their walls, like a kind of weed.A beautifull example of the changeabillity of space that has a particular function, but will become in a way multifunctional.The type of changeability can be temporal or cyclic. Someplace else on Yasmin Road for instance, the market stables, actually more cloth on the street, transformed during day in big brown packs, marking the pavement for the night, when they would unfold them again.

just a thought

Today I saw one of those places above your imagination. You try to picture a certain situation or place with knowledge and the fantasy you have, and you discover that it's out of your league. The world you predicted to know has enlarged once again. This time it was a dark labyrinth, completely inside the fortress of brick constructed houses, where you have to guess what is a street or not, and wanders where light would start to shine again. Small streets, sometimes some stone plates over the watersystem, crossing and cutting each other, leading to places you can't foretell. The presence of little lit shops and people walking through confirms the fact that this kind of infrastructure isn't private, but at the same time evokes such an intimacy that I cannot call it public either. I remembered that during the lecture ' streets' by Valerio Franzone he emphasized the vitality of the street, and it's character of not being a void but something 'massive'. I cannot say that the streets I described above were masive or a void; they were both at the same time. Cutted inside a massive block of brick, they seem empty. But inside those streets, life filled them with mass.

Far far away...

Cut through

Turning, turning around and back and forth, inside a labyrinth dominated by blackish smoke and penetrating suffocating smell. Women and men working hard in the heat spread by big self made ovens, where pots are baking inside a cotton cocoon. Open spaces filled up by pots, cley puddles, ovens and people; mind your steps! In narrow streets, people pass each other without touching, yelling or excusing, demanding in a gracious way their body space. Even the old woman over there, sitting on the border between street and open space, varnishing pots, is aware of her body and the space she occupies; with dignity but without the feeling to obstruct, simply because she already posesses this particular place. No running or rushing inside the labyrinth, still going strong in the time it takes, not trying to change it. A Rembrandt or Caravaggio would be estonished by the marevellous play of light, embedded in this somehow surrealistic decor, that seems to be disconnected with modern life so close by.

curiosity and fears: the pictures

curiosity and fears

The understanding of an urban body inside an urban body has different approaches.One of them is to find and understand the border of the two; where one stops and the other starts. Obviously that is not always an easy task, since there exist multiple relations that interweve and combine. Exploring the border by means of senses is a delicate question. After all, senses are personal and time based.Another difficulty is the new environment itself; with a possibe different culture, structure and geographic scenery. Smell, sight, vibes and sound of the boundary of Dharavi would be explored and notated and by means of GPS even located. With two students of JJ school, Richa and Pooja, Alejandra and me kicked of our exploration of Dharavi. Senses in general evoke a certain reaction, mainly expressed by body language. To me, it was very interesting to see and register the behaviour and body language of the group, evoked by the environment. Perhaps a cultural, perhaps personal; some differences in reaction and behaviour between the Indian students and Alejandra became more present during time.Where Alejandra was drawing sketches of the border and it's striking images with curiosity and enthusiasm, the Indian students acted towards the situation with a distance and sometimes fear in a to me gracefull way. Sometimes they even reacted on the open attitude of me and Alejandra, warning us to be precautious or the necessity to change behaviour towards confrontations with the locals.Time and the time of day, played an important role here. Exporing the border made me even more curious to what was happening inside Dharavi, since one is only able to peak and grasp.Later that day, after getting lost from the given route and not willing to walk over the railway track, we finally entered Dharavi in the afternoon, trying to stay close as much as possible to the border.It became clear that also inside Dharavi, borders exist. Sometimes spatially, sometimes socially or even physically, not always visible or lucid. Inside this tissue, people payed more attention to us and our behaviour then outside on the borders, where the atmosphere was completely different. Especially when we stopped to take pictures or made drawings, the area around us suddenly filled with curious people, causing sometimes congestion of the place. The intensity of curious people was much higher then I ever experienced myself, that perhaps had to do with the fact that the people here were not informed about our presence and reason. The dawn entered quickly, erasing every trace that could help us to continue our route. Anxiety started to emerge, since the reaction and behaviour of the people started to change somehow, trapped in a web without a map. Till we met Shiva, somehow able to transform the atmosphere and my feelings inmediately with his calm and wise personality.With his help, we've managed to find our way out of Dharavi.

Nightbleat

Arriving in a 'black hole' again; it's probably not a coincidence that every new world I've seen starts with the dark night, enable to give me more then some clues, but stimulates thoughts and imagination. In this case, I started to fret about the work that had to be done in relation with this sensitive and perhaps even fragile environment, and how we could try to establish a kind of balance. Of course , we are not the first group of candidates that invade Dharavi, looking, mapping and asking, perhaps even pushing to receive the desired information. What effect, vision or influence would they have left on it's habitants, and how would they react on us; 'guru ' ? There is so much you want to know about their situation, but how can you get satisfied, without leaving them behind empty? Without the feeling or even fact that they also gained something? In my country, and probably in many others, we have this phrase that says; only for nothing, the sun will shine. The habitants of Dharavi will not differ when it comes to the essence of this phrase. The question will be what they will ask. Or perhaps I should start thinking what I have to offer, what I can give to them to maintain that precious balance.

Love at first sight....

From the airport completely packed and stacked inside a mutated english cab to our Indian home at the border of Mumbai's new dazzling hotspot; Dharavi. Heavy dust filled warm air swarms around the cab, bringing new exciting and strange perfumes to me. Weak streetlights and flickering little stars reveal in a humble way pieces of this oriental delight. Oh daylight, I beseech you to run towards the sky to illuminate this new world that I desperately need to explore............

Cover Kolkata guide

Kolkata case

Kolkata, a city of joy to Indians, for us a city of dispair. Making a toeristic guide about slums in this mega city wasn't an easy task. Time passed by looking for information and maps that could make this black hole understandable and explainable. Deeper and deeper in the spiderweb, trying to unfold it's structure and reason. Then Newtons apple hit us, illuminating the idea of total absence of structures and rules as a focusing point. In peace with the facts, we actually managed to clearify a certain part of Kolkata, without losing it's main striking character. Even in the presentation, the chaotic aspect of Kolkata unintendedly ruled our explanations and elucidations. A relief that there's the guide, our guide, to clearify any confusion......

Mapping smell at Papsouwselaan

Biomapping in Delft

smell, sound, sight, sense; exploring the environment like a baby.Even more like a blind man or deaf-mute, since some senses are disabled. How would they experience streets, parks, highways, sites etc ? Christian Nold showed maps of certain urban areas made by human senses, in wich the conventional understanding of mapping an area is turned upside down.They show a humane approach and understanding towards what is mapping actually about, and what should be their goal.The method is called bio mapping, refering to our human senses as a powerfull tool for mapping. After some inspiration and contemplation we headed to the Papsouwselaan, where we asked several people to participate in a little investigation about smell. The aim was to derive places of interest along a 300 meter strip with only the aid of smell. Participants had to wear sound- blocking headphones and a blindfold in order to be completely focused on smell alone. The smell had to be judged by intensity and type; a good and pleasant or bad and horrible. Some people were looking strange at us, as if we wanted to rob them with an original but easy way, and refused to cooperate. Others were very curious, and discovered not only that they had a different idea about the environment before participating in the experiment, but also the power of their smell sense when all other senses are blocked. We placed the results in seperate schemes, showing the intensity and type of smell along the strip. We also brought all the results of the different participants in one map, that shows the strip and it's experience in general. The day of our experiment was very windy and cold; what would be the result when it would be a warm and windfree one ? Some smells were very volatile; are they always there, or was it just temporarily? These and other questions become important if one has the intention to make a trustfull map about a certain area using bio mapping.

"The difference between what we do and what we could do would suffice to solve most of the world's problems"

Gandhi

clocking

Maps can give different information by it's representation. The reality as it appears, cannot be represented in any kind of map; only certain aspects of interest can be shown. In our Western world, the notion of time became in a certain way ambiguous. The nature of things that have their own time and rhytm, are clashing with the made -up artificial time on which modern city life is based.But those two are not related to eachother, or working together. Instead, they fight against each other, since there is apparently only space for one. In rural areas, man is more directly related to nature and it's time.While urban areas are generally dominated by time represented by numbers and digits. This map tries to show both notions of time, in order to make people in urban areas aware of their use and notion of time that enables the connection with the time of nature.