People do breath

INTERVENTION

2008-03-18T08:04:00.000-07:00

An intervention for a further interaction with the people and a deeper comprehension of the place; to give something back and share what we are

YOU SPEAK, WE LISTEN
STEP 1: WE GO
Walk through the streets of Transit Camp asking the people to collaborate with our ‘golden box’, drawing, writing or telling us what they want to express.
STEP 2: THEY COME
After announcing it, we meet at the main public space in the area. There we continue recollecting and listening what people say. We also offer them the possibility to see the pictures we took in the area, where sometimes we also appear. For us these pictures represent our interaction and involvement with the people and their space. After we share snacks with them.
PREPARATION
We are preparing our intervention; we need Mr Paul’s support to be able to use the public space in Transit Camp. He is laughing when Pooja explains him our intention… It would be nice to know what he is thinking, he always seems relaxed, he is in his terrain; he is comfortable.
We can open the gate, but he would not assure that people will come, maybe the school is a better place, but we do not want to reduce the activity to one age group.
He thinks that language will enable us to get understood… he is right. We will try announcing the event and asking the people to come.
Paul knows how people think here; he says that no more than a 5% of the people will collaborate with us. We would be happy with that, a 5% of 60.000 people are a lot, maybe we cannot handle the situation. Those that are iliteral can speak and we will write for them.
Paul thinks that people will get irritated by us because when we ask for their dreams we are, at the same time, making the illusion of their fulfilment. The word ‘dream’ has already the connotation of something that may never become real, that unconsciously stays forever in your mind. This frustration we do not want to provoke, we better give the chance to the people to really say - writing, talking or drawing- whatever they want.
INTRODUCTION
These few days we have been trying to understand they way your economy, your society and your space work; in other words, we have been observing how you work, live individually, in family and in community, and how you move and order all this.
But, for good or for bad, we have not been able to leave behind our fixed ideas, programmatic attitude and pre structured mentality, not allowing ourselves to be a part of your reality.
In this step we want to get rid of our prejudices and ideas that drive our thoughts with no remedy.
We intend to know your feelings, fears, desires, your past, present and future, we aim to share dreams and realities.
We are here to listen whatever you want to tell us.
For these purposes we invite you to come tomorrow, at 5:00 P.M., to this place.
Thank you very much.

INTERVIEW WITH Miriam, from S.H.E.D. N.G.O.

2008-03-18T01:54:00.000-07:00

S. H. E. D. : Society for Human and Environmental Development
Miriam is such a busy woman; there is a lot of sotial work to do in Dharavi, and she has the intention to do as much as she can. It is already twenty years since she started doing this work.
I did this drawing while waiting for Miriam to finish with an appointment (with the sex workers of Dharavi) that she had before. These two people were speaking in Hindi, but there were few things in English that they were saying a lot: election, democratic, supervision, coordination, family, community, project, country, future,... all the best...
These concepts are all questionable in Dharavi, because they exist, they are necessary and in danger. And the relationships between and around all this concepts make the development possible.
We also wish all the best to Dharavi and its people.

Mr. CHARLES CORREA_ Lecture in Dharavi

2008-03-17T12:28:00.000-07:00

“People move to the city because they need a job, not in search a house.”
“We need ingenious ways to open up the land.”

We need:

INCREMENTALITY, PLURALISM, PARTICIPATION, INCOME GENERATION, EQUALITY, OPEN-TO-SKY SPACE, DISAGGREGATION, MALLEABILITY OF SPACE

“Tell me how fast you travel and I'll tell you who you are.”

IN AURANGABAD

2008-03-14T00:44:00.000-07:00

Our rikshaw was just great... If I lived in Aurangabad I would always call him!!! because he was just such a caracter, really tall, all dressed in white, a pacient, helpful and smilling guy. He could be a perfect rikshaw driver for any film, but he was real.
We arrived to the Ellora caves after one hour of breeze journey... we did not expect to see anything so amaizingly beautiful.
Is it architecture?, sculpture? I think this is more than that. Only believing and full of faith is that human can create so malvelous spaces.

A boy, playing th flute, inspired Risky beauty... dreams of architects, All carved, all extracted,
meditations in this budist temple. engineers and all dreamers. nothing added, unbelievable.

Aurangabad's original name was 'Khidki' or window. The Dhwajasthambha Kailash Temple (cave No. 16), with its symmetric composition, faced the valley with a huge long window... a tribute to nature and a reminder to the architect.

For this temple 3,000,000 cubic feet of rock had to be quarred, designed and sculpted.

For good reasons is this one of the most famous monuments in India.

I was feeling that I was not happy enought to be there, that I was not taking the enought time and energy to absorve and observe its details, its monumentality and splendour. I want to go back!

Ejem, ejem... diverse religions in the world, different gods, various tabues and contradictions.
Imagin a Catholic church with such a sculpture...
It will never happen, I guess...

RAMU and his family

2008-03-13T16:07:00.000-07:00

Ramu and his father Durgap came to Dharavi 60 years ago from a region between the states of Karnataka and Maharastra. They both are Hinduist priests, as their earlier generations also were. On the beginning they were established near the 90 Feet Road, but, because it was enlarged, they were moved to Transit Camp.
Since their arrival to Mumbai they worked for the Bombay Port Trust, carrying ships’ goods in the evening and taking care of the temple in the morning. After 55 years they were able to dedicate all their energies to the temple they had established in T.C.

Ramu at his temple, were he invited us

Ramu has three wifes that, by desire of his father, he got married in order to increase the size of the family. This has resulted in ten daughters and six sons, and most of them live close to each other, establishing a small and condensed community of nineteen children and twenty one children that mainly work on manufacturing brooms. It is an aged family, the mother of Ramu counts 118 years old.

Durgap has, more or less, 105 years old Ramu and his mother The daughter of Ramu, at her sister's house

Once every five years, in the month of October and together with another 500 people of T.C., they go to their original village to celebrate a religious ceremony where Ramu gets possessed and where they dance every night in front of the temple for nine days.
This big celebration only happens once in five years.

BROOMS

2008-03-13T15:49:00.000-07:00

The broom manufacturing is one of the main economic activities that take place in Transit Camp, Dharavi, and it is a family tradition in which 4 to 5 people of each house are taking part. The process followed to produce the brooms is always the same: first they break the big Khajooa and Tadi leafs that are imported from Dahisae, Veiae, and stored in their houses; with the broken leafs they produce the different parts of the brooms and latter tie them up. Each family works individually, producing around 150 brooms every two or three days, carrying them latter on their head they sell the brooms in other villages for 5 or 10 rupees each. This activity mainly takes place in the street that transversely divides the block number II, converting the street function into a gathering and a working place.

Ramu's family are making brooms and baskets:

Ain't it a nice hat?
This is the rope they use to make the brooms, it is also made by them and with the same Khajooa and Tadi leafs.

YASMIN ROAD, searching for structures

2008-03-11T00:38:00.000-07:00

On Monday evening our walk through started by witnessing a suicide, working became a difficult task, I was very sad… On Tuesday it was a bit better, in the morning and in a less aggressive context, happiness and optimism grew as we worked on. We focussed our attention in the entrances along the road, in the different activities and urban typologies, always following the longitudinal direction of the road.

Mr. MUKESH MEHTA

2008-03-08T12:52:00.000-08:00

Tergiversated intentions, calculated speeches

Mr. Mukesh Mehta is the architect in charge of the redevelopment in Dharavi.

“My aim is to make the Mumbai airport slum free.”

After his power point presentation we all felt frustrated, confused and impotent.

STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN

2008-03-06T11:40:00.000-08:00

Remarks, sensations and perspectives that were noted, located and shared by all the class.
Divided in six different groups, we started from the corners and followed opposite directions walking around Dharavi and the next day we entered the limit and moving across trying to find our way through unpredictable alleys.
Sometimes unconsciously, we searched for the emptiness of the space. The visual, sonorous, odorous and touch compositions are so extremely dense and multilayered that the activity turns tiring, distracting and difficult to comprehend. We all needed spatial silence to rest our intoxicated of information senses.

SMELLS
It gets intensified by the heat, and influenced by the effects of sun or shadow.
The people’s occupations can be smelt.
It increases in narrow streets.
The water smelt bad.
The breeze and the wind helped to give a rest to or overwhelmed noses.
The fish markets, public toilets, sewage conducts, kilns for pottery and the kitchens were easy to recognize by their smell.
The stench could be so bad that it even hurted.
SOUNDS
The traffic sound dominated all the contour of Dharavi. Inside, the sounds turned human, musical and concrete; the tumult of the cars was relegated to a second level, it became a background, not a totality anymore.
The few silent places found, usually located in more peaceful residential areas, where interrupted by the sudden noise of the train or the constant murmur of the factories.
Sound would continuously distract our attention.
We were surprised to hear so many televisions and radios.
The feet of the people produced different rhythms and effects, and bare feet were silent.
Dogs barking and birds singing, animals contributed to the surprising concert of Dharavi.
Diverse religious prayers are sang everywhere, the diversity and freedom of beliefs are happily evident.
TOUCH
Walking sem to be a dance: the body movement, in order to adapt to the busy context, was continuous and undulating. Sometimes it became stressing and aggressive, as people would push and cars rub against us.
It felt safer to move inside the area. In the narrow and solitary streets it was easier to march straight.
Coolness usually meant privacy.
Interruption was a constant.
Our presence provoked the movement of the people, some came to us and some hidded in their houses. We interfered in the surroundings.
SIGHT
Visual continuity and rhythm distinguished the border and the interior.
Light and darkness were consequences of the different urban typologies.
Flags and symbols expressed people’s identities.
The nature was much more predominant in the inside than in the limit of Dharavi.
Opened doors confirmed the communing and welcoming attitude of people.
The panoramic silhouette of Dharavi was in huge contrast with its city background.
The poor infrastructure, the lack of sanitation and the immediateness of solutions was visually recognizable.
Care and cleanness are promptly found when observing individual behaviours and contexts. When observing around without concreting the point of view disorder and dirtiness govern the scene.

Mr. BHAU KORDE

2008-03-04T13:09:00.000-08:00

He considers himself as a person who knows the streets, the streets of Dharavi. He helps the people yheir, aiming the people for dialogue and for an organization from within, influencing for the peace and unity of this multicultural society. He is not a politician, nor either a social worker, and he is sceptical about them, and cosiders the media as an often bad influence for the people, as it creates insecuriries and confrontations.

About the redevelopment plan, he says it will detroy Dharavi. The goverment, he says, will redevelop the land, but not the human beings.

“High buildings, 'boxes', destroy the community. In multi storey buildings they can not do their businesses.”

“If they are moved poverty will start. They are not poor now, they are not hanging around; they are busy.”
About their meeting place, where they talk and try to solve problems:

“When we started there were no chairs, but we just wanted to meet.”

“People in Dharavi are honest, but most of them are uneducated...”

This man gave me hopes... he thinks that we should help to solve the problems we observe, he is very sincere and has good intentions.

WHAT I SAW AND INTERPRETATED

2008-03-03T13:35:00.000-08:00

Here we started our walk around Dharavi, it was promising...

People is recolecting rubish that will be recicled near by.

There was no water in this river, only garbage and rats in a puddle...

Everything is usefull, energy and materials do not disapear, they get transformed.

Beautifull: the tree is integrated in the building, why to cut it. Informality gives good chances.He looked more angry that this drawing shows. I was impressed on how reality shows itself, transparent... activities and workare seen, doors opened.
Bare feet recycling shoes.

Shiny happy people. In search for clients?
Gathering in the pavement... is this their habitual commun space?, I guess the answer is yes. The women and the children were talking and eating, feeling safe because they were together. Looking to the street, building with panoramic view to the road.Drawing became imposible, the crowd was oppresive. I stoped when the touching went too far...

TRAVELING TO MUMBAI

2008-03-02T00:35:00.000-08:00

The waiting room in the Milan airport was occupied by a multicultural international crowd; the people filled the space eating, juggling, reading or looking around. I felt living a hidden moment in a terminal, submerged in a concentration of reasons, paths and destinies. In a few hours we all would be reaching Mumbai.

TOURISTIC GUIDE TO KOLKATA

2008-02-29T00:30:00.000-08:00

Reality tours, anxious and worried tourists that need to understand the real world: Go to Kolkata, see the way they live, talk to the people and feel the immeasurable differences and resemblances, see what disorder means and forget about accurate calculations… try then to come back.

When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about. Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955),

SINK IN THE CITY

2008-02-19T09:04:00.000-08:00

The air is humid and cold tonight.
Close your eyes and contain respiration, here comes another one...

Keep on moving arms and legs. Contracted your belly, your heavy head moves disoriented trying not to get lost from its body.
Exhausted and breadless beats your heart full of panic.
Follow the light, get impulse and stretch your neck to seek the surface.
Come on, breath.

You are alone and the wind blows furious, something has kidnapped you, keeps on playing, you are the yo-yo.
Tiny creature: what the hell can you do to escape, to get away from this schizophrenic gigantic that has absorbed you?
Better not losing faith, better think and be aware, react or you will die.
Gulp and take air, a good mouthful…

The remote whistle has decreased. Gods have calmed down.
It is time to start again, the moment to find a way to survive. Cruel is destiny and your last chance could this be.
Your wet feet slide the water, look around… It seems no perspective does exist in such an infinite horizontality.
Only a shadow is distinguished in the monochromatic uncertain distance. It’s a piece of wood! Take it.
You are a bit safer now you can float.
Inhale, exhale, deeply respire…

It is not easy to survive being a castaway and you are doing it well. Do not hesitate, never give up. Perhaps someday you will experience what equilibrium means, dwelling a piece of land.
Time has passed and you have become a genuine navigator.
For the moment you have a floor, a roof, a bucket to collect the water from the rain and some reserves.
The boat you have piece by piece constructed seems to be stable enough to combat water and wind.
But the horizon keeps still, quiet and monotonous. No land seems to appear.

So much wind, this might be a storm. The water is coming inside.
Hurry up, hold the reserves.
The boat is destroyed.
But remember not to cease fighting, otherwise hunger, thirst and sadness will kill you.
Breathe…

What a contradiction, stepping the ground and feeling the waves, becoming a prisoner of the undertow in a dry land that used to be fertile and generous but appears now scanty and selfish.
Social, political and economic are the new rivers that carry the slipping leftovers of the organized richness to end in uncontrollable oceans of poverty.
Here the paradox of the human egocentric order, where disorder, displaced and concentrated in the forgotten peripheries, keeps on flowing. Like a hidden natural force, clandestine immeasurable energy, chaos gets transformed and moved, is always there and never dies.

How hypocrite, world’s clean hands and red nails, covering dirty armpits and pestilent feet, diamond jewels that hide muddy ears, fake eyelashes mask squinting eyes; how incoherent, studying the ignorance, protecting what attacks and recycling its excesses.
Human civilization has dressed up in luxurious high rise glass perfume but sweats stinky garbage and misery.
Entropy, out in the cold, concentrated and distilled, powerful and pestilent, grows like a sea of essence that expensive cologne can not hide anymore.

Having only ten euros a day is not such a big deal when only for forty eight hours, but imagine just for a moment how would it actually feel to live in such conditions.
The train, the morning coffee and croissant, lunch and dinner; these already are too many expenses for a 10 euro.
Consider what would it happen if you where not so privileged, not enjoying a soft bed in a cosy room; no saved money, documented identity or a formally invested and patented live. How would it feel having no possessions? Are you free from your systematized routine? Food far away while you being hungry; creased feet unprotected reel searching for a firm soil where to stay and get dried, your mouth parched.
Anonymous between billions of creatures that struggle in their right to live, you must know that land has its owners and the air its rules. Ignoring the law will not exempt you from its often distorted execution. Forget about insecurities and uncertainties, feeling impotent will not help at all.

Choose, calculate, think; go and come, forget and affront; search the ways, find the tools; as much as you can, don’t forget what you want; be aware and retain; have courage, no complains; protest, praise, imagine, trust and love.

CHRONOTOPE

2008-02-18T14:53:00.000-08:00

Time is a matter of use, if not ask it to a city… Time on itself does not exist; it is a consequence of movement, energy and space. It is good to know the real value of time, and its furtiveness, its relativity and simultaneity. Right now, Dharavi - for example- is living now another time than us, because its reality, spatial and of content and context, is different. This is applicable to the concept of history, where what we call epochs are dilated, remaining in any present.

A GENERIC MAP

2008-02-18T13:28:00.000-08:00

A GENERIC MAP

Paul Klee represented the generic city in this drawing, where structures are overlapped infinitely, centre is lost and patterns repeated; where it is easy to get disoriented and, as in an ocean, only the stars can help to understand the space. Flags and symbols are, accustomed, the only identity of the place. This is a generic map.

BAD PICTURES

2008-02-15T17:11:00.000-08:00

Relativity makes it difficult to search for something bad or good, they are so subjective and unpredictable. The diversity of opinions and ways to read the pictures each of us showed made them precious art works. They had the capability to catch our curiosity. With unprecedent objectives I could get free of learned schemes and norms... it is a good exercise trying not to like, you may find yourself interested in new things. But I think that our ego and our earlier aesthetic experience makes it very difficult to really try to do anything wrong. Never before had I been dedicated one whole day to take pictures of my daily life environment. This action gives the chance to reobserve and reinterpret what habits and routines hidde.

SEQUENCES

2008-02-15T12:53:00.000-08:00

In this workshop I noticed that sometimes I do not appreciate the power and efficiency of something that, as a matter of course, I do, in this case taking pictures. Exploiting the possibilities of a media is not easy, and the use you make of a tool will determine the results their effectiveness. With a sequence of pictures time can be constringed, synthesized. In this workshop I noticed that sometimes I do not appreciate the power and efficiency of something that, as a matter of course, I do. Exploiting the possibilities of a media is not easy, and the use you make of a tool will determine the results their effectiveness. With a sequence of pictures time can be constringed, synthesized...Reflected coffe

BODY: CONTENT AND CONTAINER

2008-02-14T11:40:00.000-08:00

The zig-zag lines represent the skin sensibility, and the circles are the areas where the skin becomes more fragil, sensitive and thin. I tried to imagine the bones and organs underneath the skin, and the way the lines of our "envelop" are shaped in order to get adapted to what they contain. The mouth, the belly, ears, eyes and nose are some of the orificies that allow the exterior and our interior to interact and for that reason I tried to emphasize them.

CRESCENT MOTIVATION

2008-02-12T09:17:00.000-08:00

Motivation letter to "go know", january 2008

Once again, these Christmas, the little altar embedded in the wall of the entrance hall at my home in Spain welcomed me as I entered the door. This is a special altar; some beautiful antique restored Indian window shutters that my mom bought near the historic Red Forts in New Delhi and latter restored, adding to its background a painting of a Hindu god; a humanized fish that holds up children of different races with its many arms, representing solidarity and equality. With sparkling candles, perfumed incense and pictures or poems, it shelters my mother’s wishes, prays, and hopes.

The Indian culture has inspired and delighted to all those who I know have experienced it. People are happy and wise, they say, and they also assure that it is not easy to see what there happens, it is a hard reality which is to be found. And I think to myself: what could be better than study and analyze this reality, to get deep into such an intriguing and multilayered urban condition and maybe then become to a better understanding of our own truth, and so be able to help to change things, to help them and to help ourselves, to knock down (maybe just a few bricks) the frontier that divides the world, an unfair and shellfish frontier.

I’ve always enjoyed inquire into other cultures and to live them as profoundly as possible. For this reason is that I have traveled by myself whenever I have had the time. I first traveled by my own when I was fourteen years old to work in Ireland for a month and a half. Latter I traveled to New York, I was older and a bit more mature, explored more around, walked along the streets, met a lot of people, and got impressed by this imposing and multicultural city. One year ago I went to Denmark, and worked in a farm for two months, experiencing another way of live and meeting a lot of people from different countries, with different necessities, and so, with different working rhythms.

My father is from Chile, and so we went all together there in order to meet our family and roots. It was so impressing, the social and economic differences were extreme, sometimes even frightening, and for the first time saw squatter settlements and people living in really poor conditions. At these places people had to accept each other and learned not to complain about their situation, they just accepted it and sometimes worked hard, other times lost hopes.

I think it is very important to see and feel the world that we inhabit from all its possible corners and gaps. But traveling is not enough, I need advise; want to learn to program and to apply what I learn. I think that this experience would be so didactive and useful to my future. I want to work there in team, share the experience and apply it in the best possible way. Reading the slum of Dharavi and expressing it and trying to order a little this apparent chaos is a very ambitious approach and this studio has a privileged program in order to learn to do so and latter have tools to understand other places, cities and culture.

CONSTRUCTING OUR HOUSE IN A DAY

2008-02-12T03:00:00.000-08:00

When we started constructing our little hunt we only had a few pallets and those metalic fences that are shown in the pictures. But we were very optimistic, and we realized that with those two trees we also had a basic structure (this was a very solicitated location in the settlement, also because it was in front of the commun area with its fire place and its beautiful entrance), as the fences were already provided with a kind of beam. Our neighbours accepted to share one of the walls with us, but they

quikly covered it with plastics in search for intimacy... We were surprised, but still we discovered a little hole that served us to nose out in their place... jeje. Those red tubes gave a funny image to our roof, and could be use for recollecting rain water, carried to a buried watertank by those pipes that Alexander is holding (picture left). The little lake in the middle of our community reflected our movements and steps, we chosed this site, among other resons like its discrection, because with this water we could do the launtry, cook or prevent fires. We were lucky for such a shiny blue sky that accompanied our constructive day.
The diversity of the spaces and solutions we found was just great, spontaneity and imagination helped us to find materials and construct with them.

Basic necesities were also taken into account. In the limit of the settlement, facing another lake, a toilet was designed with an old broken chair and a hole in the ground, with nice views and newspaper included. A plastic courtain provided a bit of privacy.

Once we had this green-effect roof, that provided us with light and heat, we invited our friends to come inside, they enjoyed it. Yasmin and I were not sure if going out to smoke or not, we didn't, it was a bad decision, in such a small house, and sharing it with another four people, you have to be so careful on what you do, more that usually.

In the night, we celebrated with warm fire and wine. Geraldine, Jasper and Stephan stayed for the cold night... so brave!!