Abstract
The research output comprises two installation artworks developed in 2014 for the Unbox Festival and its preliminary Unbox LABS event in Ahmedabad. The artworks responded to the informal settlement housing in the city, investigating the relationship between physical and digital senses of space for the inhabitants, and how built and imagined narratives can create new visual and embodied commentaries about the occupation of space in cities.
Sermon worked with a team of interdisciplinary collaborators, Dr Claire McAndrew, Delhi-based architect Swati Janu and Vivek Muthuramalingam, a photographer from Banaglore. Sermon led the installation development. In the LABS event the team constructed a bamboo and muslin cube onto which were projected texts and images developed during visits to the settlements. For the installation in Delhi, a telematic installation connected visitors with London and placed them in a three by four metre space, directly referencing the settlement area. The installation artworks were used to develop co-creative audience participation around issues identified in the context of India’s increasingly densely populated cities and sought to understand the personal experiences of residents in the city's informal settlements. This contributed to international dialogue on informal housing, connectivity and social engagement as part of the Future Cities theme.
Often referred to as ‘slums’, the city’s informal, illegal settlements spring from an unforgiving urban clearance programme. The research revealed resilient, self-organised communities, lost in the resettlement process yet able to articulate their social mobility and use of communications technology, and evidenced a new type of urbanism based around communities’ self-made solutions.
Installed at the National Institute of Design Ahmedabad in 2014, the project was presented in conferences (Edinburgh 2017, Krems 2017) a showcase (Southbank Centre 2014), a documentary (Gwangju Design Biennale 2015) and in print (Metaverse Creativity 2016).
Sermon worked with a team of interdisciplinary collaborators, Dr Claire McAndrew, Delhi-based architect Swati Janu and Vivek Muthuramalingam, a photographer from Banaglore. Sermon led the installation development. In the LABS event the team constructed a bamboo and muslin cube onto which were projected texts and images developed during visits to the settlements. For the installation in Delhi, a telematic installation connected visitors with London and placed them in a three by four metre space, directly referencing the settlement area. The installation artworks were used to develop co-creative audience participation around issues identified in the context of India’s increasingly densely populated cities and sought to understand the personal experiences of residents in the city's informal settlements. This contributed to international dialogue on informal housing, connectivity and social engagement as part of the Future Cities theme.
Often referred to as ‘slums’, the city’s informal, illegal settlements spring from an unforgiving urban clearance programme. The research revealed resilient, self-organised communities, lost in the resettlement process yet able to articulate their social mobility and use of communications technology, and evidenced a new type of urbanism based around communities’ self-made solutions.
Installed at the National Institute of Design Ahmedabad in 2014, the project was presented in conferences (Edinburgh 2017, Krems 2017) a showcase (Southbank Centre 2014), a documentary (Gwangju Design Biennale 2015) and in print (Metaverse Creativity 2016).
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Place of Publication | National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India |
| Publication status | Published - 7 Mar 2014 |
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Paul Sermon
- School of Art and Media - Professor of Visual Communication
- Centre for Arts and Wellbeing
- Cities, Injustice and Resistance Research and Enterprise Group
Person: Academic