[Applause]
about six years ago I walked into the
office of the Bangalore Metro Rail
Corporation and I asked them if they
were interested in having art in their
metro stations took me a while to
convince them and then finally in 2014
they said yeah you can use the Pina
metro station it’s really far away you
know you can’t I try your experiments
there and we kind of started an art
studio at the Pina metro station after
much convincing and they allowed us to
go in there while the station was still
under construction I am a citizen of
Bangalore I have lived here all my life
and like many of you probably have
really struggled with the change that
the city has gone through over the last
15 years the metro has become a symbol
of this dynamic change on one end it is
a hope for a rapid transit system that’s
going to save us from our traffic woes
and on the other hand there are these
wounds and scars in this city of the
displacement the tree cutting the
traffic jams that the Metro construction
has caused and this mess is actually
something that I’m quite interested in
Oh another thing that has happened is
that with this change in Bangalore you
can’t really tell the difference between
say Jaipur and he knows or ulcer and
Maratha like what becomes of place and
how these places are unique from each
other and this is something that really
bothered me and I was trying to think
about whether the arts had the ability
to help replace and rebuild place based
identities in the city of Bangalore so
what what we did was we talked to the
Metro got their permission and set up
art studios here this is at the Pina
metro station and at the Cubbon Park
metro station and now more recently a
chick pet metro station and started to
use these spaces as a way to think about
art and design practice
in the public sphere I’m an educator and
an artist and one of the things that I
strongly believe in is that education
needs to happen in the real world and so
having the opportunity to move my
classroom from the shishi Institute of
Art and Design to a metro station was
fantastic we had students from public
space design from visual communications
contemporary art practice students who
were interested in marketing and
branding students who were interested in
human centered design and they all
became part of this interdisciplinary
studio and what we did was we put our
stake in the ground and we said okay
this place this metro station and the
community around it is going to become
our lab for this next period of time and
we’re going to study the history the
geography the sociology the economics
the transitions in this space and we can
have had spent you know should we do
short term projects and long term
projects but this becomes our lab the
Metro has been fantastic with us and
here you see a student presenting her
prototype to the Metro engineers and
officials and they then tell her whether
she’s able to drill into the ground or
build this or will it be a safety issue
or whatever and they are in dialogue
with her about her prototype not abyss
girl is all of 20 years old and she’s be
able to have this conversation and work
with a metro engineer in order to
develop her project
this piece over here is gives you a
little bit of a hint of how we think
about rebuilding place-based identities
so Irish car Ginelli and again another
20 year-old walked into Pina for the
first time and she said this place is
really dusty and brown and grey and
that’s all I can see I mean this isn’t
in the biggest and industrial area in
all of Asia and she went searching for
the colors in Pina so what she did was
she went around and she took a hundred
photographs over a period of three days
and then started pulling out the Pantone
shades in each of these photographs and
developed a an infographic order
bargraph you might even say of the
colors of Pina making it visible that
actually Pina did have colors and you
just had to open your eyes and observe
to students here one at the cabin park
metro station and the other at the Pina
metro station public space design
students creating seating for public
spaces and here this this this is
working but the image over there on the
left is a piece of seating that is
inspired by how people rest in Cubbon
Park and it’s been brought into the
Cubbon Park metro station people can
lean against a tree in the middle over
there or sit on a log or sit on the
ground and there’s different levels that
this student is created and here this
student was very interested when you go
and you’re in a public space like the
Metro do you actually go and sit next to
a stranger or do you leave the space or
in between and you sit somewhere else
and so here she’s organised a way for
you to move your chair if you want to
sit separately or move closer if you
want to sit next to the people around
you now what I’m going to talk about is
as much to do with your civics class as
it has to do with your art class when
you’re working in a public space and
you’re when you’re working in with
public art practice the idea of public
is not one public it’s not one
homogenized whole and actually the folks
that are sitting here we’re pretty
similar to each other but when we look
at Bangalore there’s a lot of diversity
diversity of language race caste class
and when you’re in engaging in a public
space that’s the beauty of public space
that’s the idea of the Commons now many
people might argue that the Metro you
have to go through a security system to
pass through so is it really a public
space but it’s a public space we need to
claim and if you look over here you see
a ton of people and they’ve all come to
Carbon Park on Sunday and it’s the best
time to actually do work at the carbon
Park station because it’s packed
people from all over the city have got
access to the park now because of the
metro and this is really what we mean by
thinking about our Commons
are they inclusive are they available to
everybody to participate do they have
people do people have access to our open
public spaces here you have Natasha
Sharma who’s created a very simple
intervention and I just loved this one
all she’s done is she’s bought a bunch
of mats fairly cheap and she’s hung them
up on trees in Carbon Park and they’re
there for people to use for their picnic
and put them back on a tree for the next
family to use this really in my view
Mick I mean it gives me goose bumps
because it makes me think about the fact
that we are all so different yet we all
share the same place same space and so
how do we create more opportunities to
make that visible so we’re talking a
little bit about public and the idea of
Commons now let’s talk a little bit
about the Arts why the Arts
what do artists do when we typically
think about the arts and we think about
what artists do we think about
engagement like the arts are interesting
I hear a piece of music oh wow oh I see
something that’s interesting I’m
attracted to it right we think about
engagement but artists do so much more
artists synthesize they envision they
reframe catalyze trigger juxtapose
persuade inform translate narrate
hybridize analyze bridge connect invent
predict play tricks observe critique
provoke think systematically inquire
creatively explore multiple perspectives
and so much more and what we’ve been
able to do with our work is that we see
that the arts allow for different things
here the arts are making the invisible
visible
these are all the metro staff and you
realize through these stories collected
by these two artists that worked with a
group of students at RISD that many of
our metro staff are from bengal and
orissa and here they are sharing their
stories this is a group of students that
just perform this yesterday and they
were performing at the metro station as
the trains pulled in and really trying
to make bring to our minds the idea of
gender and public space and how we think
about women and how we think about
women’s relationship with space and this
is their best dance performance that
just a couple of minutes as the train
pulled in the Piazza create an
atmosphere they’re able to submerge you
in a space that even though you’re
transitioning from one place to the
other you don’t really feel that and
there this is in Carbon Park station as
well and you come down from the park and
you’re in this atmosphere that continues
to be the park the arts give you
goosebumps this is a group of artists
this images from a group of artists
dancers musicians and theatre
practitioners who are using the metro
station to make people aware of how data
is constantly mined from us when we
think about data being mined from our
phones and every action we take on all
of our our media devices we really kind
of forget about it but suddenly when we
think about the same idea as physical so
here when my privacy is invaded
physically I’m much more conscious
however when my privacy is invaded on my
phone suddenly it doesn’t seem to matter
and that’s what these artists were doing
using dance and performance to make that
visible the student here worked with
scrap from the metro scrap yard and
created a sound installation that was
just temporary he would play who was she
on it while people were making their
trip in the evening at Pina metro
station and then he was done and he’s
returned all of that scrap back to the
yard
another student creep Rodney Mehta
created a reading corner at the Cubbon
Park metro station and people were using
it almost like you would be reading in a
study at your home or in a living room
but what she did was she invited
independent bookstores and owners to
come and sell their books at this
station so that we can think about a
different kind of book and learning
space or reading space that’s not just
our large bookstores the arts are
political a couple of months ago I don’t
know if you remember reading in the
papers but the Metro was forced to
remove its signs in Hindi by the Canada
Sangha and there was a lot of pressure
put on the Metro because there was
people was asking why do we have signs
hindi why do we why can’t we only have
science in Canada and in English and
they were forced to remove their science
and this is because language is
political and right now because of the
dynamics of migration people are worried
about the loss of language so what we
did was we invited for Canada poets to
come and curate poems in the station and
think about the beauty of language and
the way that language can evoke
something else and these poems were not
translated into English they were just
in Canada at the station and so people
could just enjoy them whether they
understood them or not at the same time
a group of other artists 12 artists
along with some of our students created
a whole bunch of silent comics that
anybody could understand regardless of
what language you spoke and so part of
what the arts do is that they get to a
problem like this they we don’t kind of
get it on its head and protest about it
necessarily that’s the arts also do that
but we think about playful ways to
engage with an idea and multiple ways to
engage with an idea this here is where
we’re moving one of the things that we
realize is that while being in public
space there are so many people in that
space with so much knowledge and this
was a workshop where we had a whole
series of images of the area in and
around the carbon Park station including
memory Road and people were coming and
sharing their memories of this space
writing on the wall drawing on the wall
sharing their memories of this space
sharing oral history sharing our stories
of families that used to visit this
space when they were younger and the
arts allow for collective knowledge
building to happen we’ve opened up our
Studios not just for our students to
learn but they’ve become a place for
workshops so this is and an augmented
reality workshop and a hologram workshop
that was happening over a couple of
weekends in October here at the station
and you see that there is an 8 year old
there are two 8 year olds an 8 year old
and a 10 year old with their parents and
then there are other people that are you
know the age group was 8 to 58
at this workshop and the idea that these
could become multi age learning spaces
is suddenly something that we’re very
excited about that ten-year-old in the
middle there ran a walk yesterday at the
metro station and he was using the
station he was he was an archaeologist
and he said this is a dig we’ve just dug
this up this is 10,000 years in the
future and he wanted to see what has
happened to Bangalore and he used all
the artwork at the station in this
completely imaginative way to tell the
story about the past present and the
future of Bangalore and of course there
were zombies involved in things like
that but he had you know all his
audience were both adults and children
were completely engrossed
what is brand loss presents
what is the bangle a tie inhabitant on
an individual level there is no such
thing as a public
we have disenfranchised identities we
come from a different language base will
come from different geographies what
what constitutes public so is cap and
park more public than Orion mall or the
railway station how do we create this
course and and develop this idea of the
public art I don’t know public art for
me is extremely gray at this point and I
feel maybe that’s good keep it gray
develop stories provides opportunities
for all kinds of artists and designers
who then look at this piece through
these lenses that public is a
constructed identity but essentially it
is made up of all these different
narratives that we are interpreting or
consolidating as a public that became
the point where we opened it up
so till then the things that were
happening at the station were all
student projects but during this two-day
period we opened it up to the entire
city I gave up making art objects and I
started doing more as a public
performances and interventions and talks
you know I’m more and like in public
spaces I started seeing city as a space
and the studio you know so the ideas
would come from the city and that itself
would be the site for my practice also
when I’m working with young people I
always make sure that this works happens
in public spaces in the city
most people who do catch the metro to
carbon park are coming for a walk in the
park people from very varied parts of
the city are able to come to the park
and the park is packed on Saturdays and
Sundays it is transitory and it comes
collects moves on and I find that very
fascinating it’s it kind of captures the
ephemeral nature of the arts I would
encounter people and everyone will have
a story about Bangalore which is very
personal and which is they unique to
Bangalore which I have never encountered
in any other metropolises of India
Susheela is an institution we don’t have
a lot of students from Bangalore when we
were engaging with Bangalore based
artists I think that that was a really
good mix because you had like a really
kind of eclectic group from all over the
country we didn’t try to make an
exhaustive list of what we could
showcase we didn’t borrow from
contemporary ideas this is how we
showcase we need to figure out how we
are much more conscious of the
traditional public art practices and not
just what one thinks about is
contemporary public art tract
and through this what emerged as a form
and aesthetics were murals comics
virtual reality experiences augmented
reality experiences film screenings
performances walks workshops printmaking
workshop installations that were purely
art and science and looking at live data
and visualizing and sana firing live
data so this set of posters that you see
has been our activities over the month
of December every weekend in December
we’ve had something going on at the
station and I want to end with this idea
how can we think about our engagement
with the city not just as a functional
one but something that is really about
experience can we develop a fluidity of
experience playfulness and and kind of
congeniality with each other with our
relationships with our places within the
city in a more not just functional way
but in a more imaginative way thank you
[Applause]
about six years ago I walked into the
office of the Bangalore Metro Rail
Corporation and I asked them if they
were interested in having art in their
metro stations took me a while to
convince them and then finally in 2014
they said yeah you can use the Pina
metro station it’s really far away you
know you can’t I try your experiments
there and we kind of started an art
studio at the Pina metro station after
much convincing and they allowed us to
go in there while the station was still
under construction I am a citizen of
Bangalore I have lived here all my life
and like many of you probably have
really struggled with the change that
the city has gone through over the last
15 years the metro has become a symbol
of this dynamic change on one end it is
a hope for a rapid transit system that’s
going to save us from our traffic woes
and on the other hand there are these
wounds and scars in this city of the
displacement the tree cutting the
traffic jams that the Metro construction
has caused and this mess is actually
something that I’m quite interested in
Oh another thing that has happened is
that with this change in Bangalore you
can’t really tell the difference between
say Jaipur and he knows or ulcer and
Maratha like what becomes of place and
how these places are unique from each
other and this is something that really
bothered me and I was trying to think
about whether the arts had the ability
to help replace and rebuild place based
identities in the city of Bangalore so
what what we did was we talked to the
Metro got their permission and set up
art studios here this is at the Pina
metro station and at the Cubbon Park
metro station and now more recently a
chick pet metro station and started to
use these spaces as a way to think about
art and design practice
in the public sphere I’m an educator and
an artist and one of the things that I
strongly believe in is that education
needs to happen in the real world and so
having the opportunity to move my
classroom from the shishi Institute of
Art and Design to a metro station was
fantastic we had students from public
space design from visual communications
contemporary art practice students who
were interested in marketing and
branding students who were interested in
human centered design and they all
became part of this interdisciplinary
studio and what we did was we put our
stake in the ground and we said okay
this place this metro station and the
community around it is going to become
our lab for this next period of time and
we’re going to study the history the
geography the sociology the economics
the transitions in this space and we can
have had spent you know should we do
short term projects and long term
projects but this becomes our lab the
Metro has been fantastic with us and
here you see a student presenting her
prototype to the Metro engineers and
officials and they then tell her whether
she’s able to drill into the ground or
build this or will it be a safety issue
or whatever and they are in dialogue
with her about her prototype not abyss
girl is all of 20 years old and she’s be
able to have this conversation and work
with a metro engineer in order to
develop her project
this piece over here is gives you a
little bit of a hint of how we think
about rebuilding place-based identities
so Irish car Ginelli and again another
20 year-old walked into Pina for the
first time and she said this place is
really dusty and brown and grey and
that’s all I can see I mean this isn’t
in the biggest and industrial area in
all of Asia and she went searching for
the colors in Pina so what she did was
she went around and she took a hundred
photographs over a period of three days
and then started pulling out the Pantone
shades in each of these photographs and
developed a an infographic order
bargraph you might even say of the
colors of Pina making it visible that
actually Pina did have colors and you
just had to open your eyes and observe
to students here one at the cabin park
metro station and the other at the Pina
metro station public space design
students creating seating for public
spaces and here this this this is
working but the image over there on the
left is a piece of seating that is
inspired by how people rest in Cubbon
Park and it’s been brought into the
Cubbon Park metro station people can
lean against a tree in the middle over
there or sit on a log or sit on the
ground and there’s different levels that
this student is created and here this
student was very interested when you go
and you’re in a public space like the
Metro do you actually go and sit next to
a stranger or do you leave the space or
in between and you sit somewhere else
and so here she’s organised a way for
you to move your chair if you want to
sit separately or move closer if you
want to sit next to the people around
you now what I’m going to talk about is
as much to do with your civics class as
it has to do with your art class when
you’re working in a public space and
you’re when you’re working in with
public art practice the idea of public
is not one public it’s not one
homogenized whole and actually the folks
that are sitting here we’re pretty
similar to each other but when we look
at Bangalore there’s a lot of diversity
diversity of language race caste class
and when you’re in engaging in a public
space that’s the beauty of public space
that’s the idea of the Commons now many
people might argue that the Metro you
have to go through a security system to
pass through so is it really a public
space but it’s a public space we need to
claim and if you look over here you see
a ton of people and they’ve all come to
Carbon Park on Sunday and it’s the best
time to actually do work at the carbon
Park station because it’s packed
people from all over the city have got
access to the park now because of the
metro and this is really what we mean by
thinking about our Commons
are they inclusive are they available to
everybody to participate do they have
people do people have access to our open
public spaces here you have Natasha
Sharma who’s created a very simple
intervention and I just loved this one
all she’s done is she’s bought a bunch
of mats fairly cheap and she’s hung them
up on trees in Carbon Park and they’re
there for people to use for their picnic
and put them back on a tree for the next
family to use this really in my view
Mick I mean it gives me goose bumps
because it makes me think about the fact
that we are all so different yet we all
share the same place same space and so
how do we create more opportunities to
make that visible so we’re talking a
little bit about public and the idea of
Commons now let’s talk a little bit
about the Arts why the Arts
what do artists do when we typically
think about the arts and we think about
what artists do we think about
engagement like the arts are interesting
I hear a piece of music oh wow oh I see
something that’s interesting I’m
attracted to it right we think about
engagement but artists do so much more
artists synthesize they envision they
reframe catalyze trigger juxtapose
persuade inform translate narrate
hybridize analyze bridge connect invent
predict play tricks observe critique
provoke think systematically inquire
creatively explore multiple perspectives
and so much more and what we’ve been
able to do with our work is that we see
that the arts allow for different things
here the arts are making the invisible
visible
these are all the metro staff and you
realize through these stories collected
by these two artists that worked with a
group of students at RISD that many of
our metro staff are from bengal and
orissa and here they are sharing their
stories this is a group of students that
just perform this yesterday and they
were performing at the metro station as
the trains pulled in and really trying
to make bring to our minds the idea of
gender and public space and how we think
about women and how we think about
women’s relationship with space and this
is their best dance performance that
just a couple of minutes as the train
pulled in the Piazza create an
atmosphere they’re able to submerge you
in a space that even though you’re
transitioning from one place to the
other you don’t really feel that and
there this is in Carbon Park station as
well and you come down from the park and
you’re in this atmosphere that continues
to be the park the arts give you
goosebumps this is a group of artists
this images from a group of artists
dancers musicians and theatre
practitioners who are using the metro
station to make people aware of how data
is constantly mined from us when we
think about data being mined from our
phones and every action we take on all
of our our media devices we really kind
of forget about it but suddenly when we
think about the same idea as physical so
here when my privacy is invaded
physically I’m much more conscious
however when my privacy is invaded on my
phone suddenly it doesn’t seem to matter
and that’s what these artists were doing
using dance and performance to make that
visible the student here worked with
scrap from the metro scrap yard and
created a sound installation that was
just temporary he would play who was she
on it while people were making their
trip in the evening at Pina metro
station and then he was done and he’s
returned all of that scrap back to the
yard
another student creep Rodney Mehta
created a reading corner at the Cubbon
Park metro station and people were using
it almost like you would be reading in a
study at your home or in a living room
but what she did was she invited
independent bookstores and owners to
come and sell their books at this
station so that we can think about a
different kind of book and learning
space or reading space that’s not just
our large bookstores the arts are
political a couple of months ago I don’t
know if you remember reading in the
papers but the Metro was forced to
remove its signs in Hindi by the Canada
Sangha and there was a lot of pressure
put on the Metro because there was
people was asking why do we have signs
hindi why do we why can’t we only have
science in Canada and in English and
they were forced to remove their science
and this is because language is
political and right now because of the
dynamics of migration people are worried
about the loss of language so what we
did was we invited for Canada poets to
come and curate poems in the station and
think about the beauty of language and
the way that language can evoke
something else and these poems were not
translated into English they were just
in Canada at the station and so people
could just enjoy them whether they
understood them or not at the same time
a group of other artists 12 artists
along with some of our students created
a whole bunch of silent comics that
anybody could understand regardless of
what language you spoke and so part of
what the arts do is that they get to a
problem like this they we don’t kind of
get it on its head and protest about it
necessarily that’s the arts also do that
but we think about playful ways to
engage with an idea and multiple ways to
engage with an idea this here is where
we’re moving one of the things that we
realize is that while being in public
space there are so many people in that
space with so much knowledge and this
was a workshop where we had a whole
series of images of the area in and
around the carbon Park station including
memory Road and people were coming and
sharing their memories of this space
writing on the wall drawing on the wall
sharing their memories of this space
sharing oral history sharing our stories
of families that used to visit this
space when they were younger and the
arts allow for collective knowledge
building to happen we’ve opened up our
Studios not just for our students to
learn but they’ve become a place for
workshops so this is and an augmented
reality workshop and a hologram workshop
that was happening over a couple of
weekends in October here at the station
and you see that there is an 8 year old
there are two 8 year olds an 8 year old
and a 10 year old with their parents and
then there are other people that are you
know the age group was 8 to 58
at this workshop and the idea that these
could become multi age learning spaces
is suddenly something that we’re very
excited about that ten-year-old in the
middle there ran a walk yesterday at the
metro station and he was using the
station he was he was an archaeologist
and he said this is a dig we’ve just dug
this up this is 10,000 years in the
future and he wanted to see what has
happened to Bangalore and he used all
the artwork at the station in this
completely imaginative way to tell the
story about the past present and the
future of Bangalore and of course there
were zombies involved in things like
that but he had you know all his
audience were both adults and children
were completely engrossed
what is brand loss presents
what is the bangle a tie inhabitant on
an individual level there is no such
thing as a public
we have disenfranchised identities we
come from a different language base will
come from different geographies what
what constitutes public so is cap and
park more public than Orion mall or the
railway station how do we create this
course and and develop this idea of the
public art I don’t know public art for
me is extremely gray at this point and I
feel maybe that’s good keep it gray
develop stories provides opportunities
for all kinds of artists and designers
who then look at this piece through
these lenses that public is a
constructed identity but essentially it
is made up of all these different
narratives that we are interpreting or
consolidating as a public that became
the point where we opened it up
so till then the things that were
happening at the station were all
student projects but during this two-day
period we opened it up to the entire
city I gave up making art objects and I
started doing more as a public
performances and interventions and talks
you know I’m more and like in public
spaces I started seeing city as a space
and the studio you know so the ideas
would come from the city and that itself
would be the site for my practice also
when I’m working with young people I
always make sure that this works happens
in public spaces in the city
most people who do catch the metro to
carbon park are coming for a walk in the
park people from very varied parts of
the city are able to come to the park
and the park is packed on Saturdays and
Sundays it is transitory and it comes
collects moves on and I find that very
fascinating it’s it kind of captures the
ephemeral nature of the arts I would
encounter people and everyone will have
a story about Bangalore which is very
personal and which is they unique to
Bangalore which I have never encountered
in any other metropolises of India
Susheela is an institution we don’t have
a lot of students from Bangalore when we
were engaging with Bangalore based
artists I think that that was a really
good mix because you had like a really
kind of eclectic group from all over the
country we didn’t try to make an
exhaustive list of what we could
showcase we didn’t borrow from
contemporary ideas this is how we
showcase we need to figure out how we
are much more conscious of the
traditional public art practices and not
just what one thinks about is
contemporary public art tract
and through this what emerged as a form
and aesthetics were murals comics
virtual reality experiences augmented
reality experiences film screenings
performances walks workshops printmaking
workshop installations that were purely
art and science and looking at live data
and visualizing and sana firing live
data so this set of posters that you see
has been our activities over the month
of December every weekend in December
we’ve had something going on at the
station and I want to end with this idea
how can we think about our engagement
with the city not just as a functional
one but something that is really about
experience can we develop a fluidity of
experience playfulness and and kind of
congeniality with each other with our
relationships with our places within the
city in a more not just functional way
but in a more imaginative way thank you
[Applause]
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