Event overview
With Ben Parry, Bath Spa University and Vinod Shetty, Acorn Foundation, India. Part of 'Curating Development' - Autumn Term Seminar Series 2017
In Dharavi, the most widely known slum in Asia, different dystopias and utopias collide, as the neoliberal dream of representing Mumbai as a ‘world class, future city’ of technology and financial services is confronted with the quotidian reality of its own free market logics. Dharavi’s unique brand of ‘home-grown urbanism’ sits in stark contrast to the manufactured and manicured images of global capitalism, provoking local conflicts as political forces direct resources towards the enactment of a high-rise smart city - even as the most basic needs of over half of Mumbai’s population remain barely provisioned for within the urban infrastructure. Nowhere is this clash of urban imaginaries more pronounced than in Dharavi’s 13th Compound, responsible for recycling 80% of the city’s hard waste, where up to 300,000 rag-pickers supply grassroots recycling processes. Mumbai relies on this process of self-organisation since no municipal waste management policy or programme of recycling exists.
Logics of expulsion and the story of waste, artist Ben Parry alongside Labour lawyer and founding director of Acorn Foundation Vinod Shetty, will discuss their plans to implement a design and development lab within Dharavi’s 13th Compound. Inspired by the makerspace movement, the project will utilise materials and resources of the recycling industry as the starting point for experimental and ecological design and living solutions. Participation and open research combine use of emerging tools and technologies of the ‘circular economy’ to those who would not normally have access to them. By equipping the lab in this way the project proposes to develop a different paradigm of ‘smart city’ where the technologically advanced city emerges from below rather than being centrally planned and implemented.
The project is a partnership between ACORN Foundation India, and three UK based researchers at University of West of Scotland, Coventry University, Bath Spa University and Shiv Nadar University, funded as a follow-on project for international impact and engagement within the Global Challenges Research Fund.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 6 Dec 2017 | 3:00pm - 5:00pm |
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