SEA CONVERSATIONS

To Inhabit, With Care

monsoon 2023


The dominance of entropic discourses and processes has meant that a majority of planetary lives across geographies are exposed to multiple forms of uncertainties today: aggravating climate change, chronic toxicities, reconfigurations of sovereignties, recurrence of pandemics, and financialization of life, land, and labor across different terrains.

Inhabiting amidst uncertainties demands that we inhabit with care. “Care,” however, is a target of opportunity for techno-pharmacological operating systems of power, which have grammaticized care, that is, captured and spatialized it into risk, security, segregation, conservation, surveillance, warfare, crises, immunization, and emergency. The prevalence of such conceptions of “care” have restricted architectural inquiries and practices to parochial interventions, such as modern health care facilities, gated residential enclaves, large geo-spatial data collection systems, heritage conservation, sustainable and green architecture, design standards for preventing contamination, and urban engineering of “Smart” cities.

Located within this milieu, we at the School of Environment and Architecture (SEA), Mumbai intend to open up the relationship between architecture and care by accounting for as well as departing from the hegemonic registers of care. The Monsoon 2023 SEA Conversations begins this exploration by asking: What does it mean to inhabit, with care? To inhabit, with care is not just an interrogation in to the medicalization and financialization of life, but also a proposition to invent careful ways for how we think, act, engage, and relate to oneself and others differently; what and how we attend to all that surrounds us; and what kinds of knowledges we produce and how we produce and impart them. The series thus aims to explore the spatiotemporal logics and labors of repair, maintenance, and change; the relationship between care, suffering, sacrifice, and violence; the ethics and responsibilities of caring as individuals and collectives; and the often neglected cultures of care that lie besides the hegemonic ones. The symposium invites eight speakers from different geographies and fields to explore these different aspects of care with the hope of speculating other ways of inhabiting this world.


speakers
06/05 Naeem Mohaiemen*
06/16 Pooja Khairnar+Anand Sonecha*
07/14 Elke Krasny
07/28 Mohit Shelare 
08/11 Monica Narula
08/18 Eliana Sánchez-Aldana 
08/25 Nausheen H Anwar  rescheduled
09/08 Radhika Govindrajan
09/29 A Collective Reading on Care <<

*on campus/hybrid

This is a hybrid lecture series, free and open to everyone across the world. The series is partly supported by Urban Centre Mumbai.

NEXT ON SEAConversations

session #8

To Attend

a collective reading

by Shveta Sarda along with  Rachit Somani, Tanisi K, Eesha Pethe, Vanshita Purwar, Gargi Somani, Lohitha Rao, Meet Gala, and Shravani Wagh.
and responses from Kush Patel

^{Friday, Sept 29, 2023 at 5:30 pm IST}
Zoom Link

To Attend is a shared reading of text, collected over a period of thinking forms of life, illness, and care. The reading conjoins the literary, scholarly, poetic, technical, biographical, historical, and experiential in relay, to sense a forcefield formed at the edges and limits of custodianship: to attend.

Shveta has brought together an argument with annotations across texts read in English, Hindi, and Marathi. This sequence is read with Rachit Somani, Tanisi K, Eesha Pethe, Vanshita Purwar, Gargi Somani, Lohitha Rao, Meet Gala, and Shravani Wagh.


ABOUT

Shveta translates, reads, lives, and walks in Delhi.

Kush Patel teaches at the Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design, and Technology, MAHE-Bengaluru, where they also head the Postgraduate Arts Program in Technology and Change and steward the Just Futures Co-lab.

They will be joined by students of SEA.


This is a hybrid lecture series, free and open to everyone across the world. The series is partly supported by Urban Centre Mumbai.