NEXT on SEA Conversations

The Bookmakers

Winter 2024-25


At SEA, the uncertain and unclear relationship between texts and space has been one of the core focuses of discussion and exploration. We have experimented with drawings and performances as bridges to create new possibilities for these connections. In this series, we invite people who work with texts - writers, translators, biographers, and even book collectors - to help us delve deeper into this relationship. In many ways, they capture the energies of their subjects, offering new meanings through their texts. The series will include book launches, readings by authors and translators, and an exhibition of a book collection.


speakers

Nov 15, 2024.
Sonal Mithal (co-authored with Arul Paul)
A Queer Reading of Nawabi Architecture and the Colonial Archive: Lucknow Queerscapes (Routledge, 2024)

Dec 10, 2024.
Nihal Perera
People’s Spaces: Coping, Familiarising, Creating (Routledge, 2016)

Dec 20, 2024.
Prasad Khanolkar
Passages of Play in Urban India: People, Media, Objects and Spaces in Mumbai’s Slum Localities, (Routledge, 2023)

Jan 17, 2025.
Mustansir Dalvi
Charles Correa: Citizen Charles (Niyogi Books, 2024)

Feb 21, 2025.
V Ramaswami
Translator of four volumes of short fiction of the anti-establishment and experimental Bangla writer, Subimal Misra: The Golden Gandhi Statue from America (2010), Wild Animals Prohibited (2015), Two Anti-Novels (2019), and The Earth Quakes (2024), all published by Harper Perennial.

Mar 07, 2025.
Shveta Sarda
Trickster City (Viking 2010) and translation of the book Mayyadas ki Mari / Mansion by Bhisham Sahani (Penguin, 2016)

Mar 21, 2025.
Priyesh Gothwal
BOOKSHOW on artists’ book (19-21 March)


this lecture series is supported by the Urban Centre Mumbai. It is open to everyone across the world.
visit www.sea-city.in for event details

A SEA City initiative

session 2

From Victims to Agents of Change: How Ordinary People Create “Lived” Spaces

by Nihal Perera 

on Tuesday, December 10, 2024,
at 6:00 PM IST

School of Environment & Architecture
CKP Colony, Eskar Road, Borivali West, Mumbai 400 091

Space is central to society. Per mainstream discourses, social space is largely produced by the state and capital. Nihal Perera’s work takes issue with this preconception and addresses a significant gap left by the leaders in the field of social production of space including Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey. As demonstrated in hisPeople’s Spaces(Routledge 2016), the adaptation, interpretation, transformation, and creation of spaces are also carried out by ordinary people. Perera argues that the vast terrain of ordinary actors and spaces which are currently marginalized should be reflected in academic debates and policy decisions and that the local thinking processes that constitute these spaces need to be acknowledged, enabled, and critiqued.

Adopting an inside-out perspective, empathic to the subjects, and using field studies, Professor Perera will demonstrate how subjects reconcile the difference between the intended goals of imposed/provided spaces and ordinary people’s own understandings and expectations of these, creating spaces for their daily activities and cultural practices. At the other end, the spaces ordinary people produce make the state and capital negotiate their needs. He will highlight the need to switch intellectual tools.


about

Nihal Perera, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at Ball State University (USA) and the founder and director of CapAsia, immersive-learning semester in Asia (1999-2021). The two-time Fulbright Scholar (China and Myanmar) was also Senior Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore and at King Mongkut Institute of Technology (Thailand), Graham Foundation Fellow (USA), Distinguished Visiting Scholar at University of Alberta (Canada), and an Erasmus Mundus Scholar (Germany and Italy). He also received three Fulbright-Hays awards. An original contributor to the field of “postcolonial urban studies,” and leading scholar of Colombo, his research focuses on how ordinary people negotiate and produce (lived) spaces for their daily activities and cultural practices. Professor Perera has published articles on gender, race, planning, development, Chandigarh, Dharavi, Yangon, and Gary (USA) and his books include Decolonizing Ceylon, Transforming Asian Cities, and People’s Spaces. He has also practiced as an architect (1977-1983) and been the Chief Architect-Planner of the Mahaweli Project (1983-1989), largest development project in Sri Lanka, and regional and physical planner of the Transmigration Project of Indonesia. He has also taught in Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, and Sri Lanka.

SEAPAVILION 2024

Liminal Pavilion

by RUST Collective
opening

on Wednesday, December 11, 2024,
at 4:00 PM IST

School of Environment & Architecture
CKP Colony, Eskar Road, Borivali West, Mumbai 400 091

SEA Pavilion experiments ephemeral architectural forms embodying radical and sustainable new ways to think about the question of shelter in a time of climate change. On its 10th anniversary, the School of Environment and Architecture, along with the above mentioned collaboratiors, invited proposals from architects and artists below the age of 30, to conceive of pavilions and other ephemeral architectural forms to conceive of an emotional, affective response to the changing monsoon in a city like Mumbai as the key aspect in their design response. 30 chosen proposals shall be exhibited in a specially designed winning entry built as a ‘shelter for shelters’ on the SEA campus.


opening programme
-----------------------

LIMINAL PAVILION
by Rust Collective

SHELTER OF SHELTERS
an exhibition of all the received pavilion design entries
during 11-24 December 2024, 10 am to 6 pm

along with a performance / reading of Kalidas’s
Meghdoota by students of SEA

on 11 Deceber 2024
4 pm to 7 pm

join us at
School of Environment & Architecture
Suvidyalaya, Eksar Road, Borivali West, Mumbai 400 091


This event is free and open to everyone.