How does architectural form and space emerge between the forest and the factory? How does matter and materiality emerge between the kitchen and the laboratory? We pose these questions in a discursive backdrop that has come to implicate the material engagements of design practices narrowly in analogies of either forest or factory, and kitchen or laboratory. Rarely do the physical and mental, prosaic and poetic, mundane and exceptional experiences of spatial and material explorations in the design fields, fit within the dualistic notions of either/or. More so, a focus on materiality in the design fields often forecloses the latent possibilities that matter, as a substance produced between the realms of forest-factory or kitchen-laboratory, could present for phenomenological explorations. Yet, the ambition of design explorations to engage the body, offering phenomenological provocations - for instance, to exist within a cloud, walk between raindrops, swim in an ocean, or run through sand dunes - essentially traverses such latent possibilities. The other register emerging in design thinking is of apparatuses of making through which new possibilities open up beyond the confines of teleological trajectories of manufacturing. In doing so, built forms essentially slide between states of matter.

States of matter is a symposium that intends to engage provocations on such latent possibilities of inhabitations between form and matter. It draws attention to the dialectical relationship between technology and phenomenology in exploring space and form as it intersects with matter and materiality. The conversations aim to open up histories of a shared technological present - to interrogate, for instance, the situatedness of craft in primordial artisanal practices; standardized production and universal culture of the factory; and, the scenographic and algorithmic logics in the digital laboratory. We delve in this series of SEA City conversations into an ‘in-between,’ not as hybrid, but as explorations into matter and material processes whose states - through their coagulation and clouding, sedimentation and decomposition, etc. - are ‘in-formation’ to shape emergent phenomenologies that could inform future design pedagogy and praxis.


speakers

16.12.22     Anubha Sood 
20.01.23     Oliver Tessmann
27.01.23     Manjunath BL
24.02.23     Anne Holtrop
10.03.23     Teja Gavankar  <<
24.03.23     Tomas Garcia

on Fri., 10th Mar 2023 @ 5:30 PM IST

Teja Gavankar’s artistic practice explores form and its qualities in pictorial space. Trained as a painter, Gavankar’s interest shifted from two dimensional representation to three dimensional space during her post graduate study wherein her forms and their perceptual fields began to be reshaped. Materials, their possibilities and limitations, play a significant role in the way these shapes deform, skew or distort in her work. Gavankar will touch upon the importance of new forms, how they get modified by the physicality of material, and what happens when we perceive them back. The lecture contemplates upon how we expand our associations and the way we see the world around us.


ABOUT

She has participated in several shows and residencies across the world including Khoj international artist association, Delhi, 2015, What about art, Mumbai, 2017, Space studio, Baroda, 2019, Verticale Artist Center, Laval, Canada, 2016 and Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation supported International (India-Quebec) Residency at The Darling Foundry, Montreal, Canada, 2014. Her works have been commissioned for the Young Subcontinent at the Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa 2016, When is Space? at Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur, 2018, Navigation is Offline at Bhubaneshwar Art Trail, Odisha, 2018. She was part of a collaborative project with Case Design and has showcased her work at Venice Architecture Biennale 2018 Italy.

Teja received the Nasreen Mohamedi Award in MVA Display, M.S.U. Baroda, 2014. Recently she received Space 118 awarded as Contemporary residences artist 2020. She has been part of many group shows, recent one was at Artissima [Italy], Sakshi Gallery [Mumbai]. She teaches Design the Academy of Architecture, Mumbai. Teja lives and works in Mumbai.



This is an online series. It has been partly supported by Urban Centre Mumbai.
The events are free and open to everyone across the world.