SEA CONVERSATIONS
To Inhabit, With Care
monsoon 2023The 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.
session #1
Afterlife: Jole Dobe Na | Grace
Two films by Naeem MohaiemenMonday, June 05, 2023 at 4:00 pm IST
venue: School of Environment & Architecture, CKP Colony, Eksar Road, Borivali West, Mumbai 400 091.
This screening brings together two films about end of life and caregivers. Jole Dobe Na (2020) is a fiction film set within the haunting of a hospital, made in response to a prompt by Delhi-based Raqs Media Collective for the Yokohama Triennale, Japan. Grace (2022) is a documentary about Karen Wentworth, the second person to sign up for end-of-life options under the newly passed Right To Dignified Death law in Maine, USA.
about
Naeem Mohaiemen combines photography, films, and essays to research forms of utopia-dystopia in South Asia after 1947. He is Associate Professor of Visual Arts & Concentration Head of Photography at Columbia University, New York.
The film screening will happen on SEA Campus followed by a discussion with the filmmaker.
about
Naeem Mohaiemen combines photography, films, and essays to research forms of utopia-dystopia in South Asia after 1947. He is Associate Professor of Visual Arts & Concentration Head of Photography at Columbia University, New York.
The film screening will happen on SEA Campus followed by a discussion with the filmmaker.
session #2
Infrastructures of Care
by Pooja Khairnar and Anand SonechaMonday, June 16, 2023 at 6:30 pm IST
venue: School of Environment & Architecture, CKP Colony,Eksar Road, Borivali West, Mumbai 400 091.
This session builds upon the recently completed works of SEALAB and PK_iNCEPTION to open up a conversation on ‘infrastructures of care’ with a specific reference to processes of drawing, designing, and engaging with others in architectural practices.
about
POOJA KHAIRNAR is an architect, designer and educator. She believes that architecture has an essential impact on every aspect of society and should respond to everyday life. She is the founder and a principal architect at PK_iNCEPTiON.
ANAND SONECHA is an architect who works and lives in Ahmedabad. He leads the architecture practice SEALAB, which recently completed School for Blind and Visually Impaired Children in Gandhinagar.
about
POOJA KHAIRNAR is an architect, designer and educator. She believes that architecture has an essential impact on every aspect of society and should respond to everyday life. She is the founder and a principal architect at PK_iNCEPTiON.
ANAND SONECHA is an architect who works and lives in Ahmedabad. He leads the architecture practice SEALAB, which recently completed School for Blind and Visually Impaired Children in Gandhinagar.
session #3
Living with a Wounded Planet: On Building Recovery
by Elke Krasny
Friday,
July 14, 2023
at 5:30 pm IST
Zoom Link
How can we imagine architecture and building in order to learn to live with a wounded planet and to recover from patriarchal colonial capitalist violence?
ABOUT
ELKE KRASNY is a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Her work focuses on environmental and social justice in architecture, urbanism, art practices and transnational feminisms.
ABOUT
ELKE KRASNY is a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Her work focuses on environmental and social justice in architecture, urbanism, art practices and transnational feminisms.
session #4
Contaminated Association and
by Mohit Shelare
Contaminated Association and
Floating Existence
by Mohit Shelare
Breathing on sewage infrastructures while listening, writing, and working; sinking inside the historical wastewater and its belief mechanism developing under the smart cities; this talk constructs a counter narrative of ecological and care politics via a thickening of the outcaste, toxic substances, and the unarrivable.
ABOUT
Mohit Shelare is an artist based in India. He constructs and activates thinking through the exploration of contamination and equality.
ABOUT
Mohit Shelare is an artist based in India. He constructs and activates thinking through the exploration of contamination and equality.
