বন্যা / DAS 2023_Dhaka Art Summit Installation Proposal
WAVES OF URBAN INTERVENTIONS
STORM SURGE
n.
An unusual, often destructive rise in sea level above normal high-tide level in a coastal area, caused by a combination of low atmospheric pressure and strong onshore winds during a storm.’
INSURGENT PLANNING
“Invented” spaces are defined as those collective actions by the poor that directly confront the authorities and challenge the status quo… Insurgent planning is transgressive in time, place, and action. It transgresses false dichotomies, by public actions spanning formal / informal arenas of politics and invited / invented spaces of citizenship practice. It transgresses national boundaries by building transnational solidarities of marginalized people. It transgresses time bounds by seeking a historicized consciousness and promoting historical memory of present experiences.’ Miraftab (2016)
Paraa’s ambitious response is a participatory, playful, architectural and tectonic installation embodying the potential of play across generations, spaces, places and communities. Paraa proposes to install a large structure (or, connected structures) in the atrium space of the Shilpakala, that respond to the needs of low income, marginalised settlements across Dhaka city in partnership with Goethe Institut Bangladesh and Floating University.
It fundamentally looks to situate the design process itself as insurgent waves of community led interventions in urban places that are often disregarded as they are not ‘formal’ ‘safe’ communities. This is due to their informal organisations or lack of legal recognition, often appearing in forms of squatter settlements or hybrid legitimate urban environments dotted across Dhaka city. Learning from our Bamboo Playspace project in Bosilla, Dhaka and its potential as a site for engaged activities going beyond the arts, becoming a place / space for activities that engage and support the neighbourhood and wider community to have access to universally accessible places / architectural interventions.
This ambitious installation will be developed via participatory methods with potentially 3-5 different community groups to design and then assemble on and off site (Depending on the designed outputs).
As a legacy of DAS, and concurrently as a starting point in communities, the structures will be dismantled and reassembled in places of informality, staying temporary but acting as invented spaces for community to play, socialise and engage / explore. The proposal builds on the work Paraa has been doing with Korail residents in collaboration with Goethe Institut Bangladesh, and charities such as LEEDO, and other community groups across the city.
As an additional and potential response to the wider concept note - Paraa will work with communities who’ve been potentially displaced by climate phenomenon and are based in Dhaka, maybe across generations or even new migrants to help inform / develop indigenous stories of climate catastrophes. Korail in Banani provides one such neighbourhood for such workshops, along with… Bhola Bosti in Pallabi, Bauniabadh, Kalshi, Mirpur to work with them to develop / create / design spaces that are resilience focused and are inclusive in their implementation and use.
