City of Spectacle 2006










This video of 'City of Spectacle' is taken by Vinita Gatne, a student of KRVIA, when the work was still incomplete. 'The cities' were kept at a lower height and the electric connection being tried out. Other people in the video, are Prachi Patel, Vinod Sewlani, Sujata Chitlangia, all student of KRVIA and were helping me with the work. The older person in the video is me.
Other students, Tapan Maharishi, Arjunan Sanjayan and Anshu Tibrewala not in this video, also worked on the project.

The name, ‘City of Spectacle ’, is borrowed from Guy Debord’s book ‘The Society of the Spectacle’.

Placed on top of three stands, with ladders, each eight feet high, the ‘cities’, each two feet by two feet, are like models used for Architectural Design studio in our college, where the whole city shrinks to the size of a toy. Each building in the ‘city’ is made from digitally render images used to advertise real estate in Mumbai newspaper supplement. Within this arrangement of buildings, made from wooden blocks with printed images pasted on them, are electrical devices and lights, animating the ‘city’.

The ‘city’ can be reached by climbing up the ladder. Each ‘city’ has a glass basin in the center filled with water. From below, the ‘cities’ look sleek and glossy. Once up on top of the ladder the ‘cities’ reveal the exposed wooden blocks and electrical devices.

Mumbai is going through a frenzied state of urban development. The exclusive areas with its malls and housing societies, highly protected and polished, stands a little away from the rest of the city. This thickly populated city can have these development only by pushing away the less privileged others out.

The city looses its gloss when looked from a closer quarter It revels wooden blocks with pasted paper and mechanical devices.

2 comments:

vinita said...

hey do you have any pictures when it was assembled at new york.. with water fountain working

pappu poppins said...

hey the link opens now:)