<nettime-ann> By-Pass - Everyday Life and Contemporary Urbanism in India and China, De Balie, Amsterdam, November 15 2008

[Eric Kluitenberg <epk@xs4all.nl>]

.
A  N  N  O  U  N  C  E  M  E  N  T

By-Pass
Everyday Life and Contemporary Urbanism in India and China

International symposium
www.debalie.nl/bypass

De Balie, Amsterdam
Saturday November 15
Time | 10.00 - 17.00 hrs
Admission | € 17,50 / 12,50  (including lunch)


For the first time the majority of the world population today lives in  
cities. A significant part of the new urban expansion in the past  
decade has been in Asia, where urban expansion, crisis and mass  
migration emerged in the context of a boom culture.

By-Pass is an international symposium about urban culture and everyday  
life in the rapidly transforming mega cities of India and China. The  
symposium will bring together a renowned group of scholars and  
practitioners to examine these changes specifically at the ground  
level. Here, urban structures are continuously reconfigured by ‘the  
Bypass’. The bypass is not formal, but at the same time, more than the  
informal forms that have always existed in cities. The Bypass is a  
tactic that is deployed by all kinds of urban groups – slum dwellers  
engaging in incremental development; street level entrepreneurs  
establishing newer networks of production and selling; civil society  
organisations and formal planners short-circuiting policy and planning  
processes, private and governmental agencies employing tactical ways  
to assemble land, urban media forms that disrupt official channels  
etc. The language of the Bypass cannot be articulated through  
mainstream ideas of formality, legality, planning, public etc. - it  
warrants a newer creative engagement. Asian cities offer an important  
site for this engagement.

The symposium will focus on discussing and engaging with the  
complexities of the Bypass. This will be done through an exploration  
of newer ideas on incrementality, entrepreneurship, piracy, mapping,  
networks, media-urbanism and image of the city by architects,  
urbanists, historians, geographers and media scholars.

By-Pass is organised by De Balie in Amsterdam in collaboration with  
Sarai in Delhi and CRIT in Mumbai.

With:
Awadhendra Sharan (Historian, Delhi), Juan Du (Architectural theorist,  
University of Hong Kong), Martijn de Waal (Media scholar, Amsterdam /  
University of Groningen), Prasad Shetty (CRIT, Mumbai), Ranjani  
Mazumdar (Film maker and theoretician, Delhi), Ravi Sundaram (Sarai,  
Delhi), Rupali Gupte (Architect, Mumbai), Solomon Benjamin (Political  
scientist Bangalore / University of Toronto), Wing-Shing Tang (Social  
geographer, Hong Kong),.

Symposium editors:
Prasad Shetty (CRIT)
Ravi Sundaram (Sarai)
Merijn Oudenampsen (Urban sociologist)
Eric Kluitenberg (De Balie)


A web dossier has been set up for the symposium, which brings together  
various background materials: www.debalie.nl/bypass

The symposium can also be followed live via internet at: www.debalie.nl/live

Recordings of the symposium will later be made available in the web  
dosssier.

----------------------------------------------------
Confirmed speakers & biographical information:

Awadhendra Sharan is a historian and Fellow at the Centre for the  
Study of Developing Societies (Delhi, India). His work involves  
research that connects environmental issues to urban space, with  
reference to the city of Delhi. He also works with Sarai, Delhi and  
offers guest lectures at the School of Planning and Architecture,  
Delhi and School of Environmental Studies, Delhi University.

Juan Du is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture,  
University of Hong Kong and Principal of IDU architecture. She teaches  
architectural design and contemporary urban theory. She has practiced  
and taught in the United States, Europe and China and co-curated  
#Performative-Cities” in the 2007 Shenzen - Hong Kong Biennale

Prasad Shetty is an executive member of the Collective Research  
Initiatives Trust, Mumbai and also works with the Mumbai Metropolitan  
Region Development Authority. His work involves research and teaching  
on contemporary Indian urbanism and has been a consulting urban  
management expert in India and abroad. His work on mapping new  
urbanism has been exhibited in India, UK, Denmark and Italy. His  
current work includes research on politics of property and  
entrepreneurial practices.

Ranjani Mazumdar is an Independent Filmmaker & Associate Professor of  
Cinema Studies at the School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru  
University (New Delhi, India). Her publications and films focus on  
urban culture, popular cinema, gender and the cinematic city. She is  
the author of “Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City” (University of  
Minnesota Press, 2007). Her current research focuses on globalization  
and film culture, film and history and Bombay’s cinematic city in the  
1950s

Ravi Sundaram is a Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Developing  
Societies, Delhi and is one of the initiators of Sarai, Delhi. He has  
written extensively on contemporary intersections of technology, media  
and urban experience. He has taught in the United States and India; in  
Spring of this year he was a Fellow of the Sheldon Cullom Davis Centre  
in Princeton University. In Delhi he is regularly teaches at the  
School of Planning & Architecture. His “After Media: Pirate Culture  
and Urban Life” is due from Routledge, London in 2009. His current  
work is on urban fear.

Rupali Gupte is an architect and urbanist. She works is a Senior  
Lecturer at the Kamala Raheja Institute of Architecture (Mumbai,  
India) and is also an executive member of CRIT, Mumbai. As an urban  
researcher she has worked in India and Africa and lectured at UK, US,  
and the Netherlands. She recently showed a work on mapping post  
industrial landscapes at Manifesta 7: The European Art Biennale in  
Italy, Her works includes studies of housing types in Mumbai, a novel  
on a semi-fictional history of Mumbai’s urbanism and writing on the  
city’s tactical infrastructures.

Solomon Benjamin is an Assistant Professor at the Department of  
Political Science, University of Toronto. Before coming to Toronto, he  
was an urban researcher operating from Bangalore, India. His interests  
lie in the politics of land and tenure and have been working on issues  
relating to the way big business re-shapes city governance.

Wing Shing Tang is Associate Professor, Department of Geography, Hong  
Kong Baptist University. His research focuses on urban (re)development  
and planning in Hong Kong and mainland China. Current research  
projects include “land (re)development in Hong Kong: the land  
(re)development regime, hegemonic construction and the people”,  
“utopian urbanism in Hong Kong”, “the geographies of power of  
sustainable development in Hong Kong: an inside-out approach”, “the  
urban revolution in China: meeting Foucault with Gramsci and Lefebvre”,

Martijn de Waal is a researcher on urban and social issues and digital  
media at the University of Groningen and the University of Amsterdam.  
Contributed an essay on Chinese urban visuality to the recent  
anthology "The Chinese Dream" published by the Dynamic City Foundation  
(Rotterdam / Beijing), Fall 2008.

Kadir van Lohuizen is a venerated photojournalist, working with  
photoagency Hollandse Hoogte in Amsterdam en Agence Vu in Paris. He  
won the prestigious Visa d'Or news at Visa Pour L'Image with his work  
on Chad published in Le Monde. Recently he has made a series on  
migrant workers in the context of the Chinese Olympics. (tbc)

Rick Dolphijn is assistant professor at Humanities, Utrecht  
University, where he lectures and writes on communication theory,  
cultural theory, philosophy of science, media theory, linguistics, art  
and cultural studies. He has visited and studied cities in China and  
India and has written on Asian urbanism and Deleuzian theory in  
architecture magazine Volume, amongst others.


_______________________________________________
nettime-ann mailing list
nettime-ann@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-ann