Marking on the land

I liked Collin's lecture yesterday. It was almost cutting a cross section through Nature-Culture relationship through medium of Land art. As he said, through design we mark the earth too, which erodes over time with us.

DoubleNegative by Michael Heizer

Roden crater by James Turrrell

Observatory by Robert Morris

Walking a Line in Peru 1972 by Richard Long

Brazil by J R

The folds, the ridges, the turns, the valleys…

I was just seeing the images I have collected of Istanbul, and there was something which tied all of them together. The images captured folds of the ground, the valleys, the ridges, the hills,the ravines, the water streams, catchments and sea edges, all of them submerged in the man-made cityscape. They are the first layer of the Urban Palimpsest on which we begin marking our presence, our being. They interest me as they erode with their own time and our everyday lives forming something unusual. They change over time and we change them to make them part of our lives. I want to search for them in Istanbul. To frame it in bulky words, I am interested in exploring varying nature-culture relationship in Istanbul.

My point of beginning..

I have been thinking about what interests about cities and where would I want to begin my journey. The dimension of time interests me the most and different chemistry of time in the city will be my focus. I will be looking for subterranean network of different kinds of palimpsests hidden beneath the city. By that I mean, parts of cities which have interesting and robust chemistry of time.

Here are few of the examples. The scale will vary from a dwelling to institution to neighbourhood to district.

- Cyclic cities

- Decaying cities

- Abandoned cities

- Invaded cities

- New shining cities

- Preserved cities

- Schizophrenic cities

That is it for the time being. I am reading about different neighbourhoods in the city and their smaller history. I will post description of the words mentioned above with few examples from Mumbai.

Urban wonders

Let me go back in time to look for my curiosties, as when you live in a new city everything is filled with curiosity. But when you live with these curiosities over time, they grow with you, sometimes loosing their charm. In order to begin talking, lets start with a lived city. Nothing can be as stimulating as her, a repository of meanings, ideas, structure and sensuality. So here are my rooms of wonder...

1. Precarious cities

An almost unknown tip of land in water, very few know a way to it. You meander through intricate fabric of slum to be released into this space which stretches till horizon. One of the old fishing villages of the city, reminisence of young Mumbai, when it was a collection of seven islands. When the rest of the city longs for glossy surfaces, this place struggles for its survival.

There also lies one of the oldest fort of thecity, almost submerged in the sea of slum, the thick walls which were grand walls built by some king once upon a time are places to hang clothes in one of the house.

It is difficult to separate them. One of the largest infrastructure project in the city,which is aimed for faster movement of cars in the city is going through it today. I wonder if the place still exists or it is only in our minds, who have been there on an evening.

2. Wrinkled cities

The inner city of Mumbai, deteriorating within itself.

3. Abandoned Cities:

Abandoned city

You destroy me everyday,
you, your thought,
me, my body,
I feel torn into pieces, pieces of a city abandoned,
I feel the pain of the city abandoned,
I live,I breadth the same pain,
of yesterday,
I smell, I talk,
the same talks,
of everyday,
I walk and walk and walk,
till there is no ground waiting ahead.