Titel pagina - De Balie

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.

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. Recordings of the sympoisum will later be made available in the dossier:
www.debalie.nl/bypass

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

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


ORDER YOUR TICKET ON-LINE HERE


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.

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.