TWO CITIES / THREE FUTURES 

Installation: Kadambari Baxi

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Two Cities / Three Futures is an audio-visual montage reinterpreting two monumental sites: CST Station in Mumbai and Ground Zero in New York. Contemporary photographs of under-construction, in-conservation, decayed, or status quo architecture are layered with text, images, and videos. Sections titled: the dome, the tower, the floor, the footprints, the memorial, the mural, the perimeter, and the curtain, create specific critical narratives on urban spaces and their underlying culture and politics. The resulting collages capture two cities simultaneously in crisis and transformation, where discussions of public relations and propaganda; heritage, memory, and the memorial industry; and rebuilding and reconstruction; failing infrastructure and “world-class” development, etc. are paired as complex realities of old and new architecture.

 

Photographic panels invite a second look as embedded digital video and sound clips are triggered through AR (Augmented Reality "Layar" app) on viewers' mobile phones. Combining old and new media elements, the project fluctuates between an updated documentary montage and a scrapbook, a public relations brochure and an opinionated blog. In this audio-visual montage displayed as a spatial installation, in the end, what emerges is a way to see architecture in relationship with its many others.

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Two Cities / Three Futures exhibitions: ETSAM (Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid) Spain, 2014; and Alternativa, WYSPA Art Institute Gdansk, Poland, 2013.

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