PERSPECTIVES & DIMENSIONS
O
Objects
‘Beyond Objects’ is an exploration of some critical questions, deep contextual inquiry of select objects and beyond preconceived methods, through immersion into self and real-life settings. Looking at multiple ways of defining an object; What the dimensions are and perceptions of an object beyond the physicality and utilitarian functionality of it. The situational aspect of objects in a context was at the heart of this course of study.
C
Cartography
What does it mean to ‘represent’ landscape? This unit was about understanding perceptions and perspectives that influence one’s ways of seeing and then learning how to do composition in order to capture and depict the landscape. This was done by delving deeper into ways of seeing and recording the streets of a neighbourhood and the people, processes, structures, relationships and practices that are characteristic of those streets.
ABOUT US
2017-2018
PGDP COLLECTIVE
Seeing is a very important aspect of knowing. Do we see only what is out there? Or do we imagine, interpret or analyse things to be the way they are, from our own points of view? Does what we see talk about how/who we are? Do we actually see something or do we see what we want to see and share what we think we have seen?
The Post Graduate Diploma Programme 2017 at Srishti had ‘Ways of Seeing’ as an overarching theme or a way of learning, for the two deeply immersive trans-disciplinary contextual inquiry units in their first semester. They did it through ways of looking at people, places and perspectives through mapping a neighbourhood and ways of looking at systems and processes through objects by chronicling their narratives around them.
The students engaged in different disparate activities which came together through analysis and synthesis, from mapping to observation exercises, learning how to use participatory methods to have conversations with people, oral history and ethnography, using photography as a medium to see, using journals to depict their journeys, trying to trace stories of a given object or a place, looking at objects as a part of a bigger system, identifying stakeholders around objects and places, researching to understand the context of something to re-contextualise it, sharing their findings by crafting stories and narratives, playing with material and medium through contextual making. Seeing pervaded everything and everybody. But in the end the gaze was turned towards oneself. It was about looking within while looking outside with interplay of image and text through different lenses. The courses were designed and facilitated by Sudebi Thakurata, Swati Maskeri, Mahesh Bhat and Ravindra Gutta.
EDITORIAL TEAM
Content: Harshita, Jaishree, Neha, Pratiksha, Radhika, Sahil, Shruti and Sonira
Layouts: Pratiksha, Shruti and Sonira
Facilitator: Sudebi
