10th Annual D X D Roundtable – Safarnama

Date/Time
Date(s) - 25/07/2019
6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Location
Galerie Romain Rolland

Categories


 

About Design X Design

Design in its many manifestations forms an integral part of every culture. Civilizations evolve and attain their full potential because of it.

Design based creative communities in India are witness to a fascinating churning, necessitating a search for a vision, that may inform their evolution beyond –  spanning education, profession and the industry. Thus, involving exposes, roundtables, exhibitions etc. Design X Design is a step in that direction.

The energy behind the design of a pin or a city being the same, this joint initiative of Alliance Francaise de Delhi and Studio IF is also geared towards raising levels of appreciation within, and nurturing connections across, various creative communities – architecture, urban/ landscape/ interior design, product/ industrial design, textile/ fashion design, graphic/ communication design etc. Local and global in outlook, it is directed at the initiated and the uninitiated alike.

About D X D Roundtable

The Roundtable component of Design X Design involves an open forum based, focused sharing of ideas, experiences and opinions about burning issues concerning design, irrespective of form and scale.

At DXD Roundtable-1, future of design based creative communities in India was deliberated upon under the broad theme titled ‘WHITHER DESIGN?’ while at DXD Roundtable-2, the focus was on ‘DESIGNLOK PAL’ : management of design based creative communities in India’. The subject of discussion at the DXD Roundtable-3 was ‘DESIGN PORIBORTAN’ : design as a domain & an agent of change in India. The DXD Roundtable-4, ‘DESIGN NARA YA MADA’,  took up for discussion gender and design in India. DxD Roundtable-5  titled ‘DESIGNER SARKAR’ :  the design of governance and the governance of design, explored the linkages between design and governance. Roundtable-6 ‘DESI DESIGN’ : Making in India, deliberated over the make in India initiative from the perspective of Design in India. Roundtable-7 ‘GLOBAL HULCHUL’ introspected on the meaning and the impact of the apparent turmoil on the disciplines, practice and profession of design. Roundtable-8 titled ‘AI KI KAYA’ : Beyond Intelligence, Yours Artificially! discussed the Artificial Intelligence Revolution, its significance to and the repercussions on Indian Design. Last years’ D X D Roundtable Design Dangal : Role and Relevance  Design Competitions in India discussed the relevance of design competitions in various domains of design practice.

About the 10th Annual D X D Roundtable

Safarnama: the design of mobilities in India

About 6500 years ago, the “settling down” of humanity, concomitant to its adopting agriculture and large scale rurality, led to nomadism receding to the peripheries of the human lifestyle spectrum. Subsequent waves of knowledge, craft, industrial and communication revolutions, not only created the technological pools for design and other cultural productions to spawn, but eventually caused the mainstreaming of globally organised systems of production, consumption and waste. The efficiencies inherent to these systems and their technological states necessitated ever denser human settlements. So gradually, cities displaced villages as the dominant human settlement type. Eventually, by 2007, the world officially turned majority urban. India is predicted to do so in 2045.

In fact, the story thus far portends that urban future to be anything but settled. About 150 years ago, the fossil fuel driven Industrial Revolution drastically enhanced human mobility in range, speed and capacity. As the world “shrank”, people travelled faster ( their ideas with them) and cultures collided. Over time, “world-class” cities became progressively modernising portals to regional, often traditional, identities.Increasingly, these economic behemoths transformed from local cultural anchors to sites of a ubiquitous globalised monoculture and diverse diasporic sub-cultures. Travel and trade, between and within them, have become human endeavours of vital importance. As our cities explode into vast peri-urban sprawls, we spend more of our day and our lives in travel. Production and consumption in transit is fast replacing static “places” of cultural and economic activity. Fluid peripatetic identities and nomadic lifestyles appear to be replacing stable or “settled” ones.

The past 20 years has witnessed unprecedented mobilities of ideas, voices and data. From the

miniaturisation of communication devices to the explosion of social media, the internet today racks up mindboggling speeds and capacities, far outpacing what has ever been achieved through physical

displacement. In India, in particular, mobile communication technologies and their inherent productions and consumptions have reached settlements yet remotely connected to physical transport networks. This has brought unmediated shocks of modernity to traditional cultural systems, heightening identity and cultural conflicts and crises.

But the breathtaking speed of human progress has come at an almost unbearable cost. The ecological impact of enhanced human mobilities has been to greatly amplify, if not trigger, global climate change and biodiversity loss. As the world braces for utterly sporadic and extreme climate events, the globalised models of development adopted thus far appear to be very vulnerable to domino-like collapse. With the climatic, ecological and economic fragilities it shares with its immediate neighbourhood, India is also due to experience mass migrations and disastrous dislocations caused by climate events.

In a sense, India appears to be at a mobility inflection point. While we race to improve and expand our networks of mobilities between our “sites” of settlement, we seem to be at a cusp between urbanism and nomadism. Given our disparities and diversities, and the impending climate crisis, the choices and innovations adopted or evolved by Indian design in its practice, processes and pedagogies bear urgent examination. In the face of its early rumblings, the 10th Design X Design Roundtable examines the significance of the Indian mobility transformation for Indian design.

In the face of its early rumblings, the 10th Design X Design Roundtable examines the significance of the Indian mobility transformation for Indian design through three questions:

Question 1: What do you see as the most significant form of mobility (of people, objects, environment and/or ideas), that Indian design must be immediately cognisant of?

Question 2: Wayfinding is imperative to mobility and design foretells paths to the future through practice in the present. How must Indian design reorient itself to respond to the demands and outcomes of mobilities?

Question 3: Are Indian design practices sedentary? More often than not the designer is far removed from the sites of production and consumption of her designs. How can, and what kind of, connectivities reduce the gulf?