Do Din 2013

Interactive installation by Madhu Kaza

“What is it Like Here (There)?” is an interactive performance project in which I engage participants one at a time and ask them to share an experience or memory of a place in Hyderabad. Through conversation and the use of objects I will guide participants to tell me a story, offer a description and explore their associations with that place. I will respond to each participant with a story or description of my own of another city (real or as imagined in art and literature) that responds to a particular element of the participant’s story. This project opens up a brief, intimate moment for participants to connect with a stranger and explore what resonates about life in cities, both here (in Hyderabad) and there (other cities).

Curated by Madhu Reddy & Aditya Mopur. Photographs from several contributors.

From the submissions we have selected images which show us stories from your city, its changing or static factors. People who make it, heritage which need not be measured in brick and mortar, culture which is integrated or still defining within new boundaries. Challenges and success stories, evolving and preserved, nostalgic personal tales, celebrations reinterpreted or transferred rural sensibilities now part and parcel of the skylines and by-lanes.

Boundaries are no issues, definitions fluid, left to your interpretation. We aim to share stories which we hope will raise questions about the “Urban” and lay to rest some. Common threads are emerging, cities all around seem so connected.

Curated by Madhu Reddy & Aditya Mopur

Visual cultures are among other things also about urban spatial practices and behavioural norms – in some sense – technologies – being deployed for tactical purposes.Their histories reveal much about the city itself. Visual cultures are about history and erasure. They are about walking and remembering and talking and changing.

Imagine if we all got our image archives and put it all in one place. Then take these images and build a timeline for the city, watch how the city unfolds. How little details we have forgotten surface to the brim of memories.

We hope to start on this project by requesting you to look into your family albums and share with images which have been taken in public spaces or show public spaces with you in them. Bring them to the Do Din event and get them scanned. With the help of the trickle of all the images we hope to build a timeline of the city in the days to come.

So, scour your albums for images of Hyderabad
Bring them to the Do Din event
Get them scanned with all the info
Wait to see what unfolds!!

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Anuradha Naik

Do Din will have focus on two neighborhoods for this year’s event. Bholakpur scrap market and Mallepally CIB quarters. Both of them are historic neighborhoods. The first was a tanning centre in mid 19th century grown around a Qutub Shahi Mosque now popularly referred to as Musheerabad Badi Masjid; gradually became the centre of an industrial belt between Hyderabad and Secunderabad and attracted a lot of migrants throughout the 20th century and finally became one of the main scrap markets in the city. The second was the immediate catchment of the Afzal Sagar tank and was mapped in detail in 1912 municipal survey. It was built up by the City Improvement Board and then gradually got built up. The Afzal Sagar tank now remains only in name. Mallepalli was the area to which the elite of both Hindu and Muslim religions moved in the 50s. Long time residents recount how every famous Urdu writer had passed through Mallepalli. It was the cultural elite but not necessarily the affluent families that lived there.

Art Installation by P.C . Prasad
Part of City On The Edge

Medium – Cloth , mirror.
An urban man works round the clock and leads a mechanical life by making maximum use of increasing technology to fulfill his needs .
The city is a red carpet welcome for him but he needs to realise the pitfalls below the glowing path .The mirror is an invitation to reflect on the loss of holistic and a wholesome life .

Art installation by Pavan Kumar .D
Part of City On The Edge

Medium – Aluminum wire and plastic

Life in a big city has many disadvantages too and particularly in modern India. The remark of the English poet Cowpen, “God made the country and man made the town” is very apt. Life in a big city is artificial and sophisticated because man is divorced from nature. He lives, grows and dies in the lap of artificial agents and machines. He does not know how a crop field dances, how a river glides smoothly, how the cow-herd drive his cattle and how the Nature herself nourishes her countless children through various agencies. In a big city, man is cut off from the nursing, educative and for­mative aspects of Nature.

Life in a big city is exceedingly unhealthy. Here men live like pigeons in holes. The filthy and nasty atmosphere of dirt, smoke and trains makes life poisoned at the root. The smoke emitted by chimneys pollutes the natural purity of environment ,day and night. Fresh air, golden sun light and clean water are rare in a big city. Here men live on tined food, refrigerated water and conditioned air, with the result that their body and soul become hollow from within and are polluted right from infancy.

The installation called ‘’farming in big city’’ is an experience of creating artificial surroundings by planting flowers , plastic in nature.
I experience it because i am part of the city and equally responsible for it………………

Man is always happier in the lap of nature than he is under the artificial shadows of modern amenities.