BackPutting the ‘I’ back in the community
After New York and Berlin, the BMW Guggenheim Lab's latest project opens its Mumbai chapter this week
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The next time you plug in those earphones to escape the chaos of the metro or local train, or log in to your Twitter account as you roll up your car window to avoid making eye contact with the beggar, you might think again. The earplugs and the car window—luxuries you hold close to your heart—are also “relentless systems of consumerist comfort" that block our interaction with our surroundings, according to Richard Armstrong, director of Solomon R Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York, who is in the country to launch the latest chapter of the BMW Guggenheim Lab’s three-city project “Confronting Comfort".
“Life can be harsh and everyone has a defence mechanism," says Armstrong. But somewhere, he adds, the need for these tools of comfort—available only to the privileged few who can afford them—is only growing with time and has caused an imbalance in the individual-community dynamic. Hoping to balance the individual with the community, that is, “ME = WE", is the “Confronting Comfort" series that opened last fall in New York, travelled to Berlin in the summer of 2012, and is playing out in Mumbai between 9 December and 20 January. Edited excerpts from an interview where Armstrong talks about the Lab’s work in New York and Berlin, redesigning water pipes, and why comfort is not always a good word:
How did you arrive at the theme of ‘Confronting Comfort’?
We were looking for a subject that would allow everyone to be an expert in it, although there are of course experts in the field. The ultimate idea is to engage the community, and have an open-door that would provoke good conversation.
You talk about the concept of responsible comfort. Is this an underlying critique of a certain class of people who live in their privileged cocoons?
It is a concept very relevant to the city of Mumbai. Even if all of us want 12 acres of land, but is that possible without excluding others who cannot afford it? At the heart of the lab is the idea of privacy: what it means in the urban environment.
It might be the core crisis today is that some people enjoy comfort a lot more than in your grandfather’s generation because they had a sense of shame. There was no political stance to this thing, we are not interested in falling into any such traps. Ultimately, it’s about a certain set of people being excluded.
What are some of the projects we should look forward to?
Why Mumbai and no other Indian city?
It is a more needy city, needier for this kind of event.
Tell us about the Lab’s work in New York City (NYC) and Berlin.
In NYC, it happened at a neighbourhood called Lower East Side, previously a site for immigrants. There was a collapsed building inhabited by rats and rubble. We cleared it up and made a gathering spot there, where the Lab had lots of conversations with people, it was mainly discursive. There were field trips, lectures, there was a hands-on “be your own urban planner" programme and people mapped out where they would put a park, a school, etc.
In Berlin, it was at a heavily damaged neighbourhood which started out as a site for squatters, who over the years had become very possessive about the neighbourhood and were very agitated at the proposal. They called it a “making marathon", because people were encouraged to make things. This re-engagement with physically making things was significant in an abstract world such as theirs.
People have often commented that the type of models suited to the West—across contexts—don’t work in India, which is a lot more complex and layered reality in comparison. How have you tweaked the idea of the Lab from its North American and German avatars?
The team has tried to discover what topics the community engages in, and has designed the programme, and even the venue, accordingly. In this case, it’s an open pavilion in the Byculla neighbourhood, a structure designed very much on the lines of a wedding/festival mandap, inclusive and festive: The audience will immediately relate to it, and want to engage with it. It’ll be decorated with flowers, with origami done by local families, have (a) portable kitchen where they can participate. We were conscious of not trying to superimpose what seems to be a relevant model in North America or Germany here in India.
This structure, much like the Guggenheim Museum in NYC, is spectacular and eye-catching. Is architecture an important feature for all things Guggenheim?
Yes. We want to be architecturally distinguished. It is an important signal that we take our audience seriously, and that people remember what they see. It is not an advantage to be interchangeable, and we want a distinct, eccentric structure.
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