Project Abstract
The historic core of Jaipur, the UNESCO World Heritage City, is a popular tourist hotspot. The global image of the city is homogenized in aerial views, depicting its nine-square grid urban plan and the pink wash of its structures; completely detaching itself from the ground level lived experiences of its inhabitants (Certeau, 1984). My site-writing project aims to peel away this grid plan weave of the more “public” realm to reveal the dense “private” labyrinth of the by-lanes, thus uncovering inclusive narratives and decolonizing the image of the city. A key theory used to rediscover these microcosmos; each having their own atmospheres and nuanced narratives is through the approach of psychogeography (Deboard, 1956).
An urban tourist guide map of the city is static, but the communities of these streets and their crafts are constantly in flux. By engaging in a dialogue with the inhabitants, the site writing takes the form of a guide, restructured as a physical do-it-yourself box complemented by audio-visual walks like those done for Alter Bahnhof by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller.
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The reappropriated historic tourist guide of the city gives voice to the marginalized by-lanes by weaving oral history interviews, bits of archival pieces, and fiction together. The index guide shall be deconstructed in its one-time-reading. By using water to carefully peel the map, the reader is involved in the process of understanding the complex and layered history of the city underneath the grid. The craft of layering the hidden image prompts on the handmade textured pages is inherent to hidden layers of a global image and thus are unique and irreproducible. The revealed index then points to an audio-visual recording on the website www.thetalkinggrid.com, each with their own emotive and cultural layer of prose. Thus, the city is opened to independent enquiries by anyone that roams it today, albeit even virtually.
The curation of the guide and the walk involves the participation of the settled communities. The inhabitants are interviewed to find out stories from their past and their daily lives and working conditions, as these unfold in the streets today. Much like these communities and their livelihoods, my site writing project is entangled in the past, living a chaotic present and striving towards its future sustenance.
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Bibliography
1.Cardiff, Miller. Alter Bahnhof video Walk, 2012 https://cardiffmiller.com/walks/alter-bahnhof-video-walk/ [accessed 6 March 2024].
2.Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life / Michel de Certeau ; Translated by Steven Rendall. Translated by Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
3.Debord, Guy. Theory of the Dérive. Translated by Ken Knabb. Les Lèvres Nues (9) November 1956.
4.Rendell, Jane. Site-Writing : The Architecture of Art Criticism / Jane Rendell. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010.