A series of questions by the Sunday Guardian are answered by the Artefacting Mumbai team…
1. What led to the initiation of the project?
2. What is the main aim behind the project? What is Artefacting Mumbai all about?
3. Why Dharavi? Do you also plan to hold the residency programme in other Indian slums?
4. How has the journey been so far? What was your first experience of stepping into the serpentine lanes of Asia’s biggest slum?
5. A lot of people (writers, artists) present a contemptible picture of India and slums to the Western world. How do you plan to bring about a change in the perspective with Artefacting Mumbai?
6. What is Dharavi’s story and how will it be narrated?
7. Can you please tell me how each of you have been associated with the project?
8. What does Artefacting Mumbai aim to highlight with its unique endeavour?
9. How are you bringing out the collision of individualist ideals of the “West” with the collective living of a “Slum” through art?
10. What was the first reaction of the Dharavi residents when you introduced the project to them?
11. What is the 13th Compound all about? Why that name?

  1. What led to the initiation of the project?
    Alex: While working for a non-profit urban planning NGO in Hong Kong in 2007 I (Alex White Mazzarella), now the Project Director, began looking for other bottom-up community planning organizations with an eye towards creating an international network. My search turned up Dharavi and specifically the story of a community coming together to combat a pending redevelopment through the creation of their own self-determinant plans. From this point forward I continued to learn more and more about Dharavi and started playing with ideas of how to engage and investigate this place and its social wealth in a meaningful way. In 2009, I made a career change to an artist and art increasingly emerged as the way to engage and penetrate this distant place to tell stories and engage social issues. And then when Casey Nolan, a videographer, colleague and friend from graduate school, agreed to work together to undertake this endeavor, it was on, and we really didn’t look back.

  2. What is the main aim behind the project? What is Artefacting Mumbai all about?
    Alex: The main aim of Artefacting Mumbai is to use art to create a dialogue and rethink the way we see or think about those people on “the other side”… in this case it’s the “slum” of Dharavi.
    Artefacting Mumbai is about using art to engage the marginalized communities of Dharavi and feel it out from the inside… it’s about breaking down outsiders preconceived notions of Dharavi - a place many local Mumbaikers refer to as the “black” place - by going beyond its rusty surface and telling intimate stories. It is about examining Western culture and confronting our fears through creating narrative art and media that can initiate relevant and meaningful discussion.
    Here in Dharavi, this project is an intervention, cultural exchange and celebration at once. By not only observing, but by directly affecting our environment through interventions (creating public art, abstract videos, and exhibitions) we cause reactions; and in turn, out come reactions in us as well. We are really experimenting with how much art can function as cultural diplomacy, and how it can build knowledge and tolerance by bringing people from different sides of the spectrum (like us outsiders and Dharavians) together.

  3. Why Dharavi? Do you also plan to hold the residency programme in other Indian slums?
    Where do we start! For starters Dharavi, a village of sorts, in the context of an “internationalizing” Mumbai… for a couple of reasons. Mega cities are accelerating towards becoming a norm and this growth is delivering modern living along with tons of slum living. Two sides that together exhibit a massive disconnect. The unknown space between is often times exploited through sensationalism and as a consequence many people are left terrified of places like Dharavi. I think this is actually helping to maintain the gap. We wanted to show just the opposite… that by being open and true you can learn from and understand more about the other side, and that this knowledge can actually help close the gap. This is a local reality but also a global phenomenon and the extremes of Mumbai make this so exemplary. Indeed we hope to continue our “Artefacting” residency programme in other Indian slums if possible!

  4. How has the journey been so far? What was your first experience of stepping into the serpentine lanes of Asia’s biggest slum?
    Alex: HA! Stepping into Asia’s biggest slum meant holding my shoulder bag in front of me and snapping around to see who was behind me. Now its three months later and its clear there is no danger here. The journey has evolved and I have evolved into a state of mind I won’t really be fully cognizant of until I return to where I came from!
    Casey: For me, I was surprised at how quickly I became comfortable in Dharavi. We all came here with certain expectations and a dreary imagery of what Dharavi is like, and although we are not here to romanticize the place, I really have grown comfortable walking around the narrow lanes and dodging mopeds, people, and men carrying 40kg bags of soon-to-be-recycled plastics over their heads.

  5. A lot of people (writers, artists) present a contemptible picture of India and slums to the Western world. How do you plan to bring about a change in the perspective with Artefacting Mumbai?
    Alex: It is this very “contemptible” material that only adds fuel to the fire by creating nightmare imagery of the otherwise unknown. Creating sensational imagery that caters to people’s psychology has almost become a science. But tapping into the humanity and sharing that with others is a much more difficult task. We have immersed ourselves in a “slum”, confronted our reactions and broken down the fear within us to feel comfortable and at times even at home in this place entitled “Asia’s Largest Slum”.
    We have been working as a team and individually creating visual arts, photography and video that are narrations of our Dharavi experience, or that express our newfound emerging perspectives. We will deliver this material to the Western (and Westernizing) world via multi-media exhibitions (now scheduled for Portland and New York City USA) that interact with the viewer to deliver a “re-experience” of Dharavi. Hopefully this combination of education, expression and emotion can force people to change their perspectives and confront what they thought they knew about a places like Dharavi… and maybe, just maybe, fear can give way to curiosity and interest.

  6. What is Dharavi’s story and how will it be narrated?
    Casey: The story of Dharavi is the story of hundreds of millions of people around the globe; honest, hard working people striving to make the best of their situation. Add to that the entrepreneurs and resourceful “freelancers” that find and create work in ways we would never think to do in the West. As a result, Dharavi is the epicenter of a recycling industry that rivals anything else in the world. You can find virtually any material that can be recycled in Dharavi. For this project, we decided to zone in on the industrial recycling district in Dharavi known as the 13h Compound. We believe that trying to cover more would water down our efforts and weaken the final product. The story is being narrated from our perspective, but with an open mind about both the people we are telling the story about and the place they call home. We chose a multi-media program to share what we learn: artwork, photography, video, written word, sound… and feel that by doing so we can spark more interest to the issues surrounding slums and the people that live in them.

  7. Can you please tell me how each of you have been associated with the project?
    Alex White Mazzarella, a visual artist, came up with the project as a way of mixing art with urbanism. Casey Nolan, now a videographer and Alex studied together for their Masters in Urban Planning in the United States. They had kept in touch and when Alex laid out the project Casey jumped on board, and we started developing it from scratch. Arne, a photographer, met Alex in Guangzhou China in 2007. They met again in New York City in 2008 while Arne was touring the USA stage building for the Rolling Stones. Alex presented the plan and Arne digested it… and later joined the team just after its start in November.
    With this core team came along our Mumbai team; Parasher Baruah, a documentarian associated with ACORN and Nishant Nayak, a talented video artist/editor.

  8. What does Artefacting Mumbai aim to highlight with its unique endeavour?
    Casey: Simply put: humanity. We are putting a face and a personality behind the shadow figures that most people will never meet. We are showing that this community of blue-collar workers isn’t all that different from the industrial workers of Detroit, or Amsterdam, or Moscow. In a sense we are celebrating a group of people that are ignored and left out of so many facets of a quickly modernizing Mumbai.
    Alex: Artistically, Artefacting Mumbai looks to use art to engage and communicate with social issues. In a time when contemporary art is becoming more and more about the artist, the challenge of his project has been to keep the artistic work equally connected with our dialogue objectives and the perspective of the artist. We also aim to highlight that art can directly engage.

  9. How are you bringing out the collision of individualist ideals of the “West” with the collective living of a “Slum” through art?
    Alex: Much of the team’s work is centered around the collision of ideals; for example the Dharavi Menswear Collection is a set of photographs that presents industrial Dharavi workers as fashion models; individuals that are pretty immortal in the Western world. And “I LIFE” is a concept we have been exploring to describe Western aspirations of being in control of life and being able to construct our identities from ideas. We’re making an ILIFE mural to showcase in Dharavi, a context where if you fail to interact with the people around you there may not be a great chance for survival.
    Alex’s “White Man” is a series that translates the distance between one side of the gap and the other. An ice-cold silhouette of a man is positioned looking through a window at a collection of rusty materials. It’s a way of telling the story of the fear and distance that is created when you can’t see what’s really inside. It’s like being in a dark room as a child… your imagination runs rampant, but when you turn the lights on, it’s just peace and quiet around you. The artwork continues into another series “Peering into Barrels” where oil drums are tilted to expose whimsical characters, scenes and objects from Dharavi.
    Also a handful of massive installations are stacks of Anish Kapoor’s wax canon canisters. We use the canisters together to exhibit a collective human system, and put emphasis on these canisters because of the elite art environment they come from.

  10. What was the first reaction of the Dharavi residents when you introduced the project to them?
    Alex: We were fortunate enough to come to Dharavi with a project partner; ACORN Foundation’s Dharavi Project. So in the beginning we kind of had a liaison to introduce us to a community a bit more familiar with foreigners interacting. Initially our art and photography classes were met with enthusiasm and overflowing attendance. But outside of this community, the residents of Dharavi were skeptical of us as tourists. And now we are at a point where there is curiosity and response to the artistic ventures we are undertaking.

  11. What is the 13th Compound all about? Why that name?
    Alex: The 13th Compound is an intense largely industrial recycling corner of Dharavi and also the name of our culminating exhibition on January 29th. It’s a place where all different types of plastics, papers, metals you name it is brought in and processed into new raw material for sale. It’s also a place of business and identity complexity; people from all over India and of all religions, working and living side by side in peace (they can’t afford to fight).
    For Artefacting Mumbai, we have called this place home during our three-month immersion, and it is the place that has influenced our artwork, carved our perspectives, and shaped our stories most. This 13th Compound exhibition is about bringing outside audiences into Dharavi for the first time in an “open house” state to get them to see what they didn’t expect. It’s about giving recognition to the people who use their ingenuity, optimism, grit and determination to process and recycle the waste of a city overflowing with it. It’s about telling the stories of local workers, their stamp collections, the ballerina shoes they produce, or the photographs they take. It’s about using art to provoke a re-thinking about a slum, and any marginalized people for that matter. Its about putting the people we have called neighbors into the spotlight for a day and saying thank you.