Assembling the plural world

Course Brief

Abstract

This course invites learners to weave together tapestries of vocabularies, materials, and practices that they encounter, appreciate, and learn from by being in a place. Situated in the walled city of Bidar, the course lays emphasis on situated practice: learners step outside their disciplinary boundaries to engage in new ways of making, sensing, and thinking that are deeply rooted in local contexts. Together with community collaborators, the cohort will make assemblages of plural lifeworlds as means to hold a public dialogue.

Key words

Place, plurality, southern practices, vocabularies, material cultures, community practices

Course Objective

We add an enabling and reflective layer to the disciplines and practices that dwell in the complexity of plural lifeworlds we inhabit. By situating ourselves in a place and fostering encounters with diverse modes of practices which often remain unacknowledged within disciplinary cannons and conventional practice, we seek to cultivate the capacity to assemble plural worlds and learn with them.

This course is related to the axiom Learning from Below: we believe communities have a tacit understanding of problems, challenges and constraints that are experiential. A key emphasis in the course will be not to learn about the place but learn from it. Learners will engage with different micro-contexts within the walled city and learn from the lived experiences of our community collaborators.

Learning Outcomes

1. The learners will be able to engage with plural settings by acknowledging and learning from a diverse set of practices.

2. They will also learn skills that aid sense-making of vast and complex lifeworlds without over-simplifying them.

These outcomes are imagined as symbiont that further grow and not only challenge normative practices within development paradigms but also produce alternative modes of practices.

Learning modes

The course will majorly use these learning modes: baithak, critical making, walking and public engagement

What you bring?

Learners should bring a curiosity to learn from relational contexts and a willingness to engage in hands-on, collaborative, and experimental practices.

Community-based practitioners, writers, artists, curators, designers or,

• someone who prefers learning as multi-modal and experimental

• someone who is willing and intent on blurring disciplinary boundaries

Open to learners of all ages!

What will you make?

The course content and pedagogy is rooted in place-based approach and situated practice. Learners will be introduced to a set of relevant methods. The course will center knowledge as a living practice of the people in the place.

The cohort will build a repository of vocabularies, material artefacts and community practices as building blocks for the assemblages they co-create with the community collaborators. This will culminate into a space where we hold a public dialogue with the larger community in the walled city of Bidar.

Some possibilities of artefacts the we will make together,

• A collaborative publication in the form of a lexicon of vocabularies encountered and learned from the walled city of Bidar.

• A repository of materials and artefacts that the learners use as entry points to learn about the place and community practices. This collection may or may not be digitalized.

• A traveling exhibit of the plural worlds that learners have assembled in the course duration with a possibility to add exhibits from your practice.