Art in Transit | Arzu Mistry | TEDxMAIS

Summary

In this talk, an artist shares their experience of integrating public art into Bangalore's metro stations. Initially, it was challenging to convince the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation, but eventually, art studios were set up at various stations like Peenya and Cubbon Park. The project allowed students and artists to explore place-based identities through art, design, and public engagement. The speaker highlights how art can reclaim public spaces, foster inclusivity, and create collective knowledge. The initiative emphasizes education beyond the classroom, community engagement, and the transformative power of public art in urban spaces.

Takeaways

• 🎨 Six years ago, the speaker convinced the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation to incorporate art into metro stations, starting with Peenya station.
• 🚇 The Bangalore metro symbolizes both hope for better transportation and the scars of urban displacement, traffic, and tree loss.
• 🏙️ The speaker is deeply interested in how arts can help reclaim and rebuild place-based identities in Bangalore amidst rapid urban changes.
• 👩‍🎨 Students from various disciplines like public space design, visual communications, and contemporary art used metro stations as public art studios and learning labs.
• 🎨 Students worked with metro officials to create public art installations, including seating inspired by natural rest positions and public seating arrangements.
• 🖼️ One student's project highlighted the hidden colors of Peenya by taking hundreds of photos and creating a color chart to show the beauty in the overlooked industrial area.
• 🌳 Projects like a shared picnic mat system at Cubbon Park station encouraged inclusivity and a sense of community in public spaces.
• 👥 The arts engage multiple public audiences and allow for interdisciplinary dialogue about social issues, including gender, privacy, and public space.
• 📚 The metro stations became venues for diverse public activities like performances, workshops, and even pop-up bookstores, creating interactive, multi-age learning spaces.
• 🗣️ The arts were used to address political and cultural issues, such as language tensions in Bangalore, by incorporating Kannada poetry and silent comics at metro stations.

Q & A

What motivated the speaker to approach the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation about integrating art into metro stations?

The speaker was motivated by a desire to use art to rebuild place-based identities in Bangalore and to make the city more unique amidst rapid urbanization and change. They saw the metro stations as potential spaces for public art.

Why was the Pina metro station chosen for the initial art experiment?

The Pina metro station was chosen because it was a relatively distant location, and the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation initially allowed the art project to be tested there as an experiment.

How did the speaker involve students in the metro station art project?

The speaker, an educator, involved students from various disciplines such as public space design, visual communications, and contemporary art practice. These students used the metro stations as a lab to conduct projects that explored the history, geography, and social dynamics of the spaces.

What was the significance of the student’s color project in Pina?

A student noticed that Pina, an industrial area, appeared dusty and monochromatic. She collected 100 photographs over three days and created an infographic to highlight the diverse colors in the area, showing that despite its initial appearance, Pina had rich colors that were often overlooked.

How did students explore the concept of seating in public spaces at metro stations?

Students designed seating inspired by how people rest in public spaces like Cubbon Park. They created seating that mimicked natural settings like leaning against a tree or sitting on logs. They also designed movable seating to allow people to adjust proximity to others, reflecting social behaviors in public spaces.

What is the significance of ‘Commons’ in the context of this public art project?

The speaker emphasizes that public spaces, or ‘Commons,’ should be inclusive and accessible to all. The metro, despite requiring security checks, can still be claimed as a public space where diverse people from across the city interact. The project aims to reclaim and rethink public spaces for collective use and engagement.

How did artists use performance to highlight social issues at the metro stations?

Artists performed at metro stations to bring attention to issues like gender and public space. For example, they staged a brief dance performance highlighting women's relationship with public spaces as trains arrived. Another performance addressed the concept of privacy, contrasting the invasion of physical space with digital data privacy.

What was the purpose of the reading corner project at the Cubbon Park metro station?

A student created a reading corner at the Cubbon Park metro station, where people could sit and read books. The project also invited independent bookstores to sell books, offering a different kind of learning and reading space beyond traditional commercial bookstores.

How did the project address the political nature of language in Bangalore?

The project invited Kannada poets to curate poems in Kannada at metro stations, reflecting the political debate over language usage in public spaces. In response to pressure to remove Hindi signs, the project emphasized the beauty of local language while also creating silent comics that could be understood universally, regardless of language.

What were some of the artistic formats and activities featured in the project?

The project included a wide range of artistic formats such as murals, comics, virtual reality experiences, augmented reality experiences, film screenings, performances, workshops, printmaking, installations combining art and science, and data visualization projects. These diverse activities aimed to engage the public in creative and imaginative ways.