There is a 4 - 6 minute gap between every train that enters the underground metro station at Cubbon Park, Bangalore.
How do we turn the wait into an opportunity to learn and share?
This project is an opportunity to create learning environments in public spaces such as the metro stations by engaging the commuters through video projections during their 4-6 minute wait for the train. The project is a Call for Entry and encourages people around the city to engage with the metro station and send entries by sharing skills, information, ideas through videos that the commuters can chance upon while they wait for their trains. This intervention is about pedagogy in public spaces and how the general public can be offered creative thinking by using the metro-transit as a classroom, making the process of learning more accessible and informal to all in a shared site such as a metro station. It attempts to make waiting a more active and interactive process.
This event ran a successful pilot on the 6th and 7th of April 2019 at Cubbon Park Metro Station to test out the engagement/ effectivity on site. This project was also showcased as part of Bangalore's nomination for World Design Capital. You can read the post here
I received entries from diverse commuters, city dwellers, artists and organisations across Bangalore, that includes illustrated story books from Pratham, composting methods from Daily Dump and learning sign language from Sign on it. My fellow artists Devika Sundar, Ruchika Nambiar and Mustafa contributed by sharing their works, where Devika shared created a video montage of Essentially Normal Studies, Ruchika taught us how to make miniature sculptures and Mustafa shared their beautiful rendition on Strangler figs taking over the city. I also received creative and informative videos on How to make a zine? How to make a resin jewellery? On rights and citizenship and more.
This project is in collaboration with Art in Transit a public art initiative facilitated by the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, with the aim to facilitate meaningful discourse, research and practice of art, design, technology in spaces of transience in collaboration with Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation (BMRCL)
Check out the documentation film from the first pilot run of the project
