This neighbourhood chat, A Disappearing Hill, involves listening to and hearing each other around concerns about the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA), a megaproject proposed to be operational in our neighbourhood in early 2025.
The chat explores a selection and research of the work by artist, filmmaker, and researcher Kush Badhwar, related to the airport and its effects. His work, often in collaboration with the Council for Arts and Social Practice (CASP) includes exhibitions and publications, as well as the thesis A Disappearing Hill: Temporal Dynamics of the Navi Mumbai International Airport Megaproject, completed at the Estonian Academy of Arts this year.
Bringing together individuals from in and around Navi Mumbai, the focus is on India’s sweeping infrastructure transformations. Using the framework of temporal dynamics, the thesis navigates the lived and rearranged experiences of time in proximity to the airport site. By examining materials and social interactions from the pre-development phase, it uncovers often-overlooked contestations related to environmental impacts, resettlement, and rehabilitation—often not always visible even within the surrounding city. The central theme probes the ongoing process of land acquisition and land-use changes driven by successive megaprojects since the 1960s, from the development of Navi Mumbai to the construction of NMIA. The presentation highlights a continuum of dispossession, seeking to deepen the understanding of how such large-scale infrastructure projects continuously reshape both the physical landscape and the social fabric of the region.
Kush Badhwar and CASP have worked together in co-producing the arts-based research project From Up There They Were Just Numbers (2019-24) and our latest arts workshop has been with children (Grades 5-7) from the Zilla Parishad School in Sector 24, Ulwe, under our collaborative project. Sector 24 and 25 in Ulwe are where people rehabilitated from the airport site live as a result of its construction. CASP presents the modalities of this workshop in this chat, that looked at the imaginings of the Ulwe Hill and its natural and built surroundings. For more, see: https://casp-india.org/activities/participatory-workshops/from-up-there-they-were-just-numbers-2/
The open discussion invites everyone exchanging their experiences and ideas about living alongside the idea of the megaproject and being in close proximity to its physical emergence. It also involves questions about the politics of memory, continuing resistances from the ground, and emotional time.
This chat is designed in collaboration with DesignWorks (an architectural studio) and New City Limits Collective, both based in Navi Mumbai.
August 24th, 2024 | 5.00 pm – 7.00 pm | DesignWorks, Navi Mumbai.
