Selected Works concerned with Urban Psychogeography

Satya
5 min readJun 11, 2020

--

▪️The Nearness of a Distant Sea—Talking Place, Manchester (Video Essay)

▪️desirepath—Bandcamp, online (Text/Sound/Music)

▪️Splinter in My House Shoe—4WCoP, Huddersfield (Video Essay)

▪️Memories of an Unnamed Hill—giallo, online (Text)

▪️Urban Microclimates—ZKU, Berlin (Workshop)

▪️Caring is a Radical Act, Munich (Street Piece)

▪️Raat (Night)—Original Tune, Bombay (Music/Video)

▪️#WalkAlone—Blank Noise Project, Bangalore (Praxis)

▪️FASSY walks and sounds, Berlin (Text/Sound)

▪️Islands of Memory (Bombay/Mumbai)—Elsewhere Journal (Text)

The Nearness of a Distant Sea // Bombay/Manchester (2022)

/////////////// I worry about touch, being in touch, touching, losing touch with places and people. I have been making videos tracing cities this past year. Literally touching cities. I’ve been thinking about place-related trauma, the anxiety of navigating IRL landscapes virtually, and an excess of movement through virtual space atrophying the tactile.

for Talking Place: A Symposium, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

desirepath (2021)

To listen to the work on Bandcamp—please click here

Fragmented love letter to a distant city with birdsong, improvisation and rumination on +++ connection, distance, virtuality, AI, anti-Capitalist readings, anxiety over dissociating, losing touch +++ embodied through a visceral feeling of the urban, and an affectionate attention to its ephemeral textures. ••• Field recording, found sound, granular synthesis, vocals ••• Made for Rob Frye & Ballroom Marfa for International Dawn Chorus Day

Full Text, Poetry and Readings—please click here

Splinter in My House Shoe // Munich/Huddersfield (2020)

walking my usual solitary desire paths in Bombay on Google Maps, but with virtual companions, talking about nature and human forces that shaped the city and our memories • walking the present in Munich with Screens || Nature || Heimweh || Reconnections || Disorientation || Distance || Saudade || Silence

for “Walk, No Walk”—4thWorld Congress of Psychogeography 2020, Huddersfield, UK

Memories of an Unnamed Hill // giallo (2020)

“Imagine living in one of the densest, most populous megalopolises in the world but having access to substantial wilderness, even one’s own personal hill across from the residential high-rise, in parallel with compositions of curated flora, tended to with attention.”

Placemaking, spaceshaping, memorymapping within the context of urban ecology in a high-security seclusion in the Bombay of one’s formative years.

Full Text — please click here

Urban Microclimates // ZKU, Berlin (2017)

Workshop to investigate microclimates and their applications within the context of urban environments. Praxis included having participants dérive in the immediate urban environment, listen to it, watch it closely, and discuss.

Sound Exercise — Soundcloud

Caring is A Radical Act // Munich (2020)

clay, glass

Raat // Bombay (2009)

Thinking about access to urban space as a solitary non-male walking at night in Bombay.

Moon rise blue light
A wayward breeze calls.

In night’s cloak i walk with stars.
I’m alone but the city walks with me.

Empty streets empty time
I revel in loneliness.

from the album Seven Blue Seas — Spotify, Bandcamp

WalkAlone, Blank Noise Project // Bombay, Bangalore, Berlin (2016)

Press — Women walk alone to reclaim India’s streets from fear and harassment (The Guardian)

Blank Noise, initiated by Jasmeen Patheja, and responded to by Action Heroes, is based on the premise that women can reclaim this basic right, not by living in fear in a culture of blame, but by rejecting sexual harassment and making it a visible part of the everyday public domain.

‘Walk Alone’ is a more recent campaign, in which Action Heroes pledged to walk alone in their neighbourhoods at night, and shared their experiences with each other.

Bombay

midnight harbour line /
breezy compartment is mine /
shauk se akeli.

#WalkAlone #Night

Bangalore

#WalkAlone 25th Wilson Garden, Bangalore. A curious policeman stopped to inquire & warn me about thieves in the area as i took the selfie

Berlin

FASSY // Berlin (2017)

Who decides who gets to be where in the city? Who decides?

Interviews with fellow FASSY collective members Atsuko, Yutsen and Fred from when i told them to go take a walk and tell me what happened.

We constructed out of scrap wood a structure to wear as a skin at various spots in the city. I wanted to know what they felt after they’d worn it. Then i made a couple of sound pieces to say what it’s like to be Here (click) and over There (click)

Islands of Memory (Bombay/Mumbai) // Elsewhere Journal (2015)

--

--