OTHERWORLDS - AN IMMERSION SPACE

2016, KHOJ, Khirki Village, with Sumedha Garg.

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In response to a call by KHOJ International Artists association looking for immersive spaces at their studio, I decided to pair up my friend, artist and fellow educator Sumedha Garg. Spatially, we decided to occupy the open frame structure in the loggia of KHOJ's premises. We proposed to use a low-cost scaffolding commonly used on construction sites that could be easily erected, dismantled and reused after the intervention.

KHOJ's studio is located in a urban village in the southern sector of Delhi. It is a phenomenon which is overstudied including the lives of people who live there. We decided to explore the settlement through an ethnography of people's dreams. We spent a week walking around Khirki talking to them about their innermost worlds, their dreams, the protagonists that reappear in them. Some of these interviews which we recorded can be found here. 

We decided to weave the immersive space around these stories. The spaces and the construction process, an animation of which can be found besides the text, offered a journey through the typology and landscape of people's inner worlds. (1) The no dream space is a space of white noise which cancels the dreamscapes. (2) The web of dreams is a space where recurring figments from dreams are suspended as materials. (3) The room of reflection is a space with mirrors and a phone in the middle which the visitor can pickup and listen. (4) The green room is a herbarium with a library of books on dreams. (5&6) The voyeur and performance spaces are where the visitor can translate the figments from the immersive, dreamy experience into the reality that surrounds it.