reflexing the city-01

"reflexing the city" is an ongoing series of a graphically rendered alternate reality. Visions of this imaginopolis are sparked by the steroid-fired transformations in the very means and nature of human communication and interaction as we negotiate a mutating cityscape.

This piece is a collage of hand drawings upto 42 x 42 cm, scanned at a hi-res, composed on Photoshop and digitally printed on flex and vinyl.


In forty years time, seven out of the world’s nine billion inhabitants will be living in cities. Almost half will be living in non-formal accommodation.

In forty years’ time, the real city and the virtual city will evolve in ways we can only speculate over. On one hand there is the grand narrative that governments and developers wish us to believe and on the other there is the equally depressive dystopic reality we shall probably encounter. Whichever direction we take the multiplicity of voice and the courage and wit to subvert exclusive systems will be key.

I am intrigued by the mythic cities we create of the cities we inhabit. These are fleeting visions of finely rendered dreamscapes built upon hope and aspiration while shaped by ancient legend and contemporary politics. I live daily with the shifting, mysterious ways in which built form and architecture create the setting in which we are the dramatis personae.

“reflexing the city” and “rickshpunk” are a series of public installations of a graphically rendered alternate reality. I intend to create a pop-up landscape which combines imagery and text to create a visual narrative on a grand scale. These printed canvases are erected and woven into existing urban settings and for a time become a part of the diorama of that part of the city. The installations will create their own spaces into which the public is drawn and they discover stories that extend in multiple dimensions as built form. The content is meant to be provocative, to challenge notions of the ownership of space and existing economies.

I eventually intend to create such installations across different cities, interweaving stories and imagining new myths and legends. Imagine a pair of installations at the train stations of Chandni Chowk in old Delhi and the Gare Centrale in Montreal. Connected to each other and creating a virtual layer of an imagined city where people across continents become players in global alternate reality.

For my recent residency at the Khoj International Artists’ Association in New Delhi, I used the architecture of the studio and beyond to weave a mythical quest amidst the chaotic setting of the urban village. The medium was banner-flex, widely used in outdoor advertising due to its low cost. The toxic imprint of the times rendered in chemical ink on indestructible canvas.

In 2010 I was selected for The City as Studio fellowship at Sarai CSDS, New Delhi. During the residency I travelled through some of the oldest parts of the city using the brand new world-class metro system, as well as low-tech, human powered cycle rickshaws. Out of these journeys came the reimagined negotiation of the city as an epic conflict played out amidst crowded bylanes and soaring steel pylons.

I have always been drawn to ideas of anarchy on a grand scale; the ironic and incredible. As a student, I was inspired by the Archigram collective of the 1960s, and the explorations of Lebbus Woods. I am interested in how the future is shaped by hope and desire; our fantasies of ourselves and how that awareness shapes our destiny. My design training and practice have honed my curiosity while giving me some tools with which to engage and render the absurdities and curiosities of my time and location. Narrative installation that is culturally and politically responsive.

SAMIR PARKER. Mumbai, June/2012