Designing Spaces of Meaning and Resistance

To set up my project I’m going to give two little case studies which are close to me and very far from Dharavi.

The first is Santiago, Guatemala, in 1990 during the civil war, occupied by soldiers charged with the job of seeking out and disappearing guerillas in the mountains around the town. One night, five soldiers got drunk and went through the town terrorizing locals. Fed up with the army presence, several thousand people marched to the army base armed only with white flags. On confrontation the soldiers shot into the crowd killing 11 people. Less than 24 hours after the killings, 15,000 thumbprints and signatures were collected demanding that those responsible be investigated, tried, and punished, and that the army base be removed immediately. Over 50 reporters showed up for a peaceful demonstration. The army pulled out its 600 troops on December 20.

Today this plaque commemorates the spot where the base used to be and remains a local space of meaning where the town celebrates their shared identity: standing up for themselves against incredible power.

In Canada, in February, 2006 native protesters began a demonstration to raise awareness about a piece of land in Caledonia, Ontario, which Henco Industries planned to develop as a residential subdivision. The land was granted, in 1784, to the Six Nations of the Grand River, but it’s argued that they surrendered their rights to it in 1841, and Henco later purchased it from the Crown.

The conflict started when a group of members from the nearby Six Nations reserve erected tents, a tipi and a wooden building on the land slated for development and blockaded an access road. For over a year there was an escalation of clashes between Natives and Caledonia residents, as well as destruction of property and public infrastructure totaling over $1 million in damages. Protesters set up checkpoints and required Caledonian residents to carry ID badges. The occupation of land in this example was a mechanism of building a space of resistance, by mirroring the occupation of native land by Canadians.

For my individual project, I chose one design guideline from our previous phase on which to expand. I’ll look at how spaces of meaning and resistance can become platforms for power as well as cement communities through the building of common identities. If the mechanism of power and identity in Guatemala is strength in numbers, and in Canada it’s the occupation of land, what is the mechanism in Dharavi, how is it mobilized and how does it manifest in space? This intervention seeks to create landmarks of meaning which can provide space for demonstration, gathering and civil unrest.