কে বা কাহারা Curatorial Collective

Embracing Impermanence

A Conversation with Marina Tabassum, Sadia Rahman and Priyanka Hutschenreiter

Abstract

Marina Tabassum, principal architect at Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA) in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is creating an architectural practice oriented towards the sustainable future of people and climate. While architectural rationalism is often construed in terms of the use of industrial materials and large scale in order to be adaptable, MTA understand sustainability and adaptability in terms of using local materials and practices. In this double-conversation, with Marina Tabassum and with the editors of this issue of OASE, we explore the tensions incurred through these differing approaches to rationalism between the needs of governments, the construction industry, local residents, and architects themselves.

OASE 119 Rationalism Revisited

Justin Agyin, Bart Decroos and Chritoph Grafe (eds.)
January 2025

In the crisis following the First World War (1929 - 1940), the Modern Movement of the 1920s supported a programme of social reform. This included the rationalization and industrialization of building processes, while efficient forms of construction were also an important source of architectural form. Nowadays, the need for economical building was based not only on purely financial considerations, but also on the limited availability of material and energy resources. In the process, ‘building’ increasingly becomes a practice of 'repairing'. Remodeling and building on represents a paradigm shift for the discipline of architecture, with architects having to reinvent themselves as bricoleurs, tinkerers or simply as repair experts. This requires not only the latest technology, but also age-old knowledge. Drawing on conversations between academics and practising architects, OASE 119 revisits the concept of rationality in architecture and explores how this shift is being addressed in different contexts.

Design: Karel Martens and Aagje Martens

ISBN: 978-94-6208-897-9

https://www.oasejournal.nl/en/Issues
https://www.nai010.com/en/product/oase-119-oase-119/

𝔉𝔞𝔶𝔡𝔞𝔟𝔞𝔡 𝔉𝔬𝔯 𝔖𝔞𝔩𝔢


5 February, 2023
2-2.45 pm at📍Baitur Rauf Jame Masjid, Faydabad, Dakshin Khan, Dhaka
3-4.20 pm at📍Rouf's Villa, Faydabad

New work by Omar Chowdhury (BD/AU) & কে বা কাহারা 

Melding Dhaka metal music and neglected architecture, 𝔉𝔞𝔶𝔡𝔞𝔟𝔞𝔡 𝔉𝔬𝔯 𝔖𝔞𝔩𝔢 is a performance and installation by the artist Omar Chowdhury and কে বা কাহারা (Ke ba kahara). At the site of a private villa by renowned architect Marina Tabassum, the performance uncovers the tangled history of an imported modernism and its obsolescence by the contemporary aesthetic of Bangladesh’s voracious new rise. Through a choreography of architectural interventions, moving images, guitar score, and performance, a speculative present is enacted that is haunted by doubt, private regret and ruinous anticipation.



About 𝔉𝔞𝔶𝔡𝔞𝔟𝔞𝔡 𝔉𝔬𝔯 𝔖𝔞𝔩𝔢

Commissioned by Ke ba kahara. Curated by Sadia Rahman and co-produced by Ke ba kahara and Muhammad Anwar Hossain. With special thanks to Marina Tabassum, Khaled Mahmud and Helena Kritis. Research and early development supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia through the 2020 Now On grant. A collateral event of Dhaka Art Summit 2023 বন্যা. Printing supported by nokta

Downloads

𝔉𝔞𝔶𝔡𝔞𝔟𝔞𝔡 𝔉𝔬𝔯 𝔖𝔞𝔩𝔢 Performers’ script (EN)

About the Faydabad project (2020-23)

Haunted by doubt, regrets and ruinous anticipation. A two-part conceptual performance, architectural intervention and installation by Omar Chowdhury (BD/AU) essaying a charismatic modernist building by the architect Marina Tabassum that is equally desirable and overwhelming to all who pass through it.  Two chapters, separated by a history of rupture and a mnemonic gap of over two years.

Detail: Omar Chowdhury. Faydabad To-Let Documentation 2021, 21m52s, 1080p, H.264 (ProRes), colour, stereo.

Related Programming

2020 Discussion group, “Sensing Spaces”, 9 October-6 November
2020 Performance, “Faydabad To—Let”, 19 December
2021 Design workshop, “Faydabad – For Sale”, 20 April-12 August


Images: Omar Chowdhury

Guided tour: Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque


Collateral Event: Dhaka Art Summit 2023 বন্যা Time-based programming


5 February, 2023
2-2.45 pm at📍Bait Ur Rouf Jame Masjid, Faydabad, Dakshin Khan, Dhaka

Guided tour by Nabil Shahidi and Samiul Sabbir Islam.

Designed and constructed by Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA), Bait Ur Rouf Jame Mosque is located in Faydabad, at the north-east periphery of Dhaka.

Documentation: Sadia Rahman

« সংলাপ » for LUMIN x Peak Cymru


LUMIN x Peak Cymru: Darllediad Radio LUMIN Radio Broadcast


3 December 2022

Digital audio recording. 40m 39s. Sadia Rahman and Priyanka Hutschenreiter (AT/BD). 2022.
Thinking in concert: autonomy, friendship and collaboration through the ether.



Broadcast from #Platfform2, Abergavenny Train Station.
Listen from Platfform 2 + Online Gwrandewch o Blatfform 2 + Ar-lein

Across 2022 LUMIN have been imagining and designing a decentralised, itinerant radio station to continue their occasional digital broadcast Local 37. On Saturday 3 December, LUMIN will be making their first broadcast from #Platfform2, Abergavenny Train Station. 

Featuring live, site-specific, dialogic, and recorded sound work from artists including Gyda gwaith sain byw, safle-benodol, deialogol, wedi’i recordio gan artistiaid yn cynnwys: 
Lauren Craig, Mort Drew, কে বা কাহারা / Ke ba kahara, Sadia Rahman, Marva Jackson Lord, Daniel Trivedy, Radha Patel, Umulkhayr Mohamed, Cecelia Graham, Owen Griffiths and Diego Gutierrez Valladares; plus Priyanka Hutschenreiter, Dafydd Jenkins, Grace Jackson, Bog Cottage, Manuela Moser, Kate Murphy, Rebecca Chesney and Lubaina Himid (The Storm by Rebecca Chesney and Lubaina Himid. Commissioned by TONSPUR Kunstverein Wien, 2021). 

Drwy 2022 mae LUMIN wedi bod yn dychmygu ac yn dylunio gorsaf radio ddatganoledig a theithiol i barhau â’u darllediad digidol achlysurol Local 37. Ddydd Sadwrn, 3 Rhagfyr, bydd LUMIN yn gwneud eu darllediad cyntaf o Blatfform 2, Gorsaf Drenau’r Fenni.

Listen (1) on-site at Platfform 2, Abergavenny Train Station & (2) online at https://lumin-press.com/


Curated by LUMIN
Supported by Peak Cymru / Casgleb and Arts Council Wales


« স্বাচ্ছন্দে » for LUMIN x Solstice Radio


9am - 9am BST, 20-21 June ☀ at www.twitch.tv/madeinroath @madeinroath
LUMIN x Solstice Radio: a 24 hour radio broadcast across the Solstice

Digital audio recording. 16m 20s. Sadia Rahman. 2022.
In-between moments, meandering conversations and silence at moments of collective rest in Rajshahi, Bangladesh in the summer of 2022 as কে বা কাহারা moves through the city morning, afternoon, evening and after midnight in breaks between workshops and visits. With thanks to Nabil Shahidi, Rasel Chowdhury and Samiul Sabbir Islam.


Songs at the Boalia tea stall:

জানি তোমার প্রেমের যোগ্য আমি তো নই (Jani Tomar Premer Jogyo Ami To Noi), by Manna Dey, যদি কাগজে লেখো নাম  (Jodi Kagoje Lekho Nam), by Manna Dey, মিষ্টি একটা গন্ধ রয়েছে ঘরটা জুড়ে (Mishti Ekta Gondho Royecche Ghorta Jure), by Manna Dey, ক ফোটা চোখের জল ফেলেছো যে তুমি ভালবাসবে (Ko Phota Chokher Jol Pheleccho Je Tumi Bhalobashbe), by Manna Dey.


LUMIN x Solstice Radio


a 24 hour radio broadcast across the Solstice
9am - 9am BST, 20 - 21 June ☀ at www.twitch.tv/madeinroath @madeinroath


Local 37 is a fictional underground radio station transmitting dialogue and strategies for the artist as worker. It inhabits the intersections of creation, transmission, and anti-colonial and working-class collectivisation. Local 37 is a manifesto for the artist, building ‘a world of mutual cooperation, mutual protection, mutual love.’ This 24 hour iteration of Local 37 continuously transmits art, labour, activism, social change, dialogue, union organising, and an everyday ambience from another reality.

Featuring: Agnes Essonti Luque + Mango+Okra, Beau W Beakhouse, blaxTARLINES (Hassan Issah), Diego Gutierrez Valladares, Farah Allibhai, Fern Thomas, Harun Morrison, Khairani Barokka, Lauren Craig, Marlo De Lara, Marva Jackson Lord, Mort Drew, Neufunkaum, Sadia Pineda Hameed, Sadia Rahman, Shenece Oretha, Siegrun Salmanian, TAKEAWAY (Kelly Best, Simon Matthew), Umulkhayr Mohamed, Volery (Tsering Frykman-Glen, Alfred Marasigan)

Curated by LUMIN
Supported by Made in Roath and Arts Council Wales

Design workshop: 𝔉𝔞𝔶𝔡𝔞𝔟𝔞𝔡 𝔉𝔬𝔯 𝔖𝔞𝔩𝔢


20 April—12 August 2021 
Online


Examining our society’s relationship to history, heritage and modern living, this design workshop is taking place within the the framework of the artist Omar Chowdhury’s year-long response to and conceptual engagement with Rouf’s Villa. A privately commissioned modernist villa in Faydabad on the outskirts of Dhaka, which was designed by award-winning architect Marina Tabassum.

Convened by Omar Chowdhury (BD/AU) and Sadia Rahman.
Design by Nabil Shahidi and Samiul Sabbir Islam.

Research and early development supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia through the 2020 Now On grant.

Walter Benjamin, Four Essays on the Art of Cinema


“একটি শিল্পদ্রব্যের পুনরুৎপাদন-সম্ভাবনা মূলগতভাবে চিরকালই বিদ্যমান থেকেছে। একের তৈরি শিল্পদ্রব্য যেকোনও সময়েই অন্যের অনুকরণসাধ্য ছিল।“
   —
ওয়াল্টার বিনইয়ামিন, “যান্ত্রিক পুনরুৎপাদনের যুগে শিল্পকর্ম”, (১৯৩০~, প্যারিস)

Forthcoming from nokta.
Translated into Bengali by Sarbajit Ghosh (IN).
Edited by Sadia Rahman.

Image: Sadia Rahman

Faydabad To—Let



19 December 2020
📍Rouf’s Villa, Faydabad, Dakshin Khan, Dhaka

New work by Omar Chowdhury (BD/AU)
Faydabad To—Let. 
Four actors. Variable dimensions. 22 minutes, in multiple repetitions.

A conceptual performance and installation essaying an abandoned modernist building by the architect Marina Tabassum and its ties to the history of regional modernism in Bangladesh. First part of a two-part performance of 22 minutes, separated by a mnemonic gap of two years. Includes architectural interventions to the site to generate narrative.

“There is a strain of melancholia that has coursed through the history of modernist architecture and art in Bangladesh that has always intrigued me. The political and cultural implications of importing these processes and aesthetics has been ... fraught, to say the least. Yet there is a heart-breaking nostalgia and desire there too. We, Ke ba kahara as a group, along with the actors, wondered how these narratives could appear and embed themselves into Marina Tabassum’s complex building and its past. The first performance and installation has been a reflexive, meta-fictional attempt at solving this problem.” — Omar Chowdhury

  • Commissioned and produced by Ke ba kahara.
  • Curator, Sadia Rahman. Associate Curator, Rasel Chowdhury.

  • Performance: Kazi Roksana Ruma, Tuku Mozniul, Rasel Chowdhury, Taniya.
  • Documentation: (Moving) Russel Parvez, (Still) Rasel Chowdhury.
  • Supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia through the 2020 Now On grant.
  • With thanks to Marina Tabassum and Khaled Mahmud.



Documentation detail. Faydabad To-Let (2023), Performance, 29m22s.

ইহা! একটি ষান্মাসিক পত্রিকা
Anthology project: Collaborative Cultures


Forthcoming: প্রথম সংখ্যা/1st issue

Table of contents

  • Café REELi a Roundtable Discussion (Part One)
  • ‘Entry Points: Reconsidering the Asian Art Biennale with Syed Jahangir’ by Diana Campbell Betancourt (1st Bangla translation)
  • Cheragi Art Show 2012-2020: Reviewing the archive
  • Lokayoto Bidyaloy: Manifesto and Invitation
  • Chobi Mela and Photo Kathmandu: Munem Wasif and Nayantara Gurung Kakshapati in Conversation (Part One)

    A series of half-yearly, Bengali-language short publications documenting practices of collaboration in arts, ideas, society and culture from the Bangladesh perspective. Over time, the series will create an evolving anthology of the practices used by cultural groups in Bangladesh and elsewhere, to collaborate, study, discuss, invent, and reinvent ways of coming together and working together. The series will document practices from Bangladesh and alongside Bengali translations of noteworthy international texts on collaboration and collective practice.

    Series co-editors: Sadia Rahman, Rasel Chowdhury.
    In collaboration with boobook and nokta. The research and production of this issue are partially supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia through the 2020 Now On grant.

    Discussion Group: Sensing Spaces

    • 9 October-6 November 2020
    • Online

    Can curatorial practice open possibilities of experience, rather than create spaces that specify what will be seen?

    Absorbing and relocating the ideas set out by Svetlana Boym in the 2008 essay ‘Architecture of the Off-Modern’, this discussion explored its own relationships to history, heritage, architecture and human experience when situated in present-day Bangladesh. The discussions took place via six online video conferences in October and November of 2020, connecting participants in the cities of Rajshahi, Dhaka and Brussels over a sequence of readings, (and re-readings), short films and recorded lectures that were organised under broad themes - ‘Maintenance, Preservation and Decay’, ‘Time and Change’, ‘The Act of Exhibiting - What is it?’

    Organised in parallel to our preparations to inaugurate the first exhibition generated by artist Omar Chowdhury’s (AU/BD) long-duration response to and conceptual engagement with Rouf’s Villa in Faydabad, Dhaka. This unique site is a privately commissioned modernist villa on the outskirts of Dhaka, designed by award-winning architect Marina Tabassum. When built, the striking building was set at a distance from the megacity that is Dhaka, Bangladesh. Over the years, the fringes of the city have pushed relentlessly outwards and now, this grand villa is hemmed in by a bustling urban surround of multi-storey apartments and small-industry, recent arrivals to the nation's voracious capital city.

    Convened by Sadia Rahman.
    Commissioned and produced by Ke ba kahara.
    This discussion group was partially supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia through the 2020 Now On grant.

    Image: Sadia Rahman

    Readings/Viewings:


    1. Boym, Svetlana. The Architecture of the Off-Modern. New York: Princeton Architectural Press (FORuM Project). 2008.
    2. Stewart Brand’s ‘How Buildings Learn Episode 1 - Flow’ [29m video]
    3. Adam Richards 'Nithurst Farm’ [5m video]
    4. Stewart Brand’s ‘How Buildings Learn Episode 3 - How Buildings Change’ [29m video]
    5. Selections from a conversation ‘Frida Escobedo and Pedro Reyes look to the future to save Mexico’s lost past’ Document Magazine
    6. The Romance of Maintenance” Episode 5 of the BBC series “How Buildings Learn” by Stewart Brand
    7. Demolitions and the Urgency of Architectural History in Egypt” by Mohamed Elshahed (Sep 7, 2020, Platform Magazine)
    8. Shearing Layers” Episode 6 of the BBC series “How Buildings Learn” by Stewart Brand
    9. Bordeleau, Anne. An Indexical Approach to Architecture. FOOTPRINT, [S.l.], p. 79-96, June 2008
    10. Ashraf, Kazi Khaleed, and James Belluardo (eds.) 1998. An Architecture of Independence : The Making of Modern South Asia. Di 1 ban. New York: The Architectural League of New York.
    11. Lecture by Dorothea von Hantelmann, “Transforming Exhibition Formats in Transforming Societies”, 25 November 2015 at ECAL
    12. Film, “Villa Empain” (Katharina Kastner, 2019)
    13. Panel Discussion “Tropical Modernisms: Brazil, Sri Lanka, and Beyond”, hosted online by Para Site, Hong Kong on 30 October 2020. Moderator: Cosmin Costinas, Discussants: Ana Maria Tavares & Fabiola López-Durán, Sean Anderson.

    Downloads:

    English-language hand-sheets for the ‘Sensing Spaces’ discussion group

    Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6

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