Futuresonic

Photographs, drawings, stories and a scale model from Petpuja, a project exploring the potential of urban food systems in Bangalore and Delhi. Petpuja demonstrates the possibility of a freely accessible network of community grown food and looks at the nutritive, environmental and inter-personal implications that growing vegetables in the public can have on neighbourhoods. 'Petpuja' translates as 'stomach worship.' It explores the potential of food growing initiatives, and references the rich street culture of fast food, street food and junk food in Delhi. 

"The project has been an effort to seed a network of publicly accessible food by growing vegetables in public spaces and mapping them. I have grown hardy vegetables like spinach on streets in Bangalore and then organised street side parties to share that food. I also developed a self-watering system for easier public space farming. Across the last few months I have been working with communities of street children in Delhi to work on mechanisms of growing enough vegetables for their own sustenance. In this process, as a response to their situation, I designed and developed a bamboo structure ("canopy") which promotes dual use of public space." - Prayas Abhinav

Biography

Prayas Abhinav lives in Bangalore, India. He has an interest in re-vitalizing and re-imagining urban spaces. Through his work he explores how public spaces can be utilized for cultural and civic uses. Employing social networks and low-fi technologies to connect communities and resources is often one of his approaches. In his projects, he experiments with the possibility of seeding networks and infrastructures which can exist around this reality. He has been part of efforts to seed open content movements in India and in 2007 helped launching the Creative Commons India licenses.

He has presented his projects and proposals at 48c: Public Art Ecology (08), Urban Climate Camp, ISEA (08), Urban Typhoon, Koliwada (08), Sensory Urbanism, Glasgow (08), First Monday, Chicago (06), The Paris Accord, Paris (06), Public Service Broadcasting Trust (06), Sarai (05).

www.prayas.in