Working with Ghana ThinkTank

In January, at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Terreform joined forces with Ghana ThinkTank to help solve diversity problems identified by residents in Houston, Texas. Ghana ThinkTank works with communities in 'developing countries' to propose solutions to the issues plaguing more economically developed regions. Drawing on their experience living in the diverse, multicultural, and secular city of Kochi, residents came up with insightful and creative grassroots solutions to problems related to racial identity, religious intolerance, and resentment towards undocumented immigrants. The solutions will be implemented by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at CounterCurrent 2017 arts festival in Houston. 

The images below are from two focus groups that Andrea Johnson, Terreform's Research Director, participated in: one with volunteers at the Biennale and one with students at Aquinas College. 

Promising Developments

On January 25, Terreform co-organized Promising Developments: Designing Presents and Futures for the South Side of Chicago, a daylong conversation with designers, activists, and planners, with The City College of New York and Experimental Station. 

Kochi-Muziris Biennale

Terreform Director Vyjayanthi Rao participated in the 3rd Kochi-Muziris Biennale as a member of the artist collective Samooha. Read her article about their installation On Stage: Sathenagar Here.

“While Mumbai’s informal communities are always available to the gaze of the privileged, we observed they rarely occupy the most privileged stages as protagonists themselves.

The intention was not to create a museum-like programme to display the talents of a single community but to allow a community’s public expression, long trapped in specific forms of public discourse around protest and rights, to take flight on another, more universally visible stage.

We named our project “On Stage: Sathenagar Here” to bring visibility both to the community as author and to the concept of the stage, which operates on multiple levels to support the community as author.”

— Vyjayanthi Rao Venuturupalli