NID, Ahmedabad
27/01/2013
Third activation of the JUNGLE FEVER user’s guide 8 hour excursion (page 22-30) with an epic 12 hour road trip in and around Ahmedabad
A series of experiments in reclaiming Leisure and Tourism using the strategies of their consumption
With Hemant Chhabra, Debanshu Bhaumik, Tania, Sneha trivedi, Atisha Penjore Bhutia, Noopur, Vishnu Chandran, Bokul Borah, Surbhi Prajapati, Ankit, Pavel Klvana, Amit Chahala, Asmita Misra, sruti Menon, Meera Margaret Singh, Ishaan Dixit
The itinerary was chosen by Ishaan Dixit and the bus was courtesy of N.I.D international open elective 2013.
Destinations: Sunday Market, Thol lake, Stepwell, Hussain Doshi Gufa, Ghandinagar
The bus was used as the base / meeting point where the JUNGLE FEVER user’s guide can be acquired and activated in collective and individual excursions.
JUNGLE FEVER user’s guide
A 42 pages pocket size user’s guide in three languages (English, German and French) replacing the artist turned tourist guide that I had been in past experiments.
An invitation to play, in our every day, together or alone, indoors or outdoors, at home or abroad, it proposes short ballades, 8 hours and 24 hours journeys. The instructions can be followed literally, metaphorically, or poetically and the accompanying map refer equally to the body, the mind or the environment (indoor or outdoor) as potential sites of exploration.
8 hour itinerary
As long as a working day, it has been arrived at through a deconstruction of many trips found in conventional travel guides.
We start with having to push the bus at 6am. Breakfast and an introduction of the day and of the users’s guide took place onboard, on route to out first destination.
We finished 5 hours behind schedule, too tired for the customary improvised recollection, though good food and the sharing of one’s stories as one does after a good trip away, happened on the following day.
” mirror what you did, echo what you heard, walk backward, leave no trace”. (JF guide, page 24)
jungle fever, Ahmedabad, postcard
video diary by Atisha Penjore Bhutia and Bokul Borah
JUNGLE FEVER (wish you were here)
was initiated in 2011, originally as an attempt to reclaim Leisure and Tourism, by subverting the strategies of their consumption for collective explorations of personal borders, as if they were exotic or unchartered territory. The project has evolved in response to what fellow junglers contributed along the way. It was thought that perhaps it is not just Tourism that needs to be reclaimed, since hand in hand, the media and the global economy have transformed the world into a glossy attraction, and its inhabitants into tourists and consumers.
It is inspired by Rober Filliou insightful words: “ Leisure will have an important role in society. .. The role of the artist is to promote the creative use of leisure and creativity as a way of life, but also as a weapon against alienation” (Teaching and learning as performing art, 1970.)