Kishkindha NY

Kishkindha NY: Office of (Un)Certainty Research

Kishkindha NY imagines a transformation of Manhattan into a forest city, a city inhabited not only by human, but by non-human animals and other actants. Its inspiration is Kishkindha, a city in the Hindu epic The Ramayana, which is neither the ideal city nor the decadent/evil city, but a city where the monkeys live in the forest, not quite forest and not quite city; a city which is not one. As a city that is not one, Kishkindha for us references Luce Irigeray’s landmark feminist essay – This sex which is not one.

Kishkindha NY for us is about producing a post-human, post-anthropocentric imaginary in the form of speculative science fiction. It imagines a transformation of the fabric of Manhattan via a “beastie” that in part works with human intelligence and agency, and in part relies on non-human intelligence and agency, in particular that of the fungus and the octopus.

Kishkindha NY is expected to be exhibited at the ECC Time Space and Existence exhibit in the Palazzo Bembo in Venice during the summer of 2023.

Vikramaditya Prakash

Professor of Architecture at the University of Washington in Seattle.

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