Melbourne travelers have been asking ‘where is the W-11 Tram?’ It is taking rest. Last Melbourne summer twenty pairs of strangers met to have an 'overheard' conversation whilst traveling a lap of the city; twenty different groups of artists led an 'overboard' improvised performance journey for a lap of the city; 20,000 souvenir artwork tickets were gifted; and over 40,000 passengers ‘otherwise’ encountered one another in a uniquely disarming and free public setting whilst onboard hosts from Karachi and Melbourne broke the ice of public inhibitions, cajoling strangers to share a bit of themselves. And yes, the most unlikely assemblages of people can spontaneously combust into dancing together on the W-11 Tram.

"the hit of Festival Melbourne 2006"
- The International News (Jang Group of newspapers) 27 March 2006

"a cacophany of colour, flashing lights and pulsating Pakistani music..."
Harbant Gill, HERALD SUN March 6, 2006

"the W11 tram... puts the ‘festivities’ in the Festival Melbourne 2006"
- The Post (Pakistan national newspaper), The Post 27 March 2006

"moving (in more ways than one) testimony to the Pakistani spirit"
- The Post (Pakistan national newspaper), The Post 20 March 2006

more reviews here

"exhilerating"
- The Age

"sets out to map ... the collective consciousness of tram users and workers, the system's reflection of the life and image of the city, and hence the actual thought and art it fosters"
- Bibio: A Review of Books

"makes trams a cultural experience"
- Hindustan Times

"an intersection where public transport and public art ... connect, and so too artist and audience, driver and passenger"
- Art Monthly Australia

"a unique initiative"
- Hindustan Times

"tram global, feel local"
- The Age

- more reviews here

shared with Denis Cliche, CEO of Melbourne's tramways operator Yarra Trams (centre) and guest speakers Soumitri Varadarajan & Marie Sierra at the tramjatra book launch

shared with The Connies - performance troupe of Melbourne tram conductors in exile, at the tramjatra book launch, Victorian Trades Hall

“exhilarating” - The Age
“ a unique initiative’ – The Hindustan Times

304pp colour, soft cover, 120 x 160mm.
AUD$30 ISBN 0 86459 364 3

Purchase online

distribution:
Australia - Modern Journal: modernjournal@netspace.net.au

Internationally - Idea Books www.ideabooks.nl
or order online at www.informit.com.au

South Asia - Foundation Books: www.fbindia.com
295 Indian Rs ISBN 81 902272 4 6

Welcome, driver. This project, A TRACKING VEHICLE, is now ready and awaiting departure. The project inquires into the design of art in public space. It is concerned with an artistry of design practice and with the design of a network of art; with the tramways of Melbourne and with concepts and experiences of public space.

The project makes tracks. It is a project that is in itself comprised of a networked collection of text, image and sound tracks. It is a project which makes moves of departure from enclosing modes of thought and action toward a non-essentialist mode of thought and action sustained by a regenerative poetic momentum. A TRACKING VEHICLE attempts to open up a renewed repertoire of movements for the conductor of the project, whilst evoking reverberative memories and resonant imaginings for those who might encounter it.

Like any new beginning, the project “contains” what Martin Heidegger has described as “the undisclosed abundance of the unfamiliar and extraordinary, which means that it also contains strife with the familiar and ordinary.” In order to facilitate new departures for art and design practice, the project mobilises a dialogue between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the ordinary and the extraordinary. Specifically, this is a dialogue between the tramways of Melbourne and reflections upon art and design practices in public space. But such a dialogue soon drifts to also be one that echoes between specification and general abstraction; between a focus on the experientially particular and ‘real’, and the conceptually vague and imaginary. The project gathers a curvilinear momentum from this dialogical turn, openly extending outward in movements that re-turn upon themselves to mobilise an undisclosed abundance of departures.

The project proposes an allegorical approach toward the design of art in public space that is concerned with modulations of movement and the connected-ness of a network of relations between art and urban structures. The net effect of A TRACKING VEHICLE is the intertwining of the dialogical momentum of its tracking, the way it moves back and forth, and the network of tracks that mobilise its approach.

# # # # #
Text shown here is an excerpt. The complete text from the project is available in pdf format below, comprised in sections.

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD
CONTENTS [96kb]
TOUR ROUTE [384kb]
ROUTE 1 [384kb]
ROUTE 2 [640kb]
ROUTE 3 [640kb]
ROUTE 4 [576kb]

# # # # #

Tram conductors of Calcutta Tramways Company were invited to wear a change of uniform for one day in September 2005. "Shared lung' is an ongoing project exploring sustainability as a uniform issue.

shared with Tollygunge tram conductor

"Tramways staff turn out in blue for a green cause...It was a rare departure from tradition and a welcome one at that. ... unprecedented gusto with which the conductors took to the change .."
- The Times of India, Saturday 10 September 2005

0 Forward - Mick Douglas

DEPARTING

1 which tram?
Debasish Bhattacharryya, Roberto D'Andrea, Jayanta Basu, Mick Douglas and Mahadeb Shi

TRACKING

2 conduct - Prabir Kumar Goswami and Roberto D'Andrea

3 still, getting there - Soumitra Das

4 jatras

5 Kolkata's tram conveys ordinary people - Sarna Chitrakar

6 journeying and seeing - Jogi Panghaal

7 passage - Suzie Attiwill

NETWORKING

8 passengers
Anirban Basu, Paul Bateman, Ranjita Biswas, Keith Butler, Aparna Das, Lyall Johnson, Malcolm Just, Mary Kalantzis, Paul Molyneux, V. Ramaswamy, S.R. Rajen.

9 transports of pleasure - Dipesh Chakrabarty

10 engaging contradiction - Catherine Murphy

11 made for a hybrid viewer: tramjatra - Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

12 ticket and travel - Bruce C. Wearne

13 pedagogic possibilities of tramjatra - Fazal Rizvi

14 speculations

SHEDDING

tramways dossier

image index
contributors
acknowledgements

"sets out to map ... the collective consciousness of tram users and workers, the system's reflection of the life and image of the city, and hence the actual thought and art it fosters"
- Bibio: A Review of Books

"makes trams a cultural experience"
- Hindustan Times

"an intersection where public transport and public art ... connect, and so too artist and audience, driver and passenger"
- Art Monthly Australia

"a unique initiative"
- Hindustan Times

"tram global, feel local"
- The Age

contact us by email:
info AT tramtactic.net

People
Mick Douglas is an artist and senior lecturer in the School of Architecture & Design at RMIT University, Melbourne, whose work explores modes of transport as mediums of art practice.

Durriya Kazi is an artist, curator and head of the Department of Visual Studies at the University of Karachi.

Roberto D'Andrea is organiser of The Connies – a performance troupe of former tram conductors that express the social craft of conducting at festivals by talking to people on environmental and social themes and distributing suites of collectable, educative tickets.

Neal Haslem is a communication designer and community-enabling worker.

Suzie Attiwill is an independant curator, writer and exhibition designer, and senior lecturer in the School of Architecture & Design at RMIT University.

Jogi Panghaal is a designer working with the crafts sector and womens groups in India evolving new product and media forms.

Wajid Ali is Karachi based visual artist and emerging filmmaker.

Mahadeb Shi is a filmmaker and film editor based in India.

Debasish Bhattacharyya is a scientist and environmental activist who has campaigned steadily for improvement of public transport in his city Kolkata.

Jayanta Basu is a zoologist, environmental journalist and community health researcher and activist.

Nusrat Iqbal, Mohammed Nadeem, Safdar Ali and Mohammed Arshard are chamak patti vehicle decorators in Karachi

The Chitrakar community of Medinapore, West Bengal, are patuas / scroll painters who practice a tradition of mobile storytelling.

Tramjatra Book Links
Yoda Press – South Asia publishers
Foundation Books - South Asia distribution
RMIT University Press - Australian publishers
Idea Books – Europe, North America & North Asia distribution

thanks
this TRAMTACTIC website was first developed in 2005 with the kind support of the Australia India Council of the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs.

W-11: Karachi to Melbourne
collaboration with Pakistani vehicle decorators and performers to transform the experience of travel by Melbourne tram, for Festival Melbourne 2006, the cultural festival of the 2006 Melbourne Commonealth Games, March 2006. (the first season of the W-11 project)

Tramjatra: Imagining Melbourne & Kolkata by tramways
Book edited by Mick Douglas, published by Yoda Press and RMIT University Press exploring the cultural dimmensions of tram travel in two linked but radically different cities, 2005.

Shared Lung
a temporary public art intervention with tramways communities, Kolkata and Melbourne 2005-6.

Tramjatra_Project
temporary public art events, Melbourne & Kolkata, 2001

A Tracking Vehicle
a speculative text, image and sound project by Mick Douglas

TRAMTACTICS DEPART FROM THE POETIC POTENTIAL OF TRAMWAYS
Tramtactic art projects draw from the practical characteristics of tramways to create poetic encounters with public transport that resonate with the collective memory and imagination.

TRAMTACTICS MOBILISE THE ART OF PUBLIC LIFE
Tramtactics celebrate the uniquely human attributes in ways of doing things in everyday public life. The art of addressing and engaging the cultural lives of urban people is mobilised by the street-wise agility of tramtactics.

TRAMTACTICS MANOEUVRE BACK AND FORTH TOWARD SUSTAINABILITY
Tramtactics follow the uniquely non-linear operating logic of tramways, moving back and forth, day in and day out, to explore how enriched experiences of tram travel can foster increased public transport patronage. Now undergoing an international revival a century after invention, tramways and light rail transport systems are becoming better understood for their practical and poetic contribution to more sustainable urban transport choices.

TRAMTACTICS NEGOTIATE STREET SITUATIONS WITH TACT
Tramtactics demonstrate how the complexities of urban living may be negotiated with care and tact, responding to tricky circumstances in flexible ways. Tramtactics are constructed through collaborative working relationships of mutual advantage, creating a collective of people moved by a city’s tramways in different ways.

TRAMTACTICS MOBILISE EFFECTS TO GET PEOPLE MOVING
Tramtactics build on people’s shared experience of being transported by trams in ways that enable us to momentarily repose and feel emotionally moved in the circle of life. Tramtactics explore the relationship between the practical movement afforded by tramways and the contemporary social, political, economic and creative forces of movement brought to tramways.

TRAMTACTICS ARE TACTILE
Tramtactics celebrate the irreducible capacity of people to feel and make themselves felt, to move, and be moved. Tramtactics brush up against the textures of urban life to provoke us into encountering others and recognising that things could be otherwise.

TRAMTACTICS NETWORK
Tramtactics operate simultaneously at local and global levels, maximising the echo effect that a tactic here can have elsewhere. In the context of increased global forces, tramtactics lay the tracks for a different network of globalisation from below.

TRAMTACTICS NEGOTIATE TRAMWAYS CONDUCT
Tramtactics explore the conduct of users and organisers of tramways systems. Tramtactics contribute toward debates about the desirable attributes and competencies that will determine the sought after tram and light rail services of the future.

TRAMTACTICS ARE FANTASTIC
Tramtactics stimulate the everyday urban imagination by heightening awareness of the fantastic dimensions of tramways life. Tramtactics come and go, appearing and disappearing to challenge popular certainty and point toward the extraordinary qualities of ordinary passages in life.

[tramtactic bag, Mick Douglas with Kolkata leather workers, first edition 2001]]