Street Connect: Where Shimokitazawa, Tokyo and Khotachiwadi, Mumbai meet.

Trading Places is a new initiative of Urbanology that re-cycles the name of an older project. The new Trading Places is a space for an exchange of narratives, images and random thoughts on lives and where we live them. At the broadest level it is an imaginary where cities from the past in one part of the world merge and collide in cities of the present and future in other parts – maybe even other worlds. This creates new contexts for drama and desire, opens up possibilities of living lives in newer ways. The idea of trade also implies movement – the exchange of goods and objects, fantasies and dreams that propel us to live lives in motion, make homes in new worlds and then move on and return to familiar places to relive past lives. It focuses as much on the journey as it does on the places themselves. It collapses the idea of the journey and destination, of nomadism and primordialism, of tribalism and sedentary habitats – and allows us to unleash our imaginations in all possible ways. After all, places, cities, journeys are as much about dreams and desires as they are about themselves. And bards, story-tellers, movie-makers, writers have inevitably conjured new worlds, places, habitats and cities, however deeply foregrounded they may have been by drama, personalities and moral commandments.

In specific terms, Trading Places invites storytellers and image makers from all kinds of backgrounds and in any language to help imagine these moments in new ways. To produce narratives and images about journeys and destinations, by delving into the past or the future, by creating drama and sculpting desire in ways that consciously mix and merge contexts, by focusing on the journeys and acts of exchange and conjuring destinations that surprise.

In May 2009 – Trading Places will come out with a publication of the best narratives and images that we find on our website – that launches in October 2008.

The theme for the first round of exchange is ‘Africa and I’. We would like these words to evoke whatever it does, keeping in mind the objectives outlined above. Do e-mail us your entries (contact <at> urbanology.org), before September 15th 2008.