Context
Phey, Ladakh
Nestled in the Trans-Himalayan region, Ladakh provides an inspiring setting to study mountain ecosystems.
Known for historic practices around glacial irrigation and vernacular architecture, it has been negotiating a shifting relationship between the historic and the contemporary.
Ladakh’s vernacular architecture, farming practices have evolved over centuries with knowledge of local materials and in response to the harsh climate of a mountainous desert within its agro-pastoral culture.
Here, the old village of Phey, on the banks of the river Indus and located 15 km from the main town of Leh, is a cluster of peasant houses that were built incrementally over the generations. This high-altitude desert offers a living laboratory for interdisciplinary exploration, blending art, science, and technology.
Participants will collaborate with local communities, drawing on their vernacular knowledge while reimagining narratives of resilience and adaptation in times of urbanisation in this fragile ecosystem.
Selected Projects
Click below to explore the journeys of the selected Projects:
by Adiba, Nikita, Swait, Abhishek, Shreni
Project Pola is an interactive tech-art installation set inside a traditional Ladakhi tent, where a chatbot housed in a Degchi shares the cultural evolution of Pulao. Blending heritage, storytelling, and digital engagement, it invites audiences to gather, reflect, and reconnect through food, memory, and multisensory participation.
by Rajbir, Jasan, Chaithali, Hridya
A Jar of Fermented Memory is an interactive installation that weaves together oral histories, food practices, and climate awareness from Ladakh into a slow, sensorial experience. At its core are three interactive jars: a Home Kitchen, Monastery Kitchen, and Nomadic Kitchen each holding distinct narratives shaped by place, tradition, and adaptation.
Mentors
Playful Experimentation | Empathetic thinking | Critical precision
Freo Majer, founder and artistic director of Forecast, connects cultural practitioners with renowned mentors through this international mentorship program. He co-initiated the interdisciplinary project Housing the Human (2017–2019) and, in 2020, began a 3-year collaboration on Driving the Human, an eco-social research program with ZKM, HfG, and acatech.
Human Wildlife Interaction | Conservation | Bio-Cultural Heritage
Saloni integrates scientific rigor with compassion and inclusivity. Focused on psycho-social dimensions of multispecies interactions and human-wildlife coexistence, she employs biocultural approaches and community-led methods. Primarily working in the Himalayan region, her PhD explored relationships between people, snow leopards, and wolves in Ladakh, fostering coexistence strategies.Abeer Gupta, Director of Achi Association since 2014, researches oral histories, material culture, and visual archives in Ladakh, Jammu, and Kashmir. An NID and Goldsmiths College alumnus, his publications explore cultural hybridity and commodification. He taught at Ambedkar University Delhi (2014–18) and authored works on Islam in the western Himalayas.
Creative Coding | Sound Design / Soundscapes | Generative text
Computational Mama and Nanditi Khilnani as Ajaibghar, an organisation that builds product and strategic solutions in Arts & Culture, driven by creative technology and new media. Computational Mama’s work explores coding, art and generative AI as a form of camaraderie, friendship, motherhood and self-care. Nanditi is a classically trained musician, passionate live-coder, creative-tech entrepreneur and community cultivator.
Location
Palay House
Achi Association India, established in 2010 as a not-for-profit, aims to contribute to, and safeguard the outstanding but endangered cultural heritage in the Himalayas. In 2023, Achi inaugurated Palay House in Phey for the public with a series of workshops, residencies, talks and collaborative art exhibitions by contemporary artists of Ladakh and Nepal. Projects at Palay House are being curated at the intersection of social justice, inclusion and access with education at its core. The broad thematic areas of engagement include Human Ecology, Material Culture and the process of Urbanisation within disciplines such as Art, Design and Architecture.
Partners
