Not My Pipe

Author(s): Julia King

Type: Photograph

Department: LSE Cities

Exhibit no: 9


Julia King
A sewer pipe running through homes in Parvatia Camp, an informal settlement in south Delhi.

Urban infrastructure has long been overlooked by social theorists because of their largely normalised and hence invisible quality, only revealed during moments of breakdown.

My work explores how maintenance and distribution is a means to uncover the technologies, assemblages and politics that shore up everyday life in the city.

This image shows a sewer pipe running through homes of the residents of Parvatia Camp, an informal settlement in south Delhi. The pipe is the material and socio-political space between a global economy, world class city narratives, and huge amounts of capital moving freely at one end and basic subsistence and poverty at the other.