Pravah Khandekar

I am a student at Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, pursuing Masters in Design Studies (M.Des) in the Ecologies domain. Traversing along a trans-disciplinary locus of landscape-urbanism, geo-spatial analysis, cinema and political geography, my present research at Harvard operates at the interfacial ecology of urbanism, issues of migration, displacement, and bio-politics. My previous experience includes an extended ethnographic work on the Trans-Himalayan landscape of Nepal-Tibet Border, trans-disciplinary design and artistic research with UNODA and Harvard GSD, and architectural work in Nepal and Morocco. Through my art practice, I seek to mediate the epistemic spectrum between the hyper-locality of the quotidian and the planetary human condition, which often reveals to me its innately universal, hybrid, precarious shape. Poised amidst devised experiments and serendipity, I intend to create a critical legibility towards geographic, corporeal, and cognitive contours that defy ordinary wisdom and rationale. Moreover and more fundamentally so, I am a musician, composer and vocalist, trained in the traditions of Hindustani(Indian) classical traditions. I founded the "Shuunya" Ensemble, a world music collective, where I collaborate with artists and musicians across traditions and styles. We experiment with musical consciousness, discover, perform and produce genre-defying compositions and improvisations.