Public Assembly

Through the overlay of mapping and navigational paths coupled with 1:1 site investigations, this project interrogated Rotterdam harbour as a social landscape – encompassing forgotten issues and detached entities along it’s edge. This investigation revealed the location of a detention centre / barge housing two hundred and seventy foreign asylum seekers.

The proposed curatorial framework took navigational bearings back to where these interned individuals came from, drawing out and mapping their memories of home to create a metaphysical space for the refugee. These new interventions proposed to create zones [possible artistic and temporal insertions] across Rotterdam city where the public could perceive the dislocation and isolation of the refugees who awaited an uncertain future.

‘Central to this cross-disciplinary studio was the idea or theme of connection, transformation and adaption. The brief of the studio involved the (re)connections of the harbour area with the urban planning of Rotterdam and parallel transformation and rethinking.’ Richard Goodwin

This project was undertaken as the first in a series of activities within the Ephemeral Laboratory. It offered an opportunity to broaden the urban context in which I had previously worked and to develop my methodology within an intensive two week ‘charette’ style studio alongside COFA and Willem deKooning Academy fine art and design students.

Despite the hypothetical nature of the brief and outcome (as an exhibition of propositions) and the limited project timeframe, this studio proved to be one of the most intense and influential projects within the Master’s ‘Ephemeral Laboratory’ research. It was the first time I developed a proposition through the utlisation of three different spatial scales: mapping at an urban planning scale, exploring the site at 1:1 scale & the imagined mind-map of the project’s subject: the interned asylum seeker.

Another paradigm shift was the development of a social framework or curatorial strategy as a solution to a design brief rather than a physical / spatial form. It proposed a method for situating works within an urban context rather than making the works themselves – offering this to other practitioners for future collaboration.

This project also illustrated the importance of seeking ongoing professional development and peer review. As the project sat within an institutional / academic context, my proposition was influenced by the pedagogical armatures and critical feedback of the studio leaders – in particular, Professor Richard Goodwin.