thématique de travail
— ETH, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule — Zürich, Schweiz / Kaapstad iKapa Cape Town, Suid Afrika / Сарајево Sarajevo,Bosna i Hercegovina / Medellín, Colombia
Responsables de projet: Huber Klumpner et Bojana Papic
Colonisation is a part of a cosmos of interchanges, transfers and imaginaries. People's practices and along with them their conflicting ideas about culture, technologies, language and practices are subject too simple and complex, modifications and exchanges. Let us look at contemporary currents of debates on Post-colonisation and De-colonisation. In our experience in the field of post-conflict Balkan, post-apartheid South-Africa, peace-process Colombia, our evidence-based research shows widespread signs of Re-colonisation.
So where inside the commercial colonisation of our public space can we find opportunities for an alternative view on colonisation? Sitting or seating, the provision of a seat or seating, the arrangement of material for a seat as one of the most basic human activities in private or public urban environments is the point of departure for our observation. Sitting is the result of habits or sometimes rituals that often happen unconsciously but show substantial transformative capital and cultural reflection. As much as s seat itself can show our position in society or social standing of an individual or group, the situation in how we sit talks about us. In our cities of today, we often find that sitting has lost "form and function". The impossibility of sitting is the final goal in often semi-privatised public space which makes sitting a commodity, while the sitting has become conditioned to be accompanied by commercial consumption. To sit and look, contemplate, provide an opportunity to engage with a by-passer known or unknown, invite for the company is not in the repertoire of public space anymore.
Our prototypical pilot-project is a real, constructed, full-scale object and invites visitors of the exhibition to re-learn sitting, repairing, producing and engaging in the re-colonisation of public space, and in the museum. Local practices are translated in public space as a driver for designing new ways of discovering qualities in the space surrounding us. People, individuals and the masses, regardless of age, race, gender, income are invited to share a seat with a renewed understanding of spatial practices by the population of a specific place irrespective of their local and migrant perceptions and practices. We look for new qualities in an open shared public space.
