Remix the City: Conference Project — Do You Control Space?

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The making of our conference project was definitely time consuming and harder than we thought it would be. We spent 15-16 hours straight in Heimbold, from 4pm to 8am the next morning. We thought we would be home by maximum 2am, but that did not happen… We had to cut each letter one by one, and then stick them up on the wall, one by one. Although the execution took so long, it was a great experience. I had never collaborated with someone artistically before, and it was definitely an enriching experience. Grace and I really put effort into the project and mostly the execution, and it was worth it because we are really satisfied with the outcome.

This is the text we wrote and put up on the wall:

Where does SPACE begin?

Does SPACE control you? Or do you control SPACE?

Architecture should make you feel at home in duration, not enclose you in space, nor in time measured out as if it were space.

You accept the division between public and private. Will you fight or conform?

FUCK CAPITALISM

You must connect one possibility to another. Either REJECT industry or EMBRACE it.

“Art can have no existential significance for a civilization which draws a line between life and art”

The doctrine of modern architecture excludes artist. Do not let it exclude YOU.

Does SPACE control you? Or do you control SPACE?

When we thought we had done the “worst” part, we had to install. And installing took so much longer than we thought it would. It was definitely the greatest part of the project, though. We saw our project come together letter after letter and that was amazing. We were in such a zone, time did not matter and people around us either. We installed our project during the night to make sure we would not be bothered by people walking through the hallway, but some people were still around, and it was really interesting to see their reactions, as the project was not yet fully put together.

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Throughout the installation, we realized that it was really a 2 person project. I could have not done this alone; the execution would have taken twice the time, and I don’t think I would have had the courage to take over the space on my own. I think we altered the visual code of Heimbold in the sense that we took over unused space and did not really give a choice to people to see it or not. We wrote our text in the second person, to make it even harder for people to not notice it. The decision of starting our story on the other end of the hallway rather at the beginning is something we were unsure of for a second, because we were worried it would not make enough sense, but I am really glad we did it that way. It followed a little bit of the Situationist’s nonsense style. The reactions to the project were really interesting and positive; I spent the whole next day in Heimbold and saw a lot of people stopping to read the text, and overheard people talking about it. Some teachers came up to me to compliment the project/to ask for some sort of explanation for what we stated, and I thought that it was really cool that faculty got involved

Author: Mathilde Hauducoeur