Artists: Hannah Schleifer, Lyy Raitala en Raúl Hilario Montes
If you put together enough corners, it might come out as a square. If you put together enough squares, you might end up with a building. If you put together enough buildings, you will enter a city.
If the city is a stage, we are all actors. My role within the set changes every minute, and even when I'm leaving the stage, I hear the whisper from the prompter. Whereas the city feels sudden, predictable, the other feels slow, unpredictable.
I proceed carefully, the beams are not yet screwed in.
Architecture is control. Home is control. We act with control in places we seek for ease. The amount of defining elements shifts from plural to hard-to-count. Some things we don't even try to count; it's not important. By trying to measure and standardise everything, we risk meaning.
While the interior attracts notions of belonging - the outer attracts notions of wanting to belong. A metropolitan attitude hugs standardisation and kills authenticity. And between form and perception, a fleeting thought of a possible settlement always crops up. I'm stuck between documentation and scenography.
1st corner. There are none. The posed lessness of an interior reads
Kant in a lounge chair.
No one listens.
2nd corner. There are some. You describe a feeling of chumminess.
3rd corner. A framework is set, yet unsure. Doubt comes from a place of trust.
A house is a cast of potential. A church is a cast of a belief system. A theatre-set is a cast of an act. A building is a cast of a house. A house is a cast of a home. A staged reality is always a staged reality. You tear it down and build it back up, just to see if it is worth measuring again.
Architecture and governance can only try to interpret something that lives inside of it, eats its guts.
No one counts corners actively, except me.
Text by Heidi Holmström
Art direction and graphic design: Eva Welten (Studio Evert.)
With thanks to: Hannah van den Elzen and Herman Lamers
Exhibitions in Het Archief Artspace are made possible by: SKAR Ateliers, CBK Rotterdam and Fleur Groenendijk Foundation