THE SCHOOL onderzoekt RUIMTE IN DE STAD
RECOR = onderzoek 1
IKEA = onderzoek 2
20 juli opende Kunst op Stelten, een expositie die één van de twee potentiële nieuwe ruimtes van The School mee onderzoekt. IKEA en RECOR (oftewel de ontwikkelaar Futurn) zijn al enige tijd een gesprekspartner van The School. Onderzoek naar Ruimte in de Stad loopt en ideeën werden gepitcht. Wat volgt zijn 11 dagen beeld in ruimte, alsook 11 dagen zoektocht naar nieuwe inzichten en een nieuw perspectief. Wie neemt de leiding van het RIDS Research Summer Residency de volgende 10 dagen? Wie vraagt? Het onderzoek naar Ruimte in de Stad werd elke dag anders gekleurd, een klein energiek team wisselde van locatie en focus naargelang de leiding en bezetting.
#ruimteindestad
#theschoolisnotaschool
Research Day 1/11
We started our day at 10 and ended at 10. The School is researching Space within the City, the potential for the near future, through invitation by developers or building owners.
Recor Research:
The exhibition ‘Kunst op Stelten’ was presented to press and audience, Recor was bursting with energy through image, sound and movement.
IKEA Research:
We visited the IKEA shop and tasted the ice cream and hot-dogs. Afterwards nettles, dille and lots of other plants were discovered in an area which has more potential than predicted.
A planning was made for ten days of which each day has at least 1 person to take the wheel of our research ship. Each day starts at 10h at our breakfast table in Maison Florida, which is still our playground until we say so. And we will say it, very soon!
20/07 — Opening Kunst op Stelten
21/07 — Stef Lemmens asks?
22/07 — Pablo Hannon asks?
23/07 — Fee Veraghtert asks?
24/07 — Mathias Kuypers asks?
25/07 — Selina Vanstalle asks?
26/07 — Milan Gillard asks?
27/07 — Yannick Douw asks?
28/07 — Gust Dntnr asks?
29/07 — Senneke Van de Wygaert asks?
30/07 — We celebrate the end!
Research day 2/11
Research in Recor:
The ‘Kunst op Stelten’ exhibition opens every day at 2 pm and closes at 8 pm, this is becoming a constant due to the research, today that was fine because it was raining and the Ikea is closed: national holiday
Stef Lemmens takes the lead and asks: Can new meaning be given to the letters of RECOR?
“Ruwe Energie Concentreren Op Rafelranden”
“Ruimte En Creativiteit Ongelimiteerde Rijkdom” “Rethink Elevate Continue Operate Relocate”
Restlessness strikes and together with Selina Vanstalle and Bjorn Croonenberghs, Stef Lemmens installs a first composition of a studio on stilts. Again new questions can be asked.
The exhibition attracts visitors and brings new movement, about community, about beer breweries, factories and energy of people. Stilt walkers present themselves and photographers pass by.
Hunger and the evening falls, Chili Sin and the Austrian guest eagerly feast in the back outdoor kitchen at the back of @crocodile.boulevard . It rains a little more.
All on to Matrastheater where the screen is created and the large beamer installed. The screen will still need a helping hand during the screening. “MIJN LANDBOUWBELANG” turned out to be touching and it loosens the tongues in the afterthought. A film by: Frank van Valderen, Hans van Hezik, Levon Lois and Michiel Ubels. Five years in the making, this documentary about one of the last squatters strongholds in the Netherlands: the Landbouwbelang in Maastricht. A film about what it is like to live together in a closed community. A community that, through trial and error, develops its own codes and rules, balancing between individual and collective harmony, but remains dependent on the goodwill of the society of which it is part.The film is a metaphor for the struggles of filmmaker Frank van Valderen whose life was considerably absorbed in the turbulent production of this documentary.
Stef tears up. Recognition in the lap.
Time for rest has come. Sleep around the corner. Tomorrow Friday, @pablohannon takes the lead and asks questions!
Research day 3/11
Elke Cuppens and Stef Lemmens serve breakfast and the sun is welcomed in Florida, squatting chocolate sandwich, brewed ginger tea and found iced tea. Kip Rosa comes to strum some territorial with Yannick Douwe’s invasive dog. Three legs and a leash prove insufficient.
14h says the radio and there is already a telephone from TVL to double check whether the opening hours of the exhibition are correct, because there are people at the gate of Recor. Two more minutes. Visitors find their way. Copper & Light’s eyes scan the plan and the art is eaten. 5 visitors in total will pass on this Friday. One of which Count von Luft, very interested in explanations and also in exhibiting himself. Interesting conversation about straight gas pipes and crooked politicians.
Sebastiaan Josep Ferran Theuns and Selina Vanstalle accompany Friday’s researcher Pablo Hannon and an idea for Recor drawing cafe is suggested. A tower of Babel rises and gets higher and higher, there is dragging, screwing and lashing. A productive afternoon visiting Gamma for screws and rope, and Ikea for pencils, tape measure and ice creams. New Ikea hacks lurk around the coffee corner. Two Chiro and KSA groups call for an overnight stay, as long as they clean the kitchen in return it will be fine. They now know where to find us. Maison Florida is a home that has convenience to think about. Time for sleep and a Saturday when Fee Veraghtert pulls the investigation, Fee asks!
Research day 4/11
Fee Veraghtert asks about Space in the City
After three turbulent weeks of construction, curators @feeveraghtert and @mathiaskuypers need some rest. The day starts with drawing floor plans on the pink sheets. An article about The Night Shift encourages reflection and insight. A three-day multidisciplinary event in Ostend prior to a month residency of a group of artists. A team of three curators curates, takes care of, creates space, mentally and physically, allows time, experiments, discovers what doesn’t work, because that should also be possible. A playground where concrete ideas are transformed through context and contacts. It makes us dream bigger. The research into rest and reflection starts with rolling out the turf and filling the foot bath. Clearing the head for new ideas, new plans. While Fee finally begins the perpetually delayed reading of her bookcase full of picture books with colorful art pictures, Mathias eagerly uses the drawing cafe and smears the high fashion models in his Vogue magazines. The day is coming to an end. The sun disappears behind the Recor building around 6 am but reappears at a quarter past 7 along the intersection. Zaiyun comes to have a chat about life. And three visitors pass. And flying ants attack. — Rest well deserved! Saturday has been a while, tomorrow we will read the report of Mathias Kuypers because he was the driving force behind the Sundays investigation! Ruimte in de Stad is a study by The School, in which every day until July 30, someone else takes charge of future artistic spaces in Recor and behind Ikea.
#spaceinthecity #theschoolisnotaschool
Research day 5/11
Sunday was completely in the hands of Mathias Kuypers . What is the oldest hall of Recor doing to him? Mathias asks, not in words but in image and deed. Would you like to participate in this atypical research into Spatial Planning in the City? Would you like to help think, play and act in research into the potential new spaces of The School, Recor and Ikea? Would you like to take the initiative in the realization of new creative spaces in Hasselt? Let us know! Monday it was up to Selina Vanstalle, Selina asks! And Tuesday it’s up to Milan Gillard, Milan asks!
Research Day 6/11
What objects are free to take at IKEA? With this question we explored the spotless kitchens, the unslept beds and the playcorners waiting for playfulness. Besides the iconic IKEA pencils we also found brochures, left over fabric from the cut-it-yourself corner, some price tags and a table that thought it was nothing more than a box, leftover screws were not included. Stef Lemmens wanted to blend in with the IKEA family. An IKEA hat and backpack was made and a gift card got a creative update. The cashiers were not impressed. 1 euro was asked for the yellow bag. The other stuff was given for free. The table was placed at the entrance and our outfit was put on display. Afterwards we carried this table towards the green hills behind the building. There it was used to collect lots of yellow flowers with a pigment similar to that of IKEA. Who was first? Didn’t IKEA appropriate this color from nature when it was founded? What is the relation between this building and the land it is occupying? Imagine what they could do together!
Research Day 7/11
Yannick Douw asks!
Is there space for animals within our permaculture plans on the IKEA site?
The drawing table unfolds and soon enough keywords for our IKEA plans are dropped with words and sketches. Hotspot internet adds some more insights on the basics of permaculture and new associations began to emerge. We decide that animals also deserve a space in our future project since they were probably occupying this space long before IKEA was build. One of our original ideas for this site was to build five atelier spaces on top of the green hill behind IKEA in which artists can do a residency on permaculture, wild plants, photography, radio, materials… These kind of constructions take time which is why we decided to build a temporary shelter on top of this hill for one animal, the all-seeing bat. Within permaculture individual elements often experience a mutual benefit when they are placed within the same environment. In exchange for building its shelter we ask these bats to keep watch over this magnificent space, to guard it 24/7 and thus helping us with our first steps towards the creation of a space in which humans can live with nature, rather then next to it.
Research Day 8/11
Milan Asks !? How can radio influence this intersection of business? Lore Praet inspires passing cars with a talk about Cinema Zed and its future projects. Floriwaas, a song and tribute to 3 years of Maison Florida by Stef Lemmens, is released for the first time on our very local radio. In the meantime Selina and Gust are constructing a camera obscura that will also be installed on top of the green hills of IKEA. Can this camera use double exposure to capture both the industrial characteristics of IKEA as well as the nature it is surrounded by? We will soon find out! Clémence, part of the developing team Futurn, arrives at the RECOR site. She proposes to take us on a tour throughout the enormous space that used to be this furniture factory. When walking trough hallways of 10.000 M2, our home space Maison Florida suddenly feels like a tiny house. The emptiness is quickly filled with ideas that echo through the hallways until they hit the wall and come back to us even more enthusiastic. This building is eager to transform. We end up were we started, at the Kunst Op Stelten exhibition which is still ongoing. Two visitors arrive to check it out. Juul and Frank are locals and know the space surrounding RECOR and IKEA very well. They propose to take us on a bike trip in which we explore forgotten spots of nature in Hasselt. The inhabitants of Crocodile Boulevard absorb all of this information like a sponge for they are searching for a new space in which they can continue their research on new ways of living (together). Heads are filled with too many future ideas so rest is wel deserved. Annelies proposes to have a barbecue in her garden, from which we can watch the sun setting behind the IKEA building. Tomorrow it will rise and with it new questions will follow because Gust will ask!
Research Day 9/11
Gust Asks! How can we rethink the IKEA energy and our own energy? We start our day preparing our mobile kitchen for a roadtrip because tomorrow we want to cook for the employees at IKEA. Food, water, gas and solar power are installed. Gust jokes around when he says we should cook soup while moving this thing through the city. We laugh, we smile and then we look at each other with an expression that has become a trademark among the People of Florida. Be careful what you wish for. Cutting knifes are sharpened, guitar strings are stretched and the countdown begins. We cross the busy intersections, climb hills and dive under train bridges with a slowness that feels contagious as we see people decrease their tempo and increase their enjoyment. Our slow cooking show has been on air for one hour and twenty minutes as the smell of boiled zucchini enters the RECOR site. We rest for a while as Gust prepares his questions. What kind of energy do we need to be part of ‘The IKEA Family’? We each write an application letter, not to work there but to be included in this family. “If I welcome you into my family, will you invite me into yours?” Afterwards Gust challenges us to think about the darkest, most evil way to create energy. Doomsday scenario’s emerge in which energy is sucked out of human bodies or just wasted in the worst possible way. We then go to IKEA were we order fries with pepper. No salt but Gust adds some flavor by challenging us to now think of the most bright idea to create energy before our fries are finished. We then pair up and pitch our ideas to the IKEA employees and visitors. The employees seem glad to talk about something else then colors of couches and beds. Visitors are either enthusiastic or think we are a cult when we suggest we should all live on ‘Freedom Island’. We leave IKEA with new insights only to come back an hour later with our kitchen. We find a nice spot between trees and bushes underneath the enormous IKEA sign where we decide to spend the night. After dinner we transform the kitchen into a camping site. We say goodnight to the four letters above us as we think about the questions that Senneke will ask us tomorrow!
Research Day 10/11
We wake up around 9 am with the sound of someone walking his dog through our one-day-camp. He looks at us as with a glance of suspicion while asking us if we speak English. When we explain our entire project his suspicion makes room for confusion, which is always better than the first. After some breakfast we push our cart to the green hills behind IKEA. There we start searching for all the edible plants that are growing around the IKEA site. Plants are photographed and scanned with the app Plantnet and later dubbelchecked in the book ‘300 edible wild plants’. We start writing down the characteristics of each plant and in what dish it would fit best. Curious IKEA employees come by and are presented with our wild menu. We started off with some tea made with nettle leaves (Urtica dioica) and yarrow flowers (Achillea millefolium). Then we presented a salad of goosefoot (Chenopodium album), clover leaves (Trifolium), wild oregano (Origanum vulgare), wild chicory flowers, (Cichorium intybus), dense-flowered mullein flowers (Verbascum densiflorum), yarrow flowers (Achillea millefolium) dressed with honey from IKEA’s own beehive. We also baked some flatbread with flower from the IKEA shop which we dressed with compote we made from rosehip (Rosa canina) of which the seeds were dried and used for their vanille flavor. After this meal we pushed our kitchen back to RECOR where Senneke launched her questions. How can we wear a space? We each received colored yarn that was used to create our own space inside the RECOR buildings. There we searched for the limitations of ways in which we could interact with our chosen spot. Afterwards teams were made and cavities, cracks and holes were filled with body parts. Céline and Elke arrive at the site with everything to cook chili sin carne while others rest a bit more after yesterdays intense journey. Guitar is played and a peaceful bracelet workshop emerges. We close day 10 with a campfire at Maison Florida and sleep in our own beds again for tomorrow we need energy to celebrate the end of our RIDS Research Residency.
Research Day 11/11
At 14h we open the doors of the ‘Kunst op Stelten’ exhibition for the last time. Visitors come and take a look while eating some leftover chili from yesterday. Glenn, Stacey and Pablo explore future RECOR sounds while using the info sheets of Futurn, the developer of this site, as their instrument. During the exhibition nobody has dared to sit on the 3m high chair on stilts so today is the last chance. Glenn is feeling lucky. A new perspective is found! Maxim Hoebreckx and Aris Borboudakis arrive at the site and take us into their archive of sounds. Dust vibrates and distant church bells remind us of the farming villages that were here before this factory was build. Lies walks through the entire exhibition on stilts one last time before we close the gates. Our mobile kitchen needs to be pushed back to Maison Florida but we need motivation. Today nobody was asking but sound became our research topic. We ask it to guide us one more time. The kitchen is transformed again, this time into a recording studio. Laptop and speakers are hooked up to the solar battery and we begin our journey. We capture the sound of cars passing us by, Gust reacts to their noise by shouting their brands as aggressively as they accelerate. A barking dog joins our orchestra of noise resulting in the attention of all the other dogs we cross paths with. Pablo steals some opinions from a dutch group of people sitting on a terras. “The city is nice, oh what a nice city it is”. We stop next to a beer bicycle that donates an old song from their region to our archive. Finally we meet a family that shouts the name of the pizza they just bought in Ukranian. The Sounds of the City are stacked upon each other resulting in a chaos that echos through the streets and in our heads. Our ears are ringing when we enter the gates of Maison Florida. Heads are cooled with a water hose and silence is appreciated. The noisy cloud in our heads slowly disappears as we look back on these 11 days of research. We are grateful to everyone who shared their energy and ideas, to IKEA and RECOR for the trust that was given and we look forward to seeing these projects evolve in the near future.
#ruimteindestad
#theschoolisnotaschool