Some of the most striking accounts of the inventive power of imagination come from former prisoners who have spent time in solitary confinement. In these testimonies, they relate how their imaginative capacity enabled them to keep their sanity, even in the most arduous circumstances. Somehow they managed to find a way to keep a very basic sense of social and cultural relations intact, by picturing themselves in a richer world than the one afforded by the concrete walls of the cell block. There is the astonishing story of the experience of the brothers Midhat, Bayazid, and Ali Bourequat who spent 18 years in a Moroccan prison. Here they were able to muster the power of imagination in a most dramatic way. The only way to survive their ordeal, according to their own testimonies (Hiddema B: De hel van Marokko: “We hebben Hassan beloofd te zwijgen”. De Groene, 7. https://www.groene.nl/artikel/de-hel-van-marokko-we-hebben-hassan-beloofd-te-zwijgen, 1994), was by imagining they were somewhere else. In their own 2-by-3-meter cells, the prisoners forgot about the thick walls locking them in and celebrated their birthdays, weddings, even births, and whatnot. Their minds were inexhaustible in creating diversions. One of them was by taking each other for walks in Paris. Gradually all the other inmates, sitting in their other dim-lighted prison cells, “walked” along with them. Thus they shut out reality completely: their world was what they invented. That was their salvation (This account is based on (Hiddema B: De hel van Marokko: “We hebben Hassan beloofd te zwijgen”. De Groene, 7. https://www.groene.nl/artikel/de-hel-van-marokko-we-hebben-hassan-beloofd-te-zwijgen, 1994, February 16)). It is this radical human ability to imagine worlds wholly other to the one that one is present in, which is foregrounded in the artful workshop that is the theme of this chapter.
Some of the most striking accounts of the inventive power of imagination come from former prisoners who have spent time in solitary confinement. In these testimonies, they relate how their imaginative capacity enabled them to keep their sanity, even in the most arduous circumstances. Somehow they managed to find a way to keep a very basic sense of social and cultural relations intact, by picturing themselves in a richer world than the one afforded by the concrete walls of the cell block. There is the astonishing story of the experience of the brothers Midhat, Bayazid, and Ali Bourequat who spent 18 years in a Moroccan prison. Here they were able to muster the power of imagination in a most dramatic way. The only way to survive their ordeal, according to their own testimonies (Hiddema B: De hel van Marokko: “We hebben Hassan beloofd te zwijgen”. De Groene, 7. https://www.groene.nl/artikel/de-hel-van-marokko-we-hebben-hassan-beloofd-te-zwijgen, 1994), was by imagining they were somewhere else. In their own 2-by-3-meter cells, the prisoners forgot about the thick walls locking them in and celebrated their birthdays, weddings, even births, and whatnot. Their minds were inexhaustible in creating diversions. One of them was by taking each other for walks in Paris. Gradually all the other inmates, sitting in their other dim-lighted prison cells, “walked” along with them. Thus they shut out reality completely: their world was what they invented. That was their salvation (This account is based on (Hiddema B: De hel van Marokko: “We hebben Hassan beloofd te zwijgen”. De Groene, 7. https://www.groene.nl/artikel/de-hel-van-marokko-we-hebben-hassan-beloofd-te-zwijgen, 1994, February 16)). It is this radical human ability to imagine worlds wholly other to the one that one is present in, which is foregrounded in the artful workshop that is the theme of this chapter.
Society continues to place an exaggerated emphasis on women's skins, judging the value of lives lived within, by the colour and condition of these surfaces. This artistic research will explore how the skin of a painting might unpack this site of judgement, highlight its objectification, and offer women alternative visualizations of their own sense of embodiment. This speculative renovation of traditional concepts of portrayal will explore how painting, as an aesthetic body whose material skin is both its surface and its inner content (its representations) can help us imagine our portrayal in a different way, focusing, not on what we look like to others, but on how we sense, touch, and experience. How might we visualise skin from its ghostly inner side? This feminist enquiry will unfold alongside archival research on The Ten Largest (1906-07), a painting series by Swedish Modernist Hilma af Klint. Initial findings suggest the artist was mapping traditional clothing designs into a spectral, painterly idea of a body in time. Fundamental methods research, and access to newly available Af Klint archives, will expand upon these roots in maps and women’s craft practices and explore them as political acts, linked to Swedish Life Reform, and knowingly sidestepping a non-inclusive art history. Blending archival study with a contemporary practice informed by eco-feminism is an approach to artistic research that re-vivifies an historical paradigm that seems remote today, but which may offer a new understanding of the past that allows us to also re-think our present. This mutuality, and Af Klint’s rhizomatic approach to image-making, will therefore also inform the pedagogical development of a Methods Research programme, as part of this post-doc. This will extend across MA and PhD study, and be further enriched by pedagogy research at Cal-Arts, Los Angeles, and Konstfack, Stockholm.
The city of Amsterdam is well-known for its creative citizens, innovative use of public spaces, and bottom up and informal (citizen) initiatives. Many of these initiatives are endorsed and - after some time - formalised by local government. However, some need to be relocated or disappear due to densification-strategies. This is particularly the case in contexts of urban growth and not unique for Amsterdam. Depending on the specific circumstances, densification strategies compensate densification with nature conservation and/or public space programs. Densification is a contested approach – chiefly because it often entails quantitative approaches that are abstracting specific places into numerical value and generalized policy ambitions that do not resonate with the creative language and practical wisdom and imagination at play in the specific places. Often, these strategies also involve uncertainty regarding their relationship with informal citizen initiatives. Particularly in the urban fringe, we see a variety of initiatives that have developed over the years and which have obtained temporary approval for their activities. In this pop-up research we explore if, and how techniques of research by design contribute to making productive these confrontations – between formal and informal resources, between practical wisdom and generalised knowledge, between local creative-artistic and more general quantitative approaches - with the broader aim to create more sustainable and liveable cities.
