Sitings

 

 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s

Process Space Residency Program at Governors Island 

Sitings, 2018, Photo Collage, 16″ x 20″

 

            

Sitings explore the phenomena of unconventional domestication of public space. They examine the conventions and limits of design and urbanism and its isolating effects on the human relationship to the environment. Sitings replicate sites and specific public places that people domesticated to create site-responsive sculptures functioning as lounges and public platforms.  They incorporate architectural fragments such as street corners stairs and pavement found in use for sitting or lying and transforming them into functional sculptures.

During the LMCC Process Space Residency 2016 at Governors Island in NYC we have been exploring non-conformist behavioral situations in the public space in Lower Manhattan. The object of our study were people such as workers on break, tourists, homeless people, children etc. that were “domesticating” the public space and creating unique and personal forms of interaction with sites and architecture by sitting, lying, reading or eating in un-designed public places. Based on the research and documentation of these situations we created photo collages and clay models, which further serve for the production of a series of site-responsive sculptures functioning as furniture. The project is meant to materialize as an interactive sculptural installation in form of a lounge, reflecting the specific sites, while using materials identical to the original situations such as pavement, concrete, and bricks.

While Sitings questions the limits and conventions of the private and the public and its cultural of spatial determination, it amplifies the simple gesture of creating personal space as a creative act, a powerful performative, transformative for the alienated and highly defined urban environment. The piece will allow exploring and experiencing a site-integrity through use and physical interaction.

Sitings extends a body of our work, in which we explore the activity of sitting and furnishing as a means to experience broader social and environmental issues such as Plantarium – Tea garden (2018), Charing New York (2018), Homescape (2014), Looking for a Home (2011), In Loving Memory (2011) etc.  The project Sitings is aiming to activate environmental awareness and further provoke discussion on how to deepen integrity to the environment starting in our immediate surroundings.

 

Sitings, 2016, photographs documenting the use and domestication of public space in Lower Manhattan

 

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