THE TEMPORARY INSTITUTE
Working Period at the Arts Center Nadine, Brussels / Performance-Installation / 2007

In collaboration with David Helbich and Paul Craenen

When the Temporary Institute was founded on the 14th of October 2006, a question was raised: What kind of infrastructure would be most suitable for an institute that is by definition temporary? How would this infrastructure demarcate itself from, and still be within the pre-existing architecture of its host institution? Constituted of 127 lines, 255 hooks and 1800m of rope in PE-elastic, a GRID was conceived that divided the space of Nadine into the 152 rooms of The Temporary Institute. This massive undertaking resulted in a fragile but monumental form: a three dimensional sketch of an imaginary building. Seen as an interiorized building, the equal sized rooms of the Institute propose, impose and absorb different kinds of programs.

The spatialisation of the Institute took a clear position toward its initial subject matter: For an organization that would deal principally with movement, an architectural solution was proposed in which there is no circulation space but only room(s) - an architecture that is explicitly obstructive towards ‘free’ movement. In the same logic that the force of the wind is measured by how much resistance it offers, the GRID would try to understand the circulation of movement in a public space by opposing it.

www.nadine.be

 

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