An Escape to a Geographically Different Location
Background
London is a segregated city. The cities different areas and neighbourhoods are socially and economically considerably different. In a segregated city, people from different neighbourhoods seldom meet. Each area, its people and architecture, tells only one specific story. The installation “An escape to a geographically different location” wants to tell another.
The Installation
Through loudspeakers placed in different urban spaces in London, anonymous voices tell stories about public places that have meant a lot to them. We let these people for a short time appropriate the space.
Listening provides a pause, a breathing space. A stranger’s story takes the listener/audience to a different place. The listening creates a social space that is a hybrid of private and public.
Large balloons mark out the places that carry a story. The balloon is both a physical marker and a symbol for how these stories take the audience to a geographically different location, if only in the mind.
Purpose
Create meetings – Instead of physical meetings the installation will create mental meetings.
Redefine public space – By giving the public space a new content the installation gives it an alternative meaning.
Give a voice – The installation wants to give a voice, and consequently a physical space and the power, to the people whose stories are not usually heard in the public space.
Method / Design
Citizens are asked to tell a personal story about an urban space that has been important for them. Narrators represent different parts of the city, have different ages, gender, sexuality, socio-economic status and background. The storyteller is anonymous; their stories, voices, rhythms, pauses, accents, memories speaks for themselves.
DIS/ORDER is a collective of landscape architects funded and driven by Karin Andersson and Johanna Bratel. They are interested in the power structures in the public realm and the relation between people and place.
