Spatial Narratives

Spatial Narratives

Our daily encounters with spaces resides in the ordinary, often the primacy is given to the visual sense.  A space is not only the ceiling, walls, floor, or the configuration of the objects, but it has a wider context. It is not empty, but belongs to a community of people, and is filled with historical, cultural and geographical legacies, stories and memories. In this practice-based artistic research project we want to rebut the idea that a space is something static and unchangeable, which has important societal and artistic repercussions. We want to investigate spaces in their different shapes and forms, with a concern for the social conditions and the political context of spaces. Through close reading, historical analysis, ethnographic research and conceptual mapping, we are collecting data and found footage, subsequently to transform physical spaces to places for spatial narratives. We allow people’s narratives to enter, and dialogue. Key to this project is our insider position, to become more personally acquainted and intimate. By immersing ourselves into a space or situation, spending intense periods of listening, looking, and sensing, we won’t remain observers.

Keywords: spatial practice, immersion, spatial narrative, perception, mediating, close reading

By Esther Vanrooij