METASITU
TDCU IZZ
The chronicle of increasing isolation of a group of artists attempting to reach the World's most remote human inhabited place, the island of Tristan da Cunha.
THE VISIT
Meziara is a village in Northern Lebanon, where most of its residents do business in Nigeria for most of the year, before returning every summer. The suburb to an invisible city.
TORA BORA
The extraction and export of 'Jerusalem Stone' is one of the most lucrative businesses in the Palestinian Territories, and remains highly unregulated. Everyone wants a piece of the holy land.
MEMENTO LOCI
Souvenirs are tokens that help to perpetuate spatial narratives. Mass produced around the world, they serve as a vehicle through which power narratives are unfolded and displayed.
MEMENTO LOCI unpacks some of these strategies.
14th DISTRICT
Slavutych was built to rehouse the workers of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It is made up of 13 districts, each inspired by a different Soviet city. With 86, we are building a new district based on Athens.
STOP OVER CITY
Moscow City is a decaying business district in Central Moscow. By linking it to the two largest airports in the city and giving it the status of 'international transfer zone' we would revitalize this vacant territory.
STATES, STATUS,
STATUES & STATUTES
VDNHk park in central Moscow is a spatial technology that serves to advance an imperialistic idea based on an old regime.
(re)appropriating (post)soviet narratives.
NATION STATE OF MIND
Nation State of Mind proposes an alternative understanding of the nation in a post-national world. What is the role of territoriality and locality in Ecumenopolis?
#mariupolwillnotdie
#itistheworldthatwillend
Mariupol is a mono-industry town in Eastern Ukraine. Its population has been shrinking since the collapse of the USSR. This is a manifesto to embrace its shrinking condition and work with it.
EXPEDITION TO ECUMENOPOLIS
Expedition to Ecumenopolis is a series of workshops that we deliver to different groups in order to collectively think about ideas evolving around contemporary urbanism in the age of hyper-globalisation.
VOCABULARY FOR ECUMENOPOLIS
In the era of Globalization and the Antropocene, we find that there are a new set of urban qualities/phenomena that take place globally. Here is a glossary that attempts to identify some of those.
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On January 2016, we joined another six artists, a Captain and an expedition organizer to try to reach the World’s most remote human inhabited place, the British Overseas territory of Tristan da Cunha.
This remote island-community, in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, can only be reached by sea from either the Brazilian or South African coasts, after approximately a week of sailing.
We never made it to the island.
“TDCU IZZ” documents and reflects on the failed expedition in the form of a deconstructed reality TV show. The work not only traces the events that led to the abortion of the whole expedition through our eyes, but also draws parallels with Tristan da Cunha, and by looking at the history of the settlement, show how the world’s most remote enclave, is urban; part of the all encompassing fabric of Ecumenopolis.
The departure point of our research project, which we intertwined with our lived experience on board, was the postcode for Tristan da Cunha – TDCU IZZ. In 2005 the island's governor wrote to House of Lords for a colonial amendment to change Tristan's postcode to a more ‘UK sounding one’, in order to ease on-line shopping on e-Bay and Amazon. They wanted to be part of a global conversation. They changed their legislative landscape to be able to ‘perform urbanism’. Sorted in a dedicated warehouse in England, Tristanians receive their parcels every few months.
As the film highlights the connectivity of the island in the age of the Internet despite the geographical challenges that its remoteness poses, it also unfolds our increased isolation as a group of artists, removed from reality, on a boat to nowhere.
Music: Gosha Babanski
ECUMENOPOLIS
TDCU IZZ
failed expedition to the most remote island
video 30' 11'' -- 2016
US