This piece poses the question, ‘What takes place between the seen and the unseen, the heard and the unheard?’ For me the Bijlmer is surrounded by everyday myths that influence the rhythms of everyday life and instill cycles of repetition where the future mirrors the past. Throughout the Openset research programme Griffin embarked on a series of rhythm workshops addressing the micro and macro assemblages of human and non-human, biological and physiological rhythms present in the territory of the Bijlmer. She applied this learning to carry out sensory rhythm analytical explorations into the complex layers of everyday life and the human experience in the Bijlmer, consisting of sonic geography walks throughout the neighbourhoods, historical research and interviews. Working closely with Henno Eggenkamp of the Bijlmer Muesum, to explore the modernist dream that was the Bijlmer, the city of the future. A long standing resident of the apartment block featured in the dialogue and a firm believer in the modernist cause.
The project was an exploration of tuning in from the perspective of the everyday sponge: a mundane object with the ability to tune with whatever it encounters, temporarily altering its shape through absorption and through the application of pressure before returning to its natural form thereafter. Utilising the metaphor of the sponge, this project problematises the notion of tuning and it’s short-lived state, after which we slip back to our usual mode of being. A critique on design and anthropological practices that come in from the outside, to encounter the ‘other’ in a moment of temporary tuning. The performance itself was a live sound piece, performed by the sponge in speculative dialogue with one of the last remaining original Bijlmer modernist apartment blocks, an experiment in the power of listening and auditory imagination allowing the audience to traverse between the mind of the sponge and the belly of the building uncovering the everyday myths that surround the Bijlmer and the assumptions that cultivate them.
The project was an exploration of tuning in from the perspective of the everyday sponge: a mundane object with the ability to tune with whatever it encounters, temporarily altering its shape through absorption and through the application of pressure before returning to its natural form thereafter. Utilising the metaphor of the sponge, this project problematises the notion of tuning and it’s short-lived state, after which we slip back to our usual mode of being. A critique on design and anthropological practices that come in from the outside, to encounter the ‘other’ in a moment of temporary tuning. The performance itself was a live sound piece, performed by the sponge in speculative dialogue with one of the last remaining original Bijlmer modernist apartment blocks, an experiment in the power of listening and auditory imagination allowing the audience to traverse between the mind of the sponge and the belly of the building uncovering the everyday myths that surround the Bijlmer and the assumptions that cultivate them.
Sorry I'm Not From Here But... (2019)
Written & Performed By - Heather Griffin | Thank You - OPEN SET / Irina Shapiro / Bijlmer Museum / Henno Eggenkamp
Written & Performed By - Heather Griffin | Thank You - OPEN SET / Irina Shapiro / Bijlmer Museum / Henno Eggenkamp