Laurens Kolks > spatial design

Publishing in Public Spaces #2: Reacting Endlessly

production

A workshop and installation for the municipality of Breda and Caradt, developed and executed February 2019. The project is part of my research into how various 'social design' approaches address public issues for the Caradt research group Autonomy in Art and Design, headed by lector Sebastian Olma.

During a five day workshop students were challenged to address an issue through the design and realization of a temporary, monumental text installation in a vacant commercial space located in Breda's central railway station. The space is located next to a square that many visitors to Breda use to enter the city. In their design proposals, the students were asked to incorporate the given that a potentially large and very diverse public is being addressed, consisting of both people who see the installation just once and those who see it on a regular basis.

Several proposals were created that aimed to address the pressure that participants experience to constantly react, be it to direct messages coming in on their cell phones, hypes, changing political situations...

Out of four presented options a committee - made up of representatives of both the municipality of Breda and Caradt - selected the installation proposal that featured the text that said (in Dutch):

”REACTING ENDLESSLY”
"HOPING FOR A REPLY"

The second part of the text is executed in mirror writing and can only be fully read when the spectator moves back and forth the main window facade of the exhibition venue, reading the text via a mirror installed inside the space. In this way, the installation design aims to engage the viewer by asking a little more effort. The letters making up the text were executed in a specific blue colour intending to be calm to the spectators’ eyes and were randomly texturized, deliberately opposing the perceived slickness and lack of tactility characterizing the design of many digital communication interfaces.

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