Rhythm analysis

Rhythm analysis
We constantly adapt ourselves as we move through the city. We tend to pass through certain spaces almost automatically without considering them closely. I call those spaces “no spaces” or “transit places”. They are just pins on the city map where time is a clock measuring out the repetition of minutes and hours, cycles and moments of duration. The time is often slow-motioned or over-speeded. I found myself interested in this anonymous or depersonalized aspect of the city. Stations, airports, parking lots, etc. are all places that are identical and at the same time different in every city’s layout. But what is the rhythm of time? And how can that rhythm be perceived, analyzed and changed through everyday life?
Urban planting is an attempt to explore and interact with the rhythm in the city. It is my first personal observation of how and to what extend I can provoke a reaction to a small action:a type of social intervention in public space. I placed a plant—a common interior feature but in this case out of its context — at the Rotterdam Central metrostation. I intentionally positioned it in the middle of the sidewalk where it frequently became an object of illumination by numerous fluorescent lights and CCTV cameras. I found myself and my non-depict form of intervention in the spotlight, overexposed, monitored and investigated. Thereby neither the absurdity of the object by itself, nor the audience’s bare reaction were centeral; instead it was the authority’s (in particular the security’s) response that became the main event of the action.


Overall: The passersby’s rhythm slightly changed. I encountered some gazes and curiosity but not a discerned reaction. The actual trigger and change was in the guards’ daily rhythm.
Urban interventions in cities are a common form of provocation in all kinds of art disciplines from fine arts to performance, activism, and urbanism - in a comprehensive way. Using this first experience as a try out, I will draw a map of potential locations and object(s)that are both relevant to my idea of “no space” environments and absurd inter relations. A step further will be to replicate the intervention and find a way to document it.

arrive and set up the plant and the camera

two security guards ask me what I am doing there and two more appear afterwards. After a short talk and a certain lack of clarity on whether I am allowed to carry on or not they call someone and then ask me how much time I need. I say an hour. So they let me stay for forty minutes more.

four men surrounding the plant.

Documentation and timeline of events as follows:
Conditions & location: Metrostation Centraal Station, Rotterdam
Action: placing an absurd, non-related or else, out of context object – a plant into the public domain.
Goal: understanding the city of Rotterdam; rhythm analysis; social experiment; an attempt to trigger the time and change the city rhythm.












Bibliography:

"Urban Interventions: Personal Projects in Public Spaces". Robert Klanten and Matthias Hubner.

"Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life". Henri Lefebvre.