Shelter-07
Wijkplaats HarderwijkDuration: 06.2007 – 08.2007
Location: Catherinakapel, Harderwijk
Participants: 13
Visitors: Inhabitants of Harderwijk and people who visited the exhibition
Number of Events: 1
The objective of the Shelter 07 project is to draw attention to the history of the Dutch city of Harderwijk. To achieve this goal, the genealogical significance of the name Harder-Wijk, “an elevated place offering a safe shelter to refugees in troublesome times”, serves as the point of departure for the exhibition in public space. That genealogical significance causes notions such as safety and freedom to appear inextricably bound to Harderwijk’s history. But how did that connection arise? Is it still linked to a spatial, site-specific concept with phenomenological connotations of physicality? Or does a medial, discursive relationship transform the current concept of “place” into a textual issue, i.e., a notion of place as a platform of knowledge and intellectual exchange?
Jeanne van Heeswijk developed together with Boris van Berkum a series of wallpapers placed on the bricked-up windows of old houses around the church square, retelling last century’s lingering tales: about the symbolic poet Rimbaud, who lost his identity as a poet during his stay in Harderwijk and vanished in the grand myth of the foreign legion; about the first big stream of (Belgian) refugees who found temporary shelter during World War I in camp Harderwijk; and about the circulating rumors of missing passports popping up during the transformation of the AZC (Refugee Center) Jan van Nassaukazerne into luxury condominiums, as proof of the search for shelter in a new, safe identity for its former inhabitants.
2007, Harderwijk |