Orientation as Gardening
Part 2: London
Almut Rink in cooperation with Ursula Reisenberger (ortszeit)

February 28th to March 9th 2017
At the Crossing of Central Saint Martins,
University of the Arts London and King's Cross vicinity

After the first working period in Japan, where the eight Assemblage Boards have beeen established as vantage points and tools for a self-examination of our own localisation and context-awareness, now they have been installed for eight days in the public space of Kings Cross and vicinity, a dense urban development area in the heart of London.
Whereas the re-search of a non-antropocentric angle was relativly well to experience, it proved tob e rather complicate in London. In a conception of the world, that ever since enlightenment has put the human in ist centre, the respective point of views here were hardly tracable and often hidden behind obstacles. What seamed natural and appropriate in an Asian everyday context, started started to fade here.
The approach to the area of Kings Cross in it“s clever and innovative strategies of urban development happened to us along its edges with the surpressed and masked aspects of the city – locations of illness, decay, dirt and death: the St Pancras Cemetery, the former Workhouse and St Pancras Hospital and the Regent’s Canal.





Entering Kings Cross along those edges established a trail of rapprochement that enabled us to enter a process of adaption. The new context went hand in hand with a process of distancing. The boards turned out to be not reachable and not usable, they dissolved and changed the media and/or its visibility.

Orientation as Gardening, part 2, London consisted in four independently functioning parts and a series of additional events:

Eight Sites

The installation of the eight Assemblage Boards at eight locations in the public space

Orientation Trail

A Self-guided tour along the eight locations

Eight Walks

A daily performative walk along the eight spots

Boxes and Stones

An installation at the Crossing in Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts

Special events

Support:
BAFA XD Pathway, Art Programme, Central Saint Martins
Austrian Cultural Forum, London, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Austria