Model Citizens, The Maquette
18/03/2009 – 22:03The 1:35 scale model of the neighborhood serves as a tool, stimulating those whose daily lives are tied to the community to reflect on their surroundings. During the course of the show we will interview members of the community and ask them what they would like to change add/or remove. The model will not remain a static representation of reality, but rather we will visualize the proposals of the neighbors in the model during the exhibition period.
Model: Ibrahim Saad, Heba Khalifa, Omnia Sabry, Salah Abdelshafy, Hady Galal Kamar, Wesam Attiya Mahmud, Amado Al Fadni, Elisabeth Jaquette, Travis Brecher, Wouter Osterholt and Elke Uitentuis
Project team during the exhibition period:
Ibrahim Saad, Hady Galal Kamar, Wesam Attiya Mahmud, Amado Al Fadni, Elisabeth Jaquette, Travis Brecher, Hoda Farah, Dina Kafifa, Wouter Osterholt and Elke Uitentuis
New photo
24/02/2009 – 20:49
Overview workspace
20/02/2009 – 15:04
Model Citizens
06/02/2009 – 21:36
We renamed the project ‘Townhouse neighbourhood 1:35’ into ‘Model citizens’. The first title was only a worktitle but we kept it for almost a year now, we couldn’t think of a better title. (‘Model citizens’ was a title of an article in the Metropolis magazine written by Cathryn Drake, all credits to her!)
Last week we worked on the concept for a poster that will be part of our project. In the research on the neighbourhood we found a picture that shows students and teachers posing in front of the Said Halim Pasha Palace. The picture was taken in 1939 at the time when the building functioned as a School. The El Nasriya School was considered to be the leading educational institute for the elite (for sons of pashas and beys) at that time. Today the place is abandoned and nobody is allowed to enter. The palace takes an enormous space in the neighbourhood and its gardens and empty spaces show a bizarre contrast with the ‘overused’ spaces beyond the palace walls.
The project ‘Model citizens’ tries to empower people in the neighbourhood to think and reflect about their daily surrounding. So for the poster of the project we thought it would be a good idea to highlight the importance of this participatory element in the project, by showing the images of the people who are going to play an important role within the workshop period.
We used the old photograph as a source of inspiration for our invitation. We took pictures of 122 ‘neighbours’ (same amount as in the old photograph), after that we printed them on cardboard, cut them out and placed their miniature version on the staircase in the maquette. The process of taking all the pictures already served as an ideal advertising tool for the workshop and besides that a lot of the people are really proud that the poster will be spread throughout the city.
Water problems
06/02/2009 – 11:36If we want to use water in our apartment we need to turn on the waterpomp. There is only one waterpomp for the entire building and the machine can only produce enough power for one household. In our kitchen we have a switch that controls the waterpomp downstairs. When it’s ON, it means that we’re not able to use the water. If a neighbour is using water, we see a red light and we can’t use any water. So every time we want to wash our hands, go to the toilet, take a shower, etc, we have to go to the kitchen to see if we can turn on the waterpomp. Most of the times we have to wait a bit before the red light turns off. This morning one of our neighbours used the water for a very long time. We were in desperate need for a shower but we were forced to wait. When the red light goes off, we have to react really fast, before another neighbour turns on the switch. Wouter stayed in the kitchen with his hand on the switch. We imagined all the other neighbours doing the same thing. Eventually Wouter won the ‘light switch contest’, only after about one hour of waiting.
Another morning we woke up because somebody knocked on our door. It was almost if somebody wanted to demolish our door. The knocking and shouting increased so Wouter opened the door and discovered a tiny old woman with a cleaning towel in her hand. She was pointing in the hallway and making strange movements with her hands and towel. Soon after she made clear that she wanted money. We couldn’t communicate with her at all and we didn’t understood what she wanted. Wouter thought she wanted to sell him the dirty looking cleaning towel. We closed the door and could hear the old woman walking away, murmuring to herself in an angry manner.
Ten minutes later we heard the sound of water coming down the stairs in the hallway. We looked through the window in the door and we could see streams of water dripping from the ceiling and running over the stairs. We immediately thought there was a leak somewhere. The water came flooding under our front door and we started to move our stuff. The water increased and we were worried for our stuff in the apartment. Before we could really start to panic, the waterfall in the hallway stopped. We opened our door and saw pools of water everywhere. We could hear the sound of people speaking and arguing from a few floors above us. We closed the door and continued our morning rituals (waiting for the red light). When we left the apartment we found the old woman, who had knocked on our door the same morning, on her knees in the pools of water cleaning the stairs with her cleaning towel. She seemed to be our cleaning lady and from time to time she cleans the shared spaces in the building. We gave her some money and tried to thank her for the unexpected water ballet.
Later that day it started leaking water in the studio as well. The garage space is situated in the same space as the Rawabat theatre. The roof is made of thin metal plates and on some places they are transparent, providing daylight for the theatre space. On this day a director of a theatre group decided to clean the roof windows, so they would have more sunlight on stage. Two guys started to clean the roof with buckets of water. Immediately it started to leak in our studio. Black water fell down from the ceiling on the maquette. We were in state of emergency (code red). As soon as we noticed we jumped of our chairs and covered the maquette in plastic. We shouted to the people on the roof to stop cleaning. They didn’t want to listen and continued the cleaning. Ibrahim and Hady ran to the theatre to negotiate. It helped but we had to get Mido to fully convince them to stop their cleaning action.