TRACING TEMPORARY SPACE

in collaboration with Maria Mengel / VAERK-STED

at the still point of the turning world
:volume, density and emptiness

The installation Tracing Temporary Space is a poetic staging of four performative practices that challenge genres and reinvent spatial definitions. It is four circular stories of temporary inhabitation unfolding unconventional spaces. It represents Denmark in the architecture section of the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space in 2011.

The Danish contribution to the Architecture Section at PQ11 focuses on temporariness – it presents temporary performances that reveal and unfold unconventional spaces. The character of the display reflects a duality between the density of an archive and the emptiness of the blank canvas forming a stage of temporary traces and memories. 

The table is created as an ever-turning, circular archive. Never resting on one image it traces spatial transformations by using the techniques of an old fashioned animation flip book. The stories are told through the classic tools of the architect: pencil, plan, section – and A4 paper, which is traced, folded and cut. The circular archive consists of four ‘archive rolls’, one for each of the selected per formative spaces. Each roll is a spatial statement, a dynamic figure that reflects the nature of each of the performances – its spatial characteristics and typology. The aim of the Danish contribution is to communicate architecture as a direct spatial and textural experience. To create an installation which reflects the nature of spatial temporariness and ambiguousness – and not just represent it at arm’s-length which is too often the case at architectural exhibitions. 

The project is supported by The Danish Arts Council and Dreyers Foundation

Link to video