Cinema / Studio

In collaboration with: Holland Animation Film Festival (Liesbeth Worm, Richard van der Koppel), students from The Royal University College of Fine Arts, Stockholm (Eva Arnqvist, Jan Rydén, Adriana Seserin, Pål Bylund, Staffan Hjalmarsson, Kerstin Olsson)

Type of work: Research project

Production: Mariette Dölle, Beyond Utrecht

Location: Nomads in Residence, Leidsche Rijn, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Year: 2004

Photo: Apolonija Šušteršič

Technical Data: Cinema setup, studio setup, living space setup, animation workshops for children, film screenings, seminars, meetings, publication

Participants of expert meetings: Bernard Colenbrander (architectural historian and writer), Hans Ophuis (architect), Henk Slager (philosopher, writer and head of Graduate School of Visual Art & Design, HKU Utrecht), Oedgze Atzema (professor of Economic Geography, University of Utrecht and head of the Utrecht Monitor team), Carel Weeber (architect and city planner), Arnoud Holleman (artist, television director and co-editor of Re-magazine), Annemiek Rijckenberg (docent at the Academie van Bouwkunst, Amsterdam), Henriette Heezen (Beyond), Klass Hoek (professor at Graduate School of Visual Art & Design, HKU Utrecht), students from Graduate School of Visual Art & Design, HKU Utrecht

Concept:

*Leidsche Rijn is a newly built area in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Over a period of 15 years, 30.000 new homes will be built, thus creating a whole new city of 80.000 new inhabitants.

**Beyond Utrecht is the scenario for the role that the visual arts can play in the creation of a whole new city.

Cinema / Studio project examined the possibility to create a facility in the Leidsche Rijn area of a special and unconventional character which would draw in people, even from outside, to Leidsche Rijn.

The idea was to investigate the realisation of a “hybrid facility” which would address specific problems present in suburban areas such as Leidsche Rijn. Through collaboration and consultation with specialists of specific professional fields like urban planning, economy, women studies, sociology and developers, I propose a prototype for a hybrid facility which would be possible to realize in the frame of Beyond. The hybrid facility would be something in-between a cinema, a living and working space and a meeting point. The hybrid facility was mainly made of specific events which would create / demand a specific situation with-in the space.

We performed the idea of hybrid facility together with participating students from The Royal University College of Fine Arts, Stockholm during three weeks of a site research.

Each week was centered on a theme that helped to provide a situation – content oriented space:

1: The Vinex-location of Leidsche Rijn. The urban planning, the plan, the process and the reality,

2: Cinema and Animation,

3: Family life in suburbia (mothers and children).

The research was housed within the Nomads in Residence mobile in Leidsche Rijn, made by Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol together with Korteknie Stuhlmacher Architecten, where we would be living and working during the research. In collaboration with Holland Animation Film Festival, we made a programme of animation workshops and animation film screenings for children. Parallel with the running of the temporary cinema in the mobile, we were collecting information about the life in Leidsche Rijn and hold seminars with professionals as well as informal discussions with the locals.

At the end we presented our action-research in a publication along with a design scheme proposal for a hybrid facility.