Page 13 - JCAU-5-2

Journal of Chinese
Architecture and Urbanism Gestures for interdependence: Designing the unfelt

with a small uninhabited island called Blackberry Island, (b) Arriving: The gesture of asking permission
just west of the Vilnius city center. In September 2022, largely the same group arrived on
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The island is shaped like a larva, about 100 m long and the island with a different raft . With the impact of our
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9 m wide and partly human-made . The common aim was to previous approaching experience stored in our bodies’
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cocreate the installation with more-than-human entities (the memory, we transgressed the lateral strength of the water
specific entities were still defined at the time of the research of the Neris toward the mooring place, central on the
trips). The group process was initiated as the formation of island. After dropping the material, we gathered among a
a “multi-species community” (Escobar, 2018). My aim constellation of trees. A guided meditation was initiated
here is to share (i) how the encounter with the river — and by one of the cofacilitators, in which we were invited for a
consequently the island — informed the different “spatial moment of deep listening followed by a small performative
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dramaturgical moments” and (ii) which design gestures ritual inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s writings on
informed the design of the performative installation. reciprocity: We asked permission for the island to arrive and
(a) Approaching: Gesture surrendering to the speed of to be there. We shifted our intention from a colonial attitude
the river (arrive, ignore, inhabit the unknown territory, and take its
In November 2021, our group mounted a raft 5 km resources) to an intention of attention and reciprocity with
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upstream from Blackberry Island. After a long process the island as body and all bodies present with her. It took
of inflating the raft — a second-hand safety raft which around thirty seconds of silence until an unidentifiable bird
appeared to be leaking air — we adventurously embarked sound provided us with a possible answer: a sign of other
on the raft and swopped the steady concrete jetty for a life to acknowledge our co-presence or at least a way of
cold liquid surface. Our limbs touched the rubber surface connecting to this as an esthetic experience at that moment.
of the boat, the rubber surface touching the water surface The lesson learned here is an embodied understanding of
of the Neris. Our arrival was suspended for about 3 – 4 h, place through a series of simple performative gestures. The
and the speed of the water asked us to defamiliarize with gesture of “surrendering to the speed of the river” reminded
our “human speed”. Accordingly, the situation invited us to slow down in our thinking-doing-being. It performed
us to defamiliarize ourselves with our habitual “modern its force on us, introducing a balancing act between the raft,
designer attitude”: visiting the territory, formulating a the human bodies on it, the “witches hair”, and the tree next
vision based on needs and programs, drawing it in the to the mooring place holding the raft cables. The gesture
studio, and building it. In this case, not our modern human of asking permission augmented our awareness of other
will, but the will of the river was taking the lead. bodies and other voices. It effectuated a form kinship that
We brought food and shared it with each other. There allowed for a multi-species community to emerge.
were moments of awkwardness, being close to each other 3.1.2. Dommel
in silence. This generously unplanned slow approach
toward the island altered the question of necessity in our In spring 2022, I cofacilitated a day-long workshop,
design actions: How does this approach (as the act of entailing a canoe trip to gather natural materials from the
approaching, not as the “visionary approach”) change our river surface and banks in the morning and the cocreation
way of projecting (from pro-ject, literally meaning “being of small spatial interventions on the river bank next to
thrown forward”) a design upon an unknown site? What the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven in the afternoon.
kind of design gesture can be left if we “cease to pro-ject”? The workshop was part of a program titled “Territories of
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In the concluding feedback session, we discussed how the Attention” , in which the Dommel delta (the area where
slowness of the approach informed the inaction at the 29 A student from Art Academy Vilnius, a weaving designer, a
moment we arrived (which we perceived as an anti-climax professor from Vilnius Technical University, four members
in regard to our designed projections). For what kind of of the TAAT arts collective, a local biologist, and the curator/
other design gestures does this process of “unlearning to artist and guardian of the Blackberry Island.
project” make space here? 30 The curator/artist and guardian of the Blackberry Island
provided us with a lateral raft from the south bank of the
26 Located between the Gariunai area and quarry. river to the island.
27 Constructed in the 1950’ to improve the flow of the river in 31 I’m using the term that composer Pauline Oliveiros used as
favour of small boat traffic. a way to bundle her situated group practice of attentive and
28 Consisting out of three students with an Arts (Vilnius active listening.
Academy) and Architecture (Vilnius Technical University) 32 The program was a collaboration with Embassy of Inclusive
background, the curator/artist and guardian of the Society, iDrops and Van Abbe Museum and was focussing
Blackberry Island, and two members of the TAAT arts on prototyping a series of design gestures related to a
collective, including the author. neurodiverse approach in design.

Volume 5 Issue 2 (2023) 7 https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.0358