RoadWorkspace/WegenWerkplaats A performative exploration of slow movement via soft connections.

Abstract

In the workshop “Social Innovation and the Arts: the Role of Plasticity” I will discuss a recent case in September 2018 that was a collaboration between architects and dance performers. We explored dance performance as a way to take final steps in a study of two years with a group of participants, being a group of citizens, policy makers, local and regional private and public organisations. The study reflected on the role of soft connections (paths or roads that are not accessible to car traffic) in making the transformation from the rather car-focused city of Genk to a more sustainable city. The results of the study were a vision on the role of slow roads in “making” sustainable cities, a typology of soft connections, several maps that visualised opportunities, desires and long-term visions and several tested actions in the field to transform slow roads into “city-makers” or productive spaces for the city.

We investigated performance as a way to make the step with the participants to literally take the studied matter into their own hands after the end of the project. Therefore, we created a “RoadWorkspace/WegenWerkplaats” where the maps and a toolbox of actions on soft connections are available to allow participants to start the debate about slow roads themselves and to take actions to activate, transform them or create new ones. In order to fully explore how to work with and manipulate soft connections and the qualities of “slow movement” via these roads, architects (a group of researchers and students) worked together with a group of dancers. During the workshop I want to discuss how this experiment with plasticity of roads allowed (or inhibited) us to make a movement from reflection and debate to active transformation.