The city and the country

The city and the country: it’s all fun and games until…

For the first time in history, over half the world’s population lives in urban areas. The Dutch countryside, however, is rapidly developing as well. The city and the country are closely related and cannot be considered separately. Visitors of the exhibition “The City and the Country”, sometimes unaware, create their own spatial future.

The walls and floors of project space “De Fabriek” in Eindhoven are dotted with metal hooks. Between them, visitors weave pieces of rope to make their own fabric, as if they are building their own city or village in a landscape. This installation of string grows and changes as new visitors participate in the game. “The City and the Country” becomes a play-based investigation into spatial rules and liberties, and the collective creativity of the crowd.

Two teams play a spatial land grab with four kilometers of rope each. A network grows increasingly denser in a weeks long game. In its own abstract manner this game demonstrates the impacts of (neo-)liberal urbanism. Favorable locations attract more thread as points are easy to obtain here. Density thus creates more density. More remote locations generate different structures. In between new patterns arise that are no longer solely urban or rural: this is home to the hybrids. A landscape of threads invites visitors to a strategic game with a serious subtext.

Visitors encounter pressure of urban and rural developments. Opportunities offered by cities appeal and attract people. The Dutch countryside, however, is rapidly developing as well. More than ever it has become a place of residence and employment. It accommodates both the urban excess and evolution according to its own logic. The urban denizens find leisure on the countryside while countrymen shift their focus from production to service-related industries. Will these changes leave room for the essential production of our food? Will this occur even more intensively on the countryside or do we have to find room in our cities? The city and the country are closely related and cannot be considered separately. The Cloud Collective explores this intertwining in a playful way.

Result

A network of two times four kilomters has grown increasingly denser in a weeks long game

photography: Peter Cox