In my work I experiment with ‘de-imagineering’ and intervening into the ‘urban commons,’ through practices of altering and re-purposing existing structures. The work is both informal and transgressive in its methodology, with the core intention to investigate and participate in the shaping and making of the city. Art and research can provide keys to accessing such a city in the making; a space where we can challenge the preconceptions of what is possible, and to imagine alternative strategies for the creation of realities. As the concept of ‘imagineering’ suggests; it is imagination-engineering possibilities to hypothetically look behind reality and shape it. Furthermore, I wish to specify ‘imagination,’ as the thought material that potential realities are made from. As the term ‘imagineering’ is heavily connected to its use in the creative economy, I suggest the wordplay of ‘de-imagineering’ (the deconstruction of imagination). I argue that the production of imagination is fundamental for the change of current conditions and should as such be re-appropriated. In this sense it’s an anarchist posture; it denounces everything that cuts us off from and diminishes our own power to act.

Not only imagination is held in the deposit and account holdings of corporate and commercial actors, but so are many of the tactics that are designed to contest this hegemony. Counter culture is continuously being transformed to fit as capitalism’s sanitizing tool in “redeveloping” cities, co-opted and instrumentalized in processes of gentrification. In my work this manifests the ethical issue of having a practice that risks to end up fueling the dominant system in opposition. A phenomenon that the Situationists referred to as Récuperation; “the activity of society as it attempts to obtain possession of what negates it,” or one could say: how strategies of resistance towards ‘the spectacle’ ends up being a vital part of it.

Based on this knowledge I’m researching which transgressive strategies, evasive yet present, could be practiced under the Lefebvrian concept of the ‘Right to the City.’ How could they be constructed, performed and shared?

This collaborative and cross-sectoral project addresses places, environments and spaces beyond mere functional urban endeavors. The project explores possibilities that become visible when public space is viewed from perspectives beyond the urban norm. The aim is to restore lost rural relations and to search for ways to leave the anthropocentric narrative. In the past, densification of cities has been considered synonymous with sustainable development, creativity and innovation. However, a one-sided urban focus leads to disarmament of rural habitats, and dissociation from human interdependence with non-human nature. Today, adaptation to global warming is dependent on the survival of the rural. Therefore, this artistic research project is primarily informed by activities in rural environments together with species and ecologies other than human and urban. The goal is to investigate how art, design and architectural interventions can foster oppositional narratives to anthropocentricity. What I present in this exposition are my most recent collaborations and a journey of professional metamorphosis to reach this goal. The result is a series of ongoing projects and processes that demonstrate how I explore places of communality, togetherness and mutual beneficial interdependency between species.

The goal of this work and of my research is to broaden our understanding of contemporary creative conditions in relation to how technologically constructed systems enable cultural production. The work explores specific systems and pushes the limits of their intended use.

In the process, I also hope to reveal the relationship between digital systems and transformative subjects. The work Radical Inside explores 3D models from the largest sharing platform for 3D content. A multiplicity of possibilities opens up as a shift in camera perspective reveals the internal structure of the 3D models. The reorientation points to criticism of how society is structured and imagined by the heteronormative gaze. The unusual angle displaces the normative placement of the model within a reduced and rigid system - the taxonomy and categorization of the platform. From within, I can highlight and explore technology as a fundamentally surreal and queer possibility.