A CITY NOT A CITY

IDENTITY––––––LANDSCAPE––––––CULTURE

Is the landscape that surrounds me part of my identity?

Is culture tied to landscape?

What is identity? And what does the connection to the city I live in change inside of me?

(1) SEARCHING FOR IDENTITY

From many voices of people working and living in Genk I heard the phrase: "Genk is not a real city." The city centre seems artificial and empty when we are strolling around in Genk for the first time. What makes a city a city?

How do the residents of Genk identify themselves with the place they live in and its history?

And what is Genk now?

(2) RETHINKING LANDSCAPE

Seeing the city as a landscape, a network of people, places, history and cultures. A place of constant exchange and complex interconnections. How does the map of my city look like in my mind? How do I navigate in a city I don't know?

Often, thoughts manifest itself when you work with your hands and let your mind wander around.

In this material experimentation, I tied long cotton threads around nails that I had hammered into a square piece of wood. I tried to imagine the structure of a city through the material. The urban network. The chaos that forms a unity.

(3) IMAGINING CULTURE

Why am I doing things the way I do them? What do I adapt from the outside world and make my own?

Identity is identification.

Culture is imitation.

Is anything original? Is anything natural? Does anything stand on its own?

Such as human existence, identity, culture and landscape cannot be imagined as fixed things. They are fluent and ever-changing, never to be defined.