SEGMENT XVI, 'REFUSE DUMP'

We were invited by ‘Beyond’ for a stay at the residence of ‘Nomads in Residence’ for a two weeks investigation of the residential area in the Leidsche Rijn nearby Utrecht. The Leidsche Rijn is the largest location in the Netherlands for urban growth. 80.000 houses are build over a period of 20 years.

We noticed during our stay in the residence that there were containers nearby recently completed houses, filled with valuable and useful objects. People who just recently moved to their new houses threw away a lot of their old belongings. Presumably these objects didn’t fit their new interior designs. In a couple of days we collected all these objects. During the nights we noticed that more collectors scattered around the different containers. We met an old man who looked for books because he had a bookstore in the city center, while others were collecting furniture or clothes. This process of recycling intrigued us.

We stored all our findings in the residence and upon one night we made a display of all the stuff in front of a newly build apartment block. With a photograph of this action we created a small poster that we used to invite the inhabitants of the Leidsche Rijn to come and see the presentation of Segment XVI,’Refuse Dump’.

For this presentation we made a display of our collection in and around the residence. Just like a big interior shop we created several areas where you could walk through. Upon a Sunday afternoon the exhibition was accessible for the public. The inhabitants of the neighborhood reacted in different ways. Some had to laugh about the vast amount of objects we had found and others were a little bit shocked or irritated when they recognized their own objects. Most of the people didn’t realize that their neighbors had done the same with their old belongings.

At the end of the project a recycling shop (the Emmaus) took nearly all the stuff with them. After the residence period we exhibited our project in a group exhibition in Pictura, Dordrecht.