Merce Rodrigo García

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Merce Rodrigo García

Participating Project	Institutional Recommendation Program
Activity Based	United Kingdom
City	Tokyo
Period	2016.8 - 2016.9

Purpose of the residency

Entitled PERIMETER, the activity in Tokyo is part of a larger enquiry entitled UNSCALE. UNSCALE questions the scalar projection of the social inhabited 'space'. Of special interest are occasions where conventional boundaries coincide with natural ones, as in the case of coastlines. Coastlines rest at the intersection between two separate realms of regulation: that of the water and that of firm land. The waterlines of Tokyo are examples at the city scale. Together they define a limit condition with a life of its own whose effects far exceed the intentions of urban planners. The project plays with the paradox of an 'interior perimeter'. The total length of waterlines resembles the official perimeter of Tokyo (some 250km). It hopes to show how this inner perimeter remains the datum of Tokyo's transformation.

Plan during the residency

This project is a visual investigation in collaboration with photographer Yozo Takada and Urban anthropologist Jinnai HIDENOBU. More loosely it involves local experts in the areas of urban planning and architectural theory and history.
The notion of an internal perimeter becomes a criterion to guide the research. The activity involves at least walking, photography, reading and interviews, possibly a workshop. We will produce materials for a split book on the waterlines of Tokyo: a 'text-book' with textual analysis and an 'image-book' consisting of images only. The format explores the value of images as a tool for intervention. The aim is to 'unscale' the waterlines from the map in order to cast the hidden perimeter as a condition of change. A reference is philospher of science Bruno Latour's mapping and photography project entitled Paris: Invisible city.

Creator Information