MINILAND MANIFESTO
Ongoing documentation of a number of our coastal cities’ incomplete highway networks has prompted a reading of the space between these structures. Aside from the parking lots and spectacular film settings they provide, they are perhaps non spaces, yet for the purposes of urban investigation - present interesting exhibition possibilities. The footprint of the no-man’s land – the space between the unfinished highways begs a study of dysfunctional urban space and the repurposing there-of. The proposition here is that of a miniature urban terrain, somewhere between Santarama Miniland in the south of Johannesburg and Madurodam in The Hague, the Netherlands. However the miniature landscape proposed here is one of experimentation and play. A medium - scale learner drivers school – if you like - for planners and artists intent on dreaming the impossible. The inevitability of failure is born into the fabric of this fareground where practical and radical interventions meet with serious scientific calculation set against equally serious flights of fancy. The proposition is relatively straightforward, the relevant public or private landowners are convinced of the value of such a public site for experimentation, such that the relevant land is leased to a group of multi-producers who dream to build, and in this initiative, do so. The economics driving this scenario are many fold and quite predictable and the need for entertainment value is necessary, although the marketing of rides at a dystopian miniland themepark may prove challenging, hence the success of the initiative may lie in its ability to reflect on what is relevant now for a particular urban situation, while simultaneously juxtaposing the radical and absurd.
MINILAND MANIFESTO
Ongoing documentation of a number of our coastal cities’ incomplete highway networks has prompted a reading of the space between these structures. Aside from the parking lots and spectacular film settings they provide, they are perhaps non spaces, yet for the purposes of urban investigation - present interesting exhibition possibilities. The footprint of the no-man’s land – the space between the unfinished highways begs a study of dysfunctional urban space and the repurposing there-of. The proposition here is that of a miniature urban terrain, somewhere between Santarama Miniland in the south of Johannesburg and Madurodam in The Hague, the Netherlands. However the miniature landscape proposed here is one of experimentation and play. A medium - scale learner drivers school – if you like - for planners and artists intent on dreaming the impossible. The inevitability of failure is born into the fabric of this fareground where practical and radical interventions meet with serious scientific calculation set against equally serious flights of fancy. The proposition is relatively straightforward, the relevant public or private landowners are convinced of the value of such a public site for experimentation, such that the relevant land is leased to a group of multi-producers who dream to build, and in this initiative, do so. The economics driving this scenario are many fold and quite predictable and the need for entertainment value is necessary, although the marketing of rides at a dystopian miniland themepark may prove challenging, hence the success of the initiative may lie in its ability to reflect on what is relevant now for a particular urban situation, while simultaneously juxtaposing the radical and absurd.