Pia Rönicke
Transcription of the interview with Pia Rönicke about Zonen:
0:54.
Well, Zonen was made from the point of view of a real project, an urban plan for 25,000 people. Actually it was a competition that was put up and architects could apply with a proposal.
The people who won the contest were this very young group of architects that I was in contact with because I was giving a lecture at the University in Copenhagen, they were interested about my ideas on urban planning and the critique of urban planning, so I also became interested in their perspective and I became curious for the ideas they had for this project, this city for 25.000 people that was going to be placed outside of a small city in Denmark, actually it is the second largest city in Denmark but it is still a small city, is 200.000 people.
2:03
So I was thinking of a way in which you could discuss these issues about urban planning and making a city, so I actually went out to visit the area, but the time when I went there I was walking and taking the bus but I actually never found the area. I was searching for the area but I didn’t found it. The Second time I visited the area I went with them and they were walking around and I was kind of recording the movements and seeing how were they acting in the environment, so in a way I was also creating a plan for recording their plan and at the end I decided to make a film about them visiting the sight for their city which was not built yet. It would be some kind of “the project before”, “the recording before” anything happens rather than recording after.
3:19
The project was about the projection of ideas onto the landscape, the fantasies you create when you see them walking and talking about this place and what could be and, of course, the project was also about architect’s projection onto landscapes and also their virtual relationship with this landscape and the kind of gap that exists between that virtual relationship and what you call the landscape itself, the situation, the place, the people living there and all the people that were going to live there. Of course when you build something you don’t know how it is going to be, what is going to happen.
4:15
So what happened was that I actually asked to perform the ideas, the concept, the ideas they were righting down to create a concept for this landscape. And I think what happened was that, I was quite sincere about I was interested in hearing what they were thinking. What happened was that there was this distance when they were walking around the landscape, there was a kind of extreme absurdity of actually doing it. And they also felt kind of uncomfortable in the place. The whole situation was very artificial, and also absurd, funny…
5:50
Obviously they don’t know the community either, and I think they are very much aware that a city is not only made out of a physical plan but it’s made through lobbying with the politicians, it’s often a very pragmatic construction and they very much talk about creating some kind of partners that can work with them creating this city that is not going to be build like in the 60’s when you just kind of put things down like they were huge sculptures, they want it somehow to be a process. But I also think at the same time about working with some very powerful organizations that have very specific interests that, in that way, they loose control of what is actually space, and the whole concept of creating a city for 25000 people I think is kind of problematic. It happens all the time, but they did had a concept of building it over time, but I still think in some kind of missing link in that thinking of that process
