Building Institutions

dora ramljak

Sensory room, a tool used in the treatment of neurorisk-impaired people, people with cognitive disabilities, and mental illnesses opens as a place for exploration of the limits of individual bodies. Care is allowed to become subjective, individual, collective, and un-hierarchical as body experiences differ from person to person. The sensory room is an individual photograph of a bodily experience in time and space constantly changing as it encounters the others.

The room is a tool for accessing the body, it functions in the urban, the city, institutional, or individual spaces. Entering a sensory room is where the ability of a controlled correction of a predestined reflex is enabled and de- institutionalized. By creating a room-project based on elements of sensory integration, the design of sensory elements derived from natural forms is facilitating the adaptation of institutions to the outside world. The elements are easily mobile and together they can form a sensory room or be used individually. The space should not be an obstacle to providing assistance to those in need, to anyone.

Cities became places of condensing and de-naturalizing bodies. Sensory room extends in form of a public sensory drawing workshop, where use of stencils and chalk, while focusing on certain senses disrupts the regularity in which we inhabit the city. By engaging in play in collective and urban spaces, the exchange where we are able to reawaken the childlike nature of the body and its gesture, but also exchange with the other, is possible. By slowing down we become aware of our senses, our place in the space. The workshop establishes an institution where re-claiming individual bodies trough re-discovering our body memory is possible. The city becomes a space whose potentiality shifts as knowledge of our own body deepens. and animals) into account.

Concept of my project emerged as I had a growing interest in understanding current medical discourse and questioning how it treats people. This shortly became the largest project I have worked on so far as my research expanded when I approached three hospitals in Croatia, where I come from, and proposed to develop a sensory room based on their needs. Together with them I was able to expand my research and understand what is needed in this moment and how I can contribute to change that I aspire to see. Therefore, my graduation work is a combination between commissioned work, building the elements of the room, and now the workshops in which I extend my research and practice outside of the institution and into the cities occupied by a variety of people. My biggest inspiration for this project is simply pure human interaction that changes as the environment changes.

Last year, I lost the ability to connect and just lived in my own reality, but then I started feeling my body again, a little bit. It is a terrifying, new feeling.. I was scared of institutions, I despised the system, but it didn’t bring me anywhere other than back to them. So, to work with the system might be a way to go? I find guidance, peace, presence, I am able to feel my own body when I touch the other, when I work hard to bend the metal or shape the wood. I used this as a way to find myself again and see the beautiful strength that my body has. I allowed myself to grow as I built small elements for hospitals, and it was just a way to imagine what my reality could look like if I ever had to face this environment again. The workshops showed me the beauty of detail, of bodies of materials and their different shapes. Cuts on the fingers, temporary burns, they are marks of time and space on my body. I want to translate this experience to everyone, to all of us, automated citizens of overfilled urban landscapes. I observed the children and learned from them. Now I observe what is around me and create my own space, my own workshop, where others can come to terms with their physicality. I capture what they create and recompose, re-contextualise, I put it in contexts where it doesn’t belong. Material slows down as the senses re-awaken.

After academy, I wish to develop my series of workshops further, but also take some rest and see where do I see myself, what is my next adventure. I am entering a research residency after I graduate, so I hope that that will be a fertile ground for the new projects to emerge.