Rebel Rebel - The Proposal

Rebel

AN ARCHITECTURAL DEVICE OF INTERFERENCE

EMPOWERING YOUNG RESISTANCE BY INTERFERING WITH URBAN PUBLIC SPACES THROUGH DIGITAL SPATIAL DISTURBANCE

In a time where a pandemic causes a pressing need for new demands, with lockdown measures and oversurveillance in place; and in a city which has been shaped by a society disregarding ungoverned presence of youth in the public realm, their possibility to rise spatially against their oppressors is being limited even further. There is no room for the young to communicate their unrest, except digitally. Such census oppresses a valuable contribution to an equal city. Protests and their various stages carry the highest potential for the youth to directly influence urban society and an equal city making. ‘Rebel Rebel’ works with the impact of digital activism and translates digital interference into spatial interference cybernetically. The work focusses on a dissolution/interference of hierarchies in public space (the right of presence, freedom of movement) through breaking boundaries by disturbing infrastructures and communication networks in a system which doesn’t serve the youth. A structural, unfolding dome, with the street as its most influential environment, gradually occupies more urban space with growing digital unrest. It’s structural plan + Software is provided as open source material. By filtering activism information, e.g. algorithms, hashtags, petitions and direct messages through the software, it creates pressure towards the governing system to pay attention to. The information gathering depicts the first safe space - it happens anonymously to hide identities. By being projected into physical space (projection mapping), the information works as a surface (curtain) to hide protesters through distraction. The space occupied enables the youth to create not only a safe digital but also physical network across the city and constructs an alternative infrastructure as a further stage of protest. ‘Rebel Rebel’ creates an urgently needed bridge between digital and physical space which can no longer be ignored and by doing so introduces a new spatial practice to the school of architecture. A digital space in the urban fabric, a rebellious tool of freedom and safety. ‘Rebel Rebel’ is a ‘stateless’ safe space which enables opinions to be heard and seen, and a motivator to re-imagine the city as a space of equality - overthrowing the spatial systems of oppression through radical digital and spatial rebellion/resistance.