WE'VE GOT A "TWO-FIVE" HERE...!

Yes, Bart and I are back in Detroit again. This time for only a week, to catch up with our friends, as well as to meet new people for future exchanges. We also brought the publication that we’ve made with Nikos and Joao about their stay in Detroit and the three stations that followed afterwards in The Netherlands and Germany. And we also brought the whole “Archive of Impressions” that we exhibited in our Expodium space last October.

When we arrived at the Detroit airport, this time it was me who was picked out of the queue at Customs for a thorough check (who are you? What are you doing here? Where are you staying?). The lady at the desk looked at my passport, took my fingerprints, and without any question called a colleague of hers. The only thing she said was: “we’ve got a Two-Five here”..... All of a sudden I was a “two-five”, and I didn’t even know what that was. I was brought down to two numbers, which probably stood for something suspicious and which needed extra attention.

I was brought up to a special desk where another lady took my passport and started typing all kind of stuff into her computer. I tried to explain why I was here, and at the point that I was talking about the exchange of knowledge and experiences between Detroit and Utrecht, she cut me off and asked if I wanted to open my suitcase.

She went through my stuff (boxer shorts, warm socks, towel, toothpaste, shirts) and saw a carton box – about an A4 size. “What’s in the box?” she asked, and I replied “an exhibition”. There we stood, a couple of seconds, realising what the situation was, and she let me go. It’s great to be back again.

DETROIT: THE PUBLICATION

Bart and Luc are heading to Detroit to visit the "dream-team".
They will be carrying in their luggage the ARCHIVE OF IMPRESSIONS exhibition package as well as our recently produced Detroit publication.

"DETROIT: BACK TO THE FUTUREARCHIVE OF IMPRESSIONS - between illusion and delusion, Urban and Rural, living and leaving" is a 179 pages booklet, printed in a limited edition of 30 copies. Every copy is numbered and signed.
Around 10 of them will be distributed to the organizations and initiatives we have been collaborating with and 20 copies will be circulated to a expanded network of professionals as part of the Urban Translations project  .

This publication is designed to give an inside to our journey so far. It includes part of the Visual Archive, a series of texts as well as documentation photos and descriptive articles of all three stations of the Translation Process.



Unlike most booklets "DETROIT: BACK TO THE FUTUREARCHIVE OF IMPRESSIONS" avoids a linear order. A plastic screw on the top left side binds all pages together, inviting readers to "twist" instead of "flip", suggesting various starting points.

"This publication is set to give a mere impression of Detroit’s complexity and highlight notions, embedded within its current state. Notions such as mutualism and the sense of taking care, preservation and the sense of belonging, agency, necessity and the trust in the outcome of a creative mind......As artists interested in social phenomena, we research, documentate and mediate. We “engage” with our subject matter, put trust in our practice, our background knowledge and reflective skills.
But so do architects, philosophers, sociologists and journalists.
We have often wondered what separates us from any other researcher.
This publication is set to give an answer to that and establish a more concrete perception of our status during our sixty-four days residency in Detroit.
Cultural colonizers? Accidental tourists? Parachuted maggots? Temporal residents or all of the above? "
Abstract from the publication's introductory text.


p. 178.