Hieke Pars & Yvette Poorter / Rotterdam
For a week Yvette Poorter and Hieke Pars were intensively present in Gropiusstadt; getting to know the neighbourhood, scouting suitable sites, serving a meal to colleagues, planning and executing ideas, and giving each other feedback.
In the otherwise empty hallway of the flat on Hugo-Heimannstraße, I leave, as a token of appreciation for a warm and hospitable stay, some flowers (a colourful bunch of Sweet Williams). Twice, the flowers disappear in short order. Did someone take them home, give them to a neighbour as a birthday present, or did the housekeeper remove them? I decide to lower a third bunch from my balcony on the fifteenth floor. The downstairs neighbour-lady, surprised to see flowers passing by, receives them happily while standing on her balcony.
Yvette Poorter's para-site residency came out of a suitcase inside the apartment of Pilotprojekt Gropiusstadt. “Erection in Gropiusstadt” is the 16th site/intervention of Knock on Woods International Residency and Dwelling for Intervals. The Knock On Woods cabin was brought to an open field and the forest of tree-flags staked claim to the land. Resident artists worked together to erect the Dwelling for Intervals in Gropiusstadt.