TEAM C AREA X Team C, was captured by traces of surveillance and deviation in Oud- and Nieuw-Mathenesse in their investigation on the sense of community in the area. The fragmented urban and social composition of the neighbourhood was conceptualised in the metaphor of ‘pixels’, a reality that makes sense in the bigger scale but conceals problematic small scale situations, reflected in the large presence of surveillance and disciplinary measures of control in the area. In the light of the M4H development plan coming inevitably into realisation and changing drastically the spatial set up of Mathenesse, potentially bringing gentrification and further cultural and social isolation, Team C see this time as an opportunity for social and spatial experiments to stimulate a new social cohesion. The group proposed a ‘temporal autonomous zone’ called Area X. Once identified the boundaries and pathways of such area, the team advocates that local residents and people from deprived backgrounds make absolute free use of the land, with no rent and no surveillance in favour of spatial trust, creativity, experimentation, transgression, pride and sense of belonging that will shape a new organic sense of community that will continue to exist socially even after the area is redeveloped physically.
“Area X is daring attempt to extend spatial imagination into unknown territories and resist increasing power of surveillance. It’s a concept that offers strategy and action, but does not predict its outcomes. Area X is for learning and emancipation, for encounters and frictions, Area X is for becoming borderless.” (from the Area X Manifesto) At the final exhibition the group set up an enigmatic installation in which black objects, representing unknown urban territories, are connected – or detached - by black threads, representing the unpredictable possibilities that a de-bureaucratised Area X will bring into existence. Set against
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