Honourable mentions

Portraits of Opacity by Shehab Awad

“Challenging the prevailing notion of sleep as a state of quiescence, medical imaging technologies are being used to capture and visualise our unconscious thoughts with the aim of helping those suffering from trauma, memory loss and various sleep disorders. Part of a larger inquiry into the potential consequences of scientific discovery, Portraits of Opacity brings together multidisciplinary perspectives to ask whether the value of sleep is predicated on preserving the unknowability of its experience.”

Comments of the Jury: A highly engaging and timely proposal that investigates the quantification and commodification of sleep. The jury recognises the strong methodology and relevance of the subject to current struggles in connection to labour conditions, human rights, health and safety, as well as its capacity to shed light on emerging forms of control and consumerism. The jury also identifies the challenges associated with the broad scope of the subject.

Algorithmic Diplomacy: re-designing algorithms for a non-polarised retrieval of information online by Emilie De Keulenaar

“This proposal intends to explore the polarising effects of a platform’s search ranking algorithms by altering them in such a way that they organise and retrieve information in a non-polarised order. It thus explores the possibility that we design mechanisms capable of systematising one’s access to information online in ways that facilitate diplomatic dialogue. If search engine algorithms are partly at fault for inducing polarisation online, can we imagine them doing the opposite?”

Comments of the Jury: Algorithmic Diplomacy is a concise and applied research project that seeks to visualise the polarising practices of search-ranking algorithms through YouTube. It demonstrates an understanding of the controversies around algorithmic decision-making, and proposes a critical position that further contributes to current efforts at politically reordering the online realm as well as modes of digital activism. The jury acknowledges the potential relevance of applying the concept of “diplomacy” to the field of algorithmic culture as an analytic tool and encourages further reflection upon this notion.

Nomos of the Sea: Architecture of Logistics in VOC’s ventures in the Persian Gulf by Hamed Khosravi

“Contrary to the majority of colonial powers, the Dutch overseas empire was mainly shaped through private trading companies, such as Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC, or Dutch East India Company). Although the VOC was a private corporation it was granted a special jurisdictional power; having the right to wage war, to imprison and to execute convicts, to negotiate treaties and to establish colonies. In fact the VOC naval forces were freelance Dutch agents who were to expand the empire at their own risk. The Nomos of the Sea reads the architectural legacy of the VOC as geopolitical apparatuses to conduct the law of the motherland remotely, materialising a pervasive state of exception.”   
 

Comments of the Jury: Nomos of the Sea is a compelling research exploration and theoretical proposition on the architecture of logistics and its relation to particular spatio-juridical conditions. Using strong historical foundations, the project focuses on the underexplored architecture legacy of the Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie  (VOC) in the Persian Gulf, as a site to investigate practices of  land appropriation. The jury is particularly impressed by the way in which Khosravi attempts to make historical research relevant today. The project sheds light on the mechanisms by which extractive and resource-appropriating activities are legitimised for international trade, and connects them to the current world of logistics and the corporate nature of Dutch colonialism.

Cursed Materialities: ​Wundkammern​ and decolonising ​Patua’s by Pedro Oliviera and Luiza Prado (A Parede)

“Colonialism is a powerful curse. It stretches time and space, contaminating ways of thinking and intervening in the world; shaping how we see ourselves and others. Design is directly implicated in this curse; by establishing and imposing taste regimes, it fabricates categories of bodies and spaces, materialising them in contemporary artefacts. Our proposal seeks to engage in a decolonisation of a jinxed material culture, identifying, cataloging and cleansing contemporary cursed objects in a Wundkammer – a cabinet of colonial wounds.”

Comments of the Jury: The jury finds in Cursed Materialities a methodologically relevant project that seeks to reverse the predominant narrative of post-colonialism by investigating what Oliveira and Prado describe as “cursed colonial objects, images, and spaces”. They propose to use design as a tool for researching alternative pedagogies, which would manifest in a collective learning practice developed together with different local communities in Rotterdam. Through the collection of objects associated to colonial curses, the creation of narratives, short stories and scenarios around them, Oliveira and Prado aim to upturn the pre-conceptions around what “Dutchness” is or might be, and unravel the relationships of power associated with this notion.

Atlas of Shores by Damáso Randulfe

“Atlas of Shores is an ongoing research project that examines the spatial construction of the Atlantic seaboard, studying shorelines as registers of environmental, economic, political and epistemic transoceanic flows. Its coming iteration will analyse the role and afterlife of the Dutch colonial project in the formation of the global Atlantic and the production of its shores. With this aim, it will mobilise archival knowledge, generate alternative cartographies and explore the decolonial potential of the atlas.”

Comments of the Jury: Atlas of Shores proposes to radically re-interpret the formalised documentary tools of mapping, archives and exhibitions in order to examine the landscape and legacy of Dutch colonialism in the Atlantic. Randulfe’s project is sensitive to the power associated with “legibility” in various formats, noting how what is different or unrecognisable in the eyes of the coloniser easily becomes invisible within or excluded from codified forms of cultural memory. The jury recognises Randulfe’s commitment to mapping the intertwining of landscape, seascape and capital in the Atlantic as an ongoing and politically-astute project, and encourages the continued dissemination of the research through written essays alongside cartography.

Shipbreak by Maayan Strauss

“The maritime shipping industry facilitates the global movement of objects, bringing us 90% of everything we consume. Yet the maritime shipping industry i​s​ consolidating, as trade in material goods has flattened since 2008, and is seeing an increasing amount of end-of-life vessels. This proposal aims to identify possible design and art interventions related to dangerous ship-breaking yards in South Asia, where cargo ships—like the commodities they once carried—become obsolete. The research is aimed towards the development of a platform that can support both artistic initiatives and political and strategic engagement in a large geographic and organisational network.”

Comments of the Jury: The jury recognises the potential and ambition of the proposal Shipbreak, which addresses the reduced economic demand in the shipping of physical goods by focusing on the object level of obsolescence and the systemic level of national policies. It also identifies the infrastructural challenges in Bangladesh that prevent these admittedly dire practices of material harvesting from transforming local micro-economies. Strauss aims to mobilise creativity towards issues of social and environmental justice. The jury is convinced by the relevance of the topic, and encourages the activist approach.

The Political Architecture of the Colonial University Campus by Sina Zekavat

"The research project explores the histories and transformations of Dutch colonial university campuses in two former Dutch colonies. By looking at the material and immaterial processes of spatial production in the two university campuses, the research aims to map the overlapping narratives and trajectories of colonial and anti colonial power dynamics that have emerged, and continue to emerge, from the spaces of colonial university campuses."

Comments of the Jury: A specific and necessary project on universities as a contentious site of both colonial power and the decolonisation of knowledge. The jury highlights the capacity of this proposal to produce new knowledge and instigate relevant conversations about the future of education. Zekavat sheds light on the forms of inclusion and exclusion associated to the architecture of pedagogical spaces, and simultaneously reveals how seemingly oppressing environments could be turned into liberating devices, thus revealing the role of universities as sites for contestation, dissidence, resistance and change.