Rooms: Modelling the Quotidian and Revealing the Enchanted of Berlin's Immigrant Spaces

Abstract

Within historiography, design and architecture production, scale models can reveal worlds of proposition, speculation and fiction. This abstract, however, situates the model as a tool for observation, documentation and engagement with The Quotidian, and its transformation into The Enchanted. Model-making as a slow, durational method of artistic research, has the potential to elevate the existence of people and place often marginalised by wider society, and manifest a deep level of participation in their lives. “Rooms” was an artistic and research project undertaken as part of an artistic residency at the Urban Nation Museum in Berlin between October 2021 and March 2022. It looked at the Romanian immigrant community inhabiting the city, the spaces they occupy and appropriate, and the objects that they surround themselves with. These instances – a Romanian shop and two domestic spaces - were drawn, surveyed, documented and then painstakingly recreated through 1:20 paper models, which were presented as part of a group exhibition.
For marginalised communities in particular, the nostalgic association with native objects, as well as with immigrant places, can represent an inner, self-created intangible border, expressing their liminal identity. These everyday spaces – The Quotidian – are revealed as objects of beauty and atmosphere – The Enchanted – by the dedication to this extreme form of representation. Modelling these mundane spaces not only visualises, but also offers new insight and gives a sense of value and recognition to the lived realities of individuals and communities often ignored or disdained. A situated mode of research, Rooms offers a methodology for encouraging access and participation from the participant, maker and the viewer into the physical condition of migrancy, and the identity of migrants.