Dissecting the colonial house

A.PASS RESEARCH CENTER CYCLE IV
END PRESENTATIONS

In the installation “Dissecting the Colonial House” the klamboe, or mosquito net, is used as a metaphor to visualize the cultural and spatial forms of separation that the colonizers created in order to mitigate their fears and vulnerabilities of being in a foreign environment. As both content and material form, as klamboe and house, the scenography functions as an activated intermediate space and support structure to talk about how the colonial house was imagined and how the process of its dissection can articulate today’s questions and struggles around coloniality.

DISSECTING THE COLONIAL HOUSE

From descriptions of the colonial house in literature and novels, it becomes clear that the spatial layout consisted of the same configuration of rooms, more or less the same size, based on a simple grid, sometimes there is a corridor with on both sides doors to a set of rooms, but generally one always navigated from room to room:

– Voorgalerij (the front verandah): the entrance of the house, the place where one received visitors.
– Binnengalerij (the inner verandah): the lounge or living room.
– Achtergalerij (the back verandah): the dining room
– Kinderkamer (the children’s play room)
– Slaapkamer (the bedroom)
– Kinder slaapkamer (chilcren’s bedroom): close to the back door.
– Bijgebouwen (the annex, where the services were housed, the kitchen, storage, garage, and a servant’s room).

The openness and porosity of tropical architecture, its relation to the outdoors, in order to keep spaces ventilated and cool – i.e. the thin walls, open windows, large galleries/verandas and airy open rooms – resulted in a lack of privacy, little personal space, a continuous resonance of sounds and movement of smells, as well as the co-habitation with all kinds of insects and other living organisms. I’m interested in the colonizer’s everyday use of architecture, how the configuration of rooms in the house reflected colonial cultural and moral values. How these cultural and moral values constructed both physical and imagined forms of hierarchy and separation, and how this represents a dispositive or shadow projection of colonial society.

The a.pass Research Center cycle IV end presentations

23 September 2023

With research presentations by Gosie Vervloessem, caterina daniela mora jara, Maurice Meewisse, Paoletta Holst and Tulio Rosa.

Documentation: Bo Vloors