Museum de Paviljoens and Enough Room for Space, Almere, The Netherlands

2008-2011

The Los Angeles Urban Rangers create our very first trail system in Almere, Netherlands, in collaboration with the Museum De Paviljoens' SITE2F7 Festival and artist Maarten Vanden Eynde of Enough Room for Space in 2008. Almere is one of the newest and fastest growing cities in the Netherlands, built over the last three decades on the Flevoland polder's reclaimed sea bottom. Mowed in collaboration with the city's landscape maintenance crew, our modest pathway system encourages visitors to explore the vacant lot surrounding the contemporary art museum, named SITE2F7, the last urban wilderness remaining in hyper-planned Almere. Signage marks the intersections where trails extend from established concrete sidewalks and asks visitors to ponder questions such as “who decides what grows here?” and “when can a dead end wander?” With special guests including a botanist and a forester, Ranger Sara Daleiden led an ontdekkingstocht, or “explorer's hike,” for museum visitors and local residents on August 23, 2008 with particular attention to the panoramic and close-ups views the site affords.

In the Fall of 2010, The Los Angeles Urban Rangers returned to Almere to create conduct community interviews and perform further site research in investigation of the trail system usage since 2008. We are currently developing a field guide and kit to explore SITE2F7 as a "speculatie grond/speculation ground" which will encourage further landscape-based projects that consider the development and identity of Almere.

We presented our in-process research at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions as part of their PUBLIC INTEREST: Projects & Prototypes convening on Saturday, November 13, 2010. For more information about the convening, click here.

This research was possible because of a City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs' Cultural Exchange International Grant with additional support from the Museum de Paviljoens and Enough Room for Space.