Cycling in the air: that is the title that Jeanne van Heeswijk has given her Artist in Residence project at the Academy of Architecture. She and a group of international students will use a winter workshop to explore the possibilities and impossibilities of opening up the Deltapoort zone with new cycle routes and connections to enhance the quality of the area.

In the autumn of 2010 the province of South Holland commissioned Van Heeswijk to conduct a study of cycle routes and movements aimed at the environment, health and sustainability. Together with students of the Academy of Architecture Van Heeswijk will look at possibilities for new cycle routes in the so-called Deltapoort, the hinterland of the Rotterdam harbour. In February and March 2011 she will organize a series of public lectures (Capita Selecta) where philosophers, political scientists and artists will discuss the themes that Van Heeswijk deals with as an artist: radicalizing local economies and migrations. The title of the lecture series is Radicalizing the local: agonistic urban strategies.

Van Heeswijk: ‘The research is on the Deltapoort, a piece of countryside wedged in between the harbour, motorways and industrial estates and thereby cut off from its surroundings. What I am aiming for is to think gravity-free, to plunge completely into the surroundings in order to come up with totally new ideas.’
Read the full interview with Jeanne van Heeswijk

Artist in Residence-programmaJeanne van Heeswijk is the successor to Jeroen Kooijmans, Adriaan Beukers and Ed van Hinte, Erik Kessels, Krisztina de Châtel, Luc Deleu and Paul Shepheard, who have all organised winter workshops at the Academy of Architecture in the past. The Artist in Residence programme is part of the Art Practice and Development research group of the Amsterdam School of the Arts, led by Marijke Hoogenboom.