NOMANSLAND
Vrije Universiteit – Faculty of Psychology | nomansland (Marjorieke Glaudemans, 1965, Driebergen, Netherlands; & Karen Lancel, 1963, Katwijk aan Zee, Netherlands)
nomansland investigates the meaning of boundaries. nomansland is by nature conceptual and the same time has a physical form, namely a piece of land 10 m square situated near the boundary line between Groningen and Drenthe.
nomansland is open to everyone. It invites interested parties and stakeholders to investigate and imagine functions, value systems and individual experiences surrounding the concept of a ‘boundary’. nomansland does not want to claim space, but to let people experience it.
nomansland has its Free Space in the Vrije Universiteit and maintains online contact with the public both in the university and beyond. The question that nomansland has put to the whole of the Zuidas: What is a No Man's Land? A question whose dimensions are huge on the one hand and personal on the other. In addition, nomansland gives guest lectures and works together with students. All statements about a no man's land will be compiled and for one short moment made physically visible in the excavation for the recently begun new building construction on the university's terrain. A postcard and a banner will mark this moment.
As such, nomansland creates a moment of communication infiltration, making audible a critical tone in the process of the Zuidas. “This project is the fulfilment of a wish that nomansland has had for a long time.”
nomansland.now in the VU
Marjorieke Glaudemans & Karen Lancel
Right now the Zuidas is an urban space in between’, with places full of potential and promises to dream about. Right now the Zuidas is being planned and built to become a functional area in which to live and to work. Now nomansland has collected statements in response to the question: What do people in cities need in order to keep alive a free zone for sensitivity and dreaming?
