IF WALLS COULD TALKIF WALLS COULD TALK

While many expected an increase in collectivity and solidarity alongside the shared pain of restriction and isolation, differences flourished online. The internet could have been a democratic symphony of a multitude of voices, but instead it became an insular platform for 'the individual'.

Many social justice movements also migrated to the internet, yet it is common for organisations such as Instagram and Facebook to regulate what is shared, how, and to whom. This networked dialogue sometimes results in advice, education and support, but it can also engender collective guilt or outrage. While efforts are made to improve it, performative posturing has become a new social currency in itself.

Inspired by the saying 'the walls are closing in', this installation uses virtual reality to confront the visitor with this new social fabric. In the VR experience visitors are first introduced to the confronting and polarising social fabric. As a next step, they get to know about the zawiya (loosely translated as 'corner'), a Maghrebi and West African term for a place to gather and solve conflicts within the community. Originally associated with religion, it now appears in many functions from the spiritual and the educational to the social and the political. Here, it is a space in which to reflect on - and try to resolve - today's tense and socially alienating climate.

From our home in Rotterdam club space MONO, (A)WAKE provide a platform for in-between voices from multiple cultural backgrounds. Focusing on western Europe, West Asia and North Africa (to which we personally belong), we explore creative and critical approaches that challenge the global north-south power dynamic through art and digital culture.

Thanks to the policy of social distancing, a generation of designers has graduated virtually unseen. What's more, in the months leading up to graduation, their education had taken place in front of the computer screen, often in complicated domestic circumstances. How has this experience shaped their understanding of living and the home? In a series of two-monthly installations, representatives of this generation present their own highly personal views on home.