Buoyed by the possibility of creating a permanent structure for the school, we set up a temporary one to begin with, placed in-between two classrooms in an adjoining underused courtyard. We borrowed a shed-like transparent inflatable from one of our previous projects, Chodzenie-Siberia, and Andreas (from public works) put together a tall scaffolding structure. He then fetched a chair from a classroom, tied it to a rope, climbed up on the roof and tied the rope to the highest-placed scaffolding bar.
The next day pupils from the adjoining classes popped out to have a peak. “What’s the chair doing up there?”
The space was only large enough to accommodate six pupils at one go. We decided to take twelve from each class in two batches of six. Over the next two months children, teachers, non-teaching staff and former pupils would visit the space to play, experiment, talk and have tea and cake. March and April 2012 were two of the wettest months on record but the Gods were kind to us.
The principle behind the temporary structure was to provide a space where everyone could think about the demolition taking place around them and explore any possibilities it may offer for the future. The chair, more than anything, embodied this process, it always made people ask questions: “What’s the chair doing up there? Can we sit on it? Does it move? How did you get it up there? What does it mean? Plus a dizzying variety of surreal explanations from the cynical to the quasi-religious: hangings, flying saucers and the resting place for yellow Jesus. Here was a small intimate courtyard and out there a higgledy piggledy assortment of buildings and open spaces fenced off by the builders into restricted areas and corridors. We used one to think up ideas about how to invade the other.
Over a period of two months we saw 152 pupils. We also invited teaching and non teaching staff to join us for tea and cake, to tell us their stories. Despite March 2012 being one of the wettest months on record, the Gods were kind and spared us from getting too wet. Initially I was torn about how to introduce the project to the pupils. I’m not one for simplifying things. I don’t see the point in cushioning anyone from complexity and offering instead a bland and watered down version of events. When the very first group of six joined us in the space, they grouped together in the inflatable as if they were in a classroom.
