Desire Lines (2020) | By Ilke Gers Archived

The New Zealand artist Ilke Gers (1981), living in Rotterdam, makes installations, performances and publications in which movement, behaviour, social and spatial conditions play a role.

We asked Ilke Gers to temporarily intervene in the outdoor space of the NDSM shipyard where a structure of rules and laws – in contrast to other public places in the Netherlands – is largely lacking. Gers looked at the NDSM shipyard beforehand to see what behavior, use and actions were taking place. By working with a ‘script’ for a chalk line, she arrived at a temporary visual work. Has the present time changed her view on the behaviour and use of public space? The lines can be seen until traffic movements or the weather takes over and the work fades away. The outlines of Ilke Gers that are normally used for sports fields make other forms of play, actions and meanings possible in response to the ‘public’ character of the NDSM shipyard.

She describes her way of working as ‘site-sensitive’ instead of site-specific, in which it is important to her how a space feels, what behaviour determines and shapes a space. Attention goes to the porous aspect of it. To elements of which you may not be aware at first sight.

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