Frank Havermans: Infra # Macau _Artificial Landscapes

This site-specific installation showcases an ongoing observation of infrastructure. Being mankind’s largest built structures, infrastructure comprises an international network that supersedes national borders. Inspired by harbour maps from Macau, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and connecting them to Portugal (Lisbon) and the Netherlands (Rotterdam), the project became a way to convey the overseas relationships that have existed for hundreds of years between these cities. The author has a personal or professional relationship with the chosen territories. If infrastructure connects people, this storefront is a three-dimensional map that collides a post-geographical affection. The spatial language of folded black harbour maps manifest uncanny views of an otherwise straightforward flat and generic typology. It proposes an imaginary transnational enterprise, in which the white voids are merely temporary gaps that are soon filled as the built environment never ceases to expand. Hypothetically, the ultimate iteration of this window would be an uneasy dense, black picture.