A Call to Repair on Governors Island

For two weekends in September, Governors Island played host to Pioneers of Change, a collection of Dutch designers and artists, exhibiting their works in eleven officers’ houses on Nolan Circle, in an event celebrating 400 years of Dutch-American friendship. One participant was Platform21, whose house revolved around the idea of repair. The house itself embodied the very cause behind their mission: many of the officers’ houses have been sorely neglected, suffering from peeling paint to flat out decay. But the folks of Platform21, and the artists inspired by them, utilized on its condition, not only by focusing all portions of the exhibit on the idea of repair, but even altering sections of the house through such endeavors. The overall effect of the exhibit was to put the ability to repair in the public’s hands and engage them in an alternative to other common end results of consumption, such as creating more refuse, or even more recycling.

Each station within the house had representatives giving demos, complete with hands-on trials for visitors. Heleen Klopper’s area revolved around wool fillers using felting. Visitors were shown the simple tools necessary to repair holes in their woolen goods – from small tears in sweaters to completely worn through spots on carpets – and then invited them to try out the process on sample patches themselves. Lotte Dekker’s room focused on piecing together broken chinaware into entirely new forms. Seams created with adhesive were emphasized with gold powder, while other plates underwent “tectonic repair,” reorienting the planes of the dishware itself while highlighting the actual process and concept of construction to the visitor. Both methods used materials easily found at the hardware store, making these options viable for just about anybody. Daan van den Berg focused on the chipping and peeling paint in the house’s hallway. Four peel-off wallpaper souvenirs, each featuring a pattern from the one of the past four centuries in Dutch design, were applied to the chipped spots with a blunt tool, and went beyond repair, and instead created a new treatment altogether.

The Platform21 = Repairing stance seems to be rather simple, but one that frequently isn’t considered by our modern minds: take something broken, and don’t just fix it, but make something new. As a group, they are not necessarily promoting anti-consumerist or anti-recycling ideals, but more remind us that inspiration can be found in what might normally be destined for the trash.

Read more on the Platform21 = Repairing project here.