Antwerp City Collection

This video work is a collection of archive material of the Temporary Penetrable Exhibition Spaces project, which spans 10 years and 11 interventions in public spaces between 2005 - 2015.

The T.P.E.S.'s are site-specific interventions that occur in vacant spaces. Like many cities in Belgium, the city of Antwerp has many derelict, vacant buildings and spaces. These spaces are sometimes inhabited by the homeless. As a result these buildings are typically demolished by developers and city councils as quickly as possible. What is not generally acknowledged is that these deteriorated spaces serve an important function in the memory and social landscape of the city, and in a way possess a beauty of their own. The rapid measures taken to demolish these unused spaces are a way to exclude everything that is irrational, chaotic and seemingly unreasonable in urban planning. Philippe van Wolputte's interventions draw attention to the existence of these spaces by making them accessible again for a short period of time, and he approaches his subjects with an almost Freudian-like obsession. Using narrow corridors and holes, he creates new passageways and infiltrates nearly impenetrable spaces, giving them a new temporary function as a fictional exhibition space.