The publication is a collaboration between Ishani Chatterjee, Jennifer Carniel, Kaan Hiçyılmaz, with the clients, social workers, employees and management team of GGzE.
'Activating Boundaries’ takes the form of an open publication that continues a conversation with its reader in a hope to inquire through different lenses the conceptual notion of ‘boundaries’. The project situates itself at De Grote Beek where the first thoughts, questions and notions of space, its restrictions and its invitations, both physical and psychological are discussed through a multitude of perspectives and provocations. This growing network of exchange aims to create an open dialogue amongst those associated with GGzE where ‘reflections’ play a vital role in analyzing the past, coming together in the present and anticipating an actively progressing future.
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Through this adapted methodology of conversations, an amalgam of different perspectives starts to take shape, where notes on various subjects from several discussions are explored to a point of ‘frictions’. The deconstruction of broader theories in the context of mental health begins with the evolution of the materialization of these boundaries via fences through the past 100 years of the GGzE. As we progress, navigating across ideas of public and private, outside and inside, client and citizen, this dialogue opens up an avenue of actants, with the three of us seen in the role of activators.
Images from the archive of GGzE, showing the fences surrounding the buildings on De Grote Beek estate. (Dates unknown)
In the course of the project, along with the actants, a community is shaped that provides us with a position of drawing out points of friction when conversing with them. Transversing our dialogues, these aforementioned points expect to critically analyze the systemic changes in a mental health institution. Though this community of conversations limit themselves at a point, the idea of the ‘open publication’ is to disregard the limitations of exclusion, so the growing web of perspectives can keep enhancing the decisions undertaken at De Grote Beek and eventually find a place for the application of this methodology in the context of mental health as a whole.
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An inquiry through the 100 years of GGzE paved a route of insights that evolved with the process but did not confine only to those participating in the landscape of mental health everyday, but also questioned the role of designers as activators towards inviting mental health institutions to reflect and converse. Is ‘being public’ a notion, an invitation or a restriction? Can the ‘affect’ of a boundary act as a reflection, a division or an invitation? Is ‘stigma’ a term and an emotion only from beyond or also from within? Can the involvement of the clients in the engagement process help navigate the planning?
