With the first phase of Neak Ta now over, the site will slowly be evolving into a more general update on all of the Incidental projects as they progress. First of all, here’s some pictures from “Doctor Doctor”, a new project in Sheffield, led by Jeremy Hutchison.
This commission is to create a combination of temporary events and permanent works for a large new surgery development. The main theme of the project is humour - finding playful ways to reinvest the experiences of a surgery with communal, light-hearted sociability.
The construction site is currently an empty lot, a vacant space covered with Japanese Knot Weed and concrete slabs. In the months before work begins on the new development, we ran a short public event, taking this ‘non-space’, and investing it with a sense of place, filled with the colour and identity of the local community.
There is nothing more specific to a community than its sense of humour. In our jokes, we reveal our politics, our histories, our cultural references, TV shows, our accents, our fears and our hopes. Jokes are very personal things.
And so jokes were collected from local residents who were visiting the surgery, and were then placed were placed freely across the site, with set-up dislocated from punchline - to cause passers-by to stop and gaze, matching up jokes, and visually exploring a long-forgotten space.
This is, of course, only the beginning. The project also includes extensive workshops with local secondary students, and we’re just starting to explore the form and content of the permanent works.
