Project: Nomadic Dwelling

A participatory collaboration exhibited at three sites across four weeks at Miami University

The project was to be used to guide their inquiry-based research of the issue of nomadic dwelling (my assignment), so we started with a charrette. Students began researching the reasons people would move their homes. These included homelessness, hunting/gathering, camping/recreation, climate migration, natural disasters, agriculture/grazing, and freedom/mobility. They fashioned the yurt support structure by lashing together and mortise-tenon joining willow saplings, and for the skin they taught themselves to sew together wool blankets ordered from a prison supply company. A door and threshold were made so that viewers could easily enter and exit. 

A week into the project, the Museum administration reconsidered the relationship in an effort to maintain the curatorial integrity of the Eurasian exhibit. The new offer was to put the yurt outside and totally enclose it, which was not of interest to the students who were hoping for a participatory project. instead of abandoning the project, they shifted it. The reason behind the shift was what some would call a problem, but we saw it as a point of enlightenment.

Because of the change, I guided the group through a second charrette where students creatively brainstormed, researched, and sought out their own resources. Their solution: A) Make the yurt truly nomadic and install it at multiple sites on campus making the installation/deinstallation part of the event, B) turn the research on nomadic shelter into a video, C) screen the video in the yurt, thus inviting the university community to experience what was learned, and D) create welcome signs in multiple languages to encourage participation and to communicate the global nature of nomadism. 

Each student wrote a 5-minute long script that creatively told the tale of their particular research topic on the issue of nomadic dwelling. Topics included: FEMA shelters, Southwestern US colonias, N-55's Snail shell system, Aisslinger's Loftcube, Krysztof Wodiczko's vehicles, Simon Starling's Shed-boat-shed, McMansions, the small house movement, and the floating Neutrinos.  The Miami Sculpture woodshop was transformed into a video studio for  few days where they performed their script in front of the green screen and then supplied still images to be plugged in behind them in post-production.  All 5-minute segments were stitched together into one long video that looped when screened inside of the yurt.