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The development of The Back Office

By Rosanne van Wijk

Visiting (the back of) an aquarium. Thinking about ‘Our Future Aquarium’.

We move ourselves through a hidden door, integrated in the decor taking a big amount of steps upstairs. On our way to the back side of the aquarium. Arriving upstairs, we immediately face a totally different view: rhythmic repetitions of drains and machines, boxes and tubes next to traffic cones and fences. These grey tubes and drains are the lungs and veins of the aquarium. This technological multi-species brings the system to life.
In this place life is constant, the diet chosen and food is in stock. Here the coral reef is fully alive within a balanced ecosystem. But this space is framed. In this place (underwater) life is continuously measured, fully taken care of and researched. The back of the aquarium is way bigger and more ugly than the front. The artificial TL light sheds a new light on our situation.

Since this ‘ugly’ back is the place that makes the beautiful front work, I am wondering, isn’t this the real front? In these times of nature’s decay, this aquarium can still make nature flourish. Is this place an interesting metaphor about how to deal with our surroundings, about where we have to take position in the ecosystem ourselves?

What if here lies a message, that visiting this place tells us we have to carry the tubes altogether to be able to create that balanced ecosystem we need. That we have to be employed for and with other species instead of employing others for ourselves and the beautiful front we always want to face. What if this cultivation brings new life, a new nature and we, as humans, change our position to the back side in the shadow of the front: the aquarium of the future. There is no front without back.
^ reflection visit Burgers’ Ocean guided by biologist Max Janse

Illustration: Olf de Bruin

Tentacles of Connection

Become a multi-species altogether.

We often forget ‘the backside’; the journey to reach the destination. We’re so used to optimized and perfection that we are not flexible at all when the decor falls. We often freeze when it goes wrong. We are our own problem and our own solution.

It’s a task not just of naming, but of doing, of making new kinds of labor for a new kind of nature.

- Donna Haraway

Taskforce-Fashion-Fashion-After-Flood-small-transparant.png — Liquid Life, a Fluid Way of Being

(title by Zygmunt Bauman)
Liquid life means being flexible, not thinking in ‘boxes’ or solid social constructs. It could also be seen as a way of living in and with water as a future. Being conscious of water, living with water and being adaptive to your environment.

Communities vs Networks

[...] This topic of communities versus networks has me occupied. In the past, as Baumans explains, we lived with structures. We tied deep knots with people and the goal was to make it difficult to dismantle them. Today, we want fluid networks in which we can enter and exit with ease. The point is not which one is better. Both have costs and benefits.
- Esther Perel

Taskforce-Fashion-Fashion-After-Flood-small-transparant.png — Time to Perform

After our visit to the aquarium I became inspired and fascinated by aluminium vent tubes. I see them as flexible tentacles and connectors; they form a system that transfers air and the tubes are moved all around a building. What if we use these objects to help us to get some new perspectives? To bring people together via these tubes?
Normally tube braces keep the system in place. I started thinking about activating people by involving them in the topic. So I started working with ‘replacing’ the normal braces by creating textile versions which connect the tube with the public. People have to hold the tube altogether, are thereby connected and form a multi-species altogether in which we act as a whole. Together we have to make the system work.