Anne Nigten 2010

Real Projects for Real People, Volume 1 

Anne Nigten is an art scholar and writes about the Dutch context. She is a part-time professor at Groningen University. In 2008, she started The Patching Zone, a transdisciplinary media laboratory in a poor neighborhood in Rotterdam, where students, young professionals and experts with diverse backgrounds work together with residents on various projects that intersect the areas of art, design, technology, science and local cooperation. The method they use is called ‘processpatching’ and it was developed by Nigten in her doctoral dissertation entitled Processpatching, Defining New Methods in aRt&D (2007) – where aRt&D stands for ‘art in research & design.’ The method involves finding ‘a third space’ between various disciplines, a neutral space not controlled by anyone, where all participants are respected and have great freedom to work as they wish. She describes this work as participants sewing a patchwork quilt together. In the book Real Projects for Real People, Volume 1, Nigten and her colleagues describe their experiences from the first two years working in the media laboratory (2010).