Tomi Hilsee

On show in Underdeveloped #4, is the culmination of Tomi Hilsee’s work over the past year at Garage Rotterdam: creating a mobile archive of squatting in Rotterdam.

Supported by the artist fees given for Underdeveloped, the Rotterdam Squat Archive is an recently started and ongoing project, intended to live well beyond the space of the exhibition. Here the art space, Garage Rotterdam, serves as the catalyst for a long term community project.

By squattors for squattors – the archive is mostly a private reference/learning tool for squattors in Rotterdam to document what is happening so that these histories can be preserved and learned from. The mobile archive begins as a pilot, focusing on the past ten years and moving from squat to squat. Every six months a different squattor will become the archivist-in-residence to care for the archive, until passing along to the next.

Tomi Hilsee’s role was to initiate the concept and build the starting structure, before the archive becomes a community managed and maintained project.