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![The Roof we made]( "The Roof we made")
infoA roof tile made of paper, sometimes standing on top of a person, sometimes displayed next to other tiles
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![The Roof we made]( "The Roof we made")
infoA roof made of single tiles displayed in armony, they spatial organization creates meaning
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![The Roof we made]( "The Roof we made")
infoSome open questions, to not forget that housing is a right, questions of someone who could have lost a house, or have not one yet.
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![As Common as Well]( "As Common as Well")
infoOne small well and a large well, some floating bricks
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![As Common as Well]( "As Common as Well")
infoPerformance consisting of pulling a rope alternated with reading poems
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![As Common as Well]( "As Common as Well")
infoA rubber brick is carved and its drawing transferred on the paper brick
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![As Common as Well]( "As Common as Well")
infoVideo projection of the video "Well well"
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![As Common as Well]( "As Common as Well")
infoFloating brick with ink print
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![Dowsing across Fields]( "Dowsing across Fields")
infoPerformance consisting of the construction of a well with several tools and the pulling of a rope
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![Dowsing across Fields]( "Dowsing across Fields")
infoSeries of poems displayed as round table, each written from a different 'character' perspective. Above a forked twig used by dowsers.
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![Dowsing across Fields]( "Dowsing across Fields")
infoSeries of drawings, hanging on a rope and displaying elements of water's infrastructure
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![Dowsing across fields]( "Dowsing across fields")
infoa dowser practicing in a rural environment
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![Dowsing across fields]( "Dowsing across fields")
infoa dowser practicing in a rural environment
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![Livingscapes]( "Livingscapes")
infoinstallation during "The Try-out Gallery"
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![Writing-Welding]( "Writing-Welding")
infoexperimenting with tools and materials
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![Livingscapes]( "Livingscapes")
infoinstallation during "The Try-out Gallery"
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![Writing-Welding]( "Writing-Welding")
infolearning TIG welding
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![Where the Ink starts]( "Where the Ink starts")
infoLive-Action role-play game played by MA students
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![As Tangible Horizons]( "As Tangible Horizons")
infointeractive installation and workshop
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![As Tangible Horizons]( "As Tangible Horizons")
infoladder to explore the landscape
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![As Tangible Horizons]( "As Tangible Horizons")
infofloating surprises
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![As Tangible Horizons]( "As Tangible Horizons")
infolearning by doing
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![As Tangible Horizons]( "As Tangible Horizons")
infofellow's hands
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![As Tangible Horizons]( "As Tangible Horizons")
infofloating leaf and words
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![Primordi]( "Primordi")
infopaper sculptures as fictional landscape
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![Primordi]( "Primordi")
infodisplay of characters' pieces
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![Primordi]( "Primordi")
infowriting spot with exhibition
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![Diario d'Esodo]( "Diario d'Esodo")
inforesearch publication as theoretical framework
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![Primordi]( "Primordi")
inforecombining vowels, shells and gestures
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![Primordi]( "Primordi")
infotiles and types
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![Primordi]( "Primordi")
infotext introducing the Primordi characters
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![Primordi]( "Primordi")
infofictional habitat of Primordi character
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![Ritual Research]( "Ritual Research")
inforeflecting upon human's signs of presence
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![Ritual Research]( "Ritual Research")
infounlearning how to write
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![Primordial Clepsydra]( "Primordial Clepsydra")
infoin the middle of a role-play game
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![Le Memorie]( "Le Memorie")
infoseries of diaries written over 8 years
Johannes Equizi is a cross-disciplinary artist interested in questioning and re-imagining how humans inhabit environments and come together as a society.
With an architectural background, his world-building practice combines storytelling, architectural installations and role-play games to create counter narratives and speculate on alternative forms of co-existence grounded in solidarity. His research focuses on post-capitalistic architectures, political models and unconventional dwelling practices where social life within a territory is considered in ways other than hierarchical.
What drives Johannes is a need to reflect collectively on how things could be otherwise.
And hopefully turning these into tangible actions.
Websites
Personal website
johannesequizi.com/Issuu account
issuu.com/JohannesEquiziPangaea Collective website
pangaea.hotglue.me/Publication personal diaries
www.instagram.com/le_memorie_/Social media
Member of Artists’ Initiative/Collective/Incubator
Pangaea Collective, Liquid Dependencies, Raise Your Voice
Curriculum vitae
Education
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2024 - 2024Raise Your Voice
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2023 - 2023Trust In Play European School of Urban Game Design
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2022 - 2022Liquid Dependencies Framer Framed
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2019 - 2021MA Interior Architecture Den Haag, Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten diploma
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2015 - 2019BA Architecture Università Degli Studi di Firenze diploma
exhibitions
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2024DIHAN’23 No #6 Antiquariaat Berger & De Vries Groningen, Netherlands During this experimental performance night I presented the work 'The Roof we made', a performance that addresses the relationship between right to housing, DIY and mutual-aid. www.instagram.com/p/C3ijZGfNmqg/ Group
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2024FUORI TUTTO Personal Studiospace The Hague, Netherlands Born from a need of “putting everything out”, FUORI TUTTO is an open studio in which I presented drawings, material experiments, writings and sculptures that I have never shown before. Such event was also the occasion to present 'Patatrac - have you also become a we?', a publication that I realised together with friend and artist Elisa Piazzi www.instagram.com/p/C6LbKCqoIfL/ Duo
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2023Reinventing the Wheel Cycloon The Hague, Netherlands Group
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2023Dowsing across Fields LAB23 The Hague, Netherlands This on-going research investigates how scientific logics and privatisation threaten informal practices dealing with water. By focusing on the role of the dowser - a person able to find underground water by using unconventional methods - I researched how their role changed across time in different social environments. I perceive the dowser as an archetypal figure crucial for making water accessible and for the development of human settlements. Is today's dominant scientific thinking threatening their survival? Is their knowledge changing the way water is perceived and shared? The controversy around the dowser’s practice puts into conversation different beliefs, economies, politics and knowledge. The multimedia installation consists of a video, a performance, sculptures and a series of poems and of drawings. Duo
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2023As Common as Well The Grey Space in the Middle The Hague, Netherlands This solo exhibition took place at the art venue "The Grey Space in the Middle" in The Hague in occasion of the event Hoogtij #75, in December 2023. The work displayed is the continuation of the research project titled ‘Dowsing across Fields’, an ongoing investigation into how scientific logics and privatisation pose a threat to informal practices related to water. By examining the figure of the dowser – an individual capable of locating underground water using unconventional methods like forked twigs or pendulums – I explored how the dowser’s role has evolved over time within various social contexts. The dowser is seen as an archetypal practitioner essential for making water accessible by creating wells, thereby influencing the transformation of human settlements. The current focus of the research centres on the ways in which communities interact with wells and water infrastructure. It seeks to understand how power structures and collective responsibility handle a common, limited resource. The research also questions whether the prevailing scientific paradigm today poses a threat to the survival of dowsers. These inquiries foster discussions that bridge different economic, political, and belief systems. Can this controversy lead to new possibilities where humans perceive and share water in a more equitable and self-sustaining manner? The multimedia installation consists of some brick sculptures, a video and a series of poems and drawings. A performance took place consisting of pulling several times the rope from the wells alternated by the reading a poem. thegreyspace.net/program/1-12-2023-as-common-as-well/ Solo
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2023Unknown Sources CorrectionVille#3 Festival Vaals, Netherlands To which extend do we question the map maker's tools for the maps we use? A map made by a dowser that used a wooden stick to map underground water streams, is not a conventional method. But what are conventional mapping methods? And, if the wooden stick was the only tool to make maps in the Middle Ages, when and by what was it replaced? This expedition, guided by cross-disciplinary artist Johannes Equizi, is not about questioning if a dowser makes thruthfull maps, but about investigating the 'thruthfullness' of map making methods. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://cartopology.institute/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/programCV03_24juli.pdf
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2022Livingscapes (part of Lena Longefay's show "Silent Meetings and Loud Breaks") Stroom The Hague, Netherlands During 'The Try-out Gallery', organised by artist Lena Longefay, I exhibited Livingscapes. This ongoing research-project explores the process of translation between an architectural content and its forms of representation and realisation. The installation is made of clusters of various paper formats hanging from the ceiling through different ropes. By experimenting with several techniques, the pieces express imaginary architectures, intimate landscapes and systems of spatial representation. I call these ‘Livingscapes’ since they relate with built environments dwelled by imaginary communities and memories of places of my childhood. www.stroom.nl/activiteiten/kleine_presentatie.php?kt_id=6401694 Group
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2021As Tangible Horizons Third Space Helsinki, Finland In “As tangible horizons”, my first solo exhibition, I focused on the ways an audience could be involved into spatial narratives and be stimulated to imagine different lifestyle scenarios. In the exhibition, visitors could interact with the installation made out of drawings, models, writings and tools and through them start outlining their own stories. www.th1rdspac3.com/as-tangible-horizons.html Solo
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2021Nature, Melancholy in the Anthropocene Our Lady of the Assumption Church Voorburg, Netherlands “Nature, Melancholy in the Anthropocene” is a group exhibition offering a synthesis of socio-political challenges of the Anthropocene through artistic imaginations and inspired by Lieven de Cauters publication, ‘Ending the Anthropocene.’ Together with other visual artists, I have been invited to explore new ways of cohabitation, symbiosis with nature, and with one another, through existing and new works. In a time in which our current living patterns are reaching their limits, their works call us to end the time of extraction by questioning the current system and offering a glimpse into a better tomorrow. Their results build bridges of understanding and express the desire to change a world that often seems unchangeable for the individual. thespectrum.space/melancholy.html Group
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2021Cultivating Relational Spaces KABK Royal Academy of Art, The Hague The Hague, Netherlands “Cultivating Relational Spaces” is a group exhibition of the graduating students of the MA Interior Architecture of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. There I presented my ongoing project Primordi, the first chapter of a parallel fictional society inhabiting the network of marginal spaces. By sharing and overlapping skills, scraps and knowledge, the Primordi characters create an independent existence based on mutual aid and collective emancipation. graduation2021.kabk.nl/students/johannes-equizi Group
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2021Raw Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam, Netherlands The exhibition “Raw” shows processes of design art and architecture projects aimed at recently graduated Master's students. These mostly abstract works can be seen as incomplete, but they mark crucial points in the project's development. The material is therefore presented as a collection of standalone works. Such group exhibition tries to uncover the hidden creative acts and broaden the ongoing investigation. In this way, the attempt is to enters into a dialogue with a wide audience in which the two sides of 'design' are discussed: the complete final image and the crucial process, which together have shaped the current reality of the modern city. gallery3byyou.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/activiteiten/raw Group
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2019Design Chewing TENT Rotterdam, Netherlands Together with the INSIDE students and REFUNC, we built a 'design reflection space' for visitors in the hall of TENT during the festival “Design Chewing”. The installation - consisted of a construction of folding chairs and a movable, rotating wheel, equipped with a camera - provided an opportunity for reflection on design and encouraged dialogue between visitors about themes such as 'the sense and nonsense of design festivals'. www.designchewing.nl/reflectie Group
Projects
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2024
The Roof we made The Hague, Netherlands My interest in self-constructions began when, as a kid, I was building tree-houses in the fields around my house. In secondary school a great teacher taught me how to do technical drawings. I guess my hands and eyes led me to studying architecture. Reading Colin Ward’s book “Architettura del dissenso” was a big drift in my path. Whenever I could, I traveled to see how differently people come together through the way they dwell places. If I ended up making art projects it’s because I'm unsatisfied with how architecture is practiced today. I decided to approach it from artistic and speculative standpoints, with a focus on people’s emancipation. With the work “The roof we made” I start a research-trajectory that explores the relationship between housing rights, DIY architecture and bottom-up/mutual-aid practices. By doing this, I feel I also revisit bits of my past.
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2023
Dowsing across fields The Hague / Florence, Netherlands johannesequizi.com/dowsingacrossfields/ Interested in how water-control sets daily routines and geopolitical equilibriums, this research, structured in 4 episodes, investigates the relationship between community, water and its infrastructure. What kind of political, social and economical values define the perception of water and rule its distribution? By counterposing different systems of beliefs, values and logics, the project aims at stimulating awareness by speculating on new models for sharing such a limited common resource. 1st episode focuses on the controversial figure of the dowser, a person capable of sensing water underneath the ground through unconventional methods. This research became a multimedia installation. 2nd episode consists in the collaboration with a Dutch dowser to designed a storytelling walk for the event CorrectionVille#3. The walk formed a common ground for collective reflection. 3rd episode focused on how corporations and local communities take care of wells and the water infrastructure. The research materialised into a spatial installation and a performance sheds light on how water is differently treated by people when their relationship is grounded in daily fatigue, scarcity and collective care. 4th episode will be a Larp game in which, as a round-table meeting, players will take decisions related to water crises. By embodying different characters, participants will discuss on how to share water in more equitable and self-sustaining manners.
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2022
Where the Ink starts Royal Academy of Art The Hague The Hague, Netherlands johannesequizi.com/where-the-ink/ Realised in collaboration with artist and game designer Jana Romanova, this project is a short live-action roleplaying game(LARP)about artist’s relationships with their creativity in the situation of time and daily life pressure. The game begins with a group of writers squatting their studio space and having to finish their script before a deadline set by Spark Press, a famous publishing house. To be published by Spark Press is the right chance for the writers to gain income and move out from the studio. The twist of this game lies in the fact that every writer is played by two people. A participant may become either a writer or writer’s creativity. Both of them will need to find a way to work with each other to finish a written piece on time. By looking at creativity as a separate entity with its own will and mysteries, this game invites participants to reflect on how to deal with their own creativity and with fellows who are in a similar situation of daily life crisis. In many ways, this game is about finding peace with your own mind in the situation of pressure that every creative person goes through on a daily basis. The game has been played by MA students of Kabk.
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2022
Livingscapes The Hague, Netherlands johannesequizi.com/livingscapes/ Livingscapes is an ongoing research-project - currently consisting of a spatial installation and a performance - in which I explore the process of translation between an architectural content and its forms of representation and realization. The installation is made of clusters of various paper formats hanging from the ceiling through different ropes. By experimenting with several techniques, the pieces express imaginary architectures, intimate landscapes and systems of spatial representation. I call these ‘Livingscapes’ since they relate with built environments dwelled by imaginary communities and memories of places of my childhood. The performance 'One night house' is inspired by self-construction and vernacular practices in the architectural world and consists of a construction of a fictional house. This is built together with a few performers/friends by combining different materials, techniques and tools with a DIY approach.
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2022
Writing-Welding The Hague, Netherlands Lately I started researching and making sense of the acts of writing and welding within my practice. What do these crafts and mediums mean in my work, especially related to my past? Do they both share some affinities or contradictions? Can they communicate any other meaning than themselves as acts, just by being present? In this early stage I am researching these and experimenting by just practicing. Somehow welding and writing resonate as a therapeutic practice for me, as a way to put separate pieces together through an organic continuity, a materialization of thoughts and emotions through similar hand movements. I am investigating these acts to understand better their role and to gain more agency of their use within my work.
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2022
As Tangible Horizons Third Space Helsinki, Finland johannesequizi.com/astangiblehorizons/ How does a story line come to exist? What if the thresholds between the characters inside and outside the story start to blur? Does the making and remaking of living environments pass through the overlap of individual microcosms? “As tangible horizons”, a side project of ongoing project Primordi, is an interactive installation in which visitors could make use of tools and navigate in the space as if it would be in an eternal moment of becoming something else. The above questions guided my spatial research towards the creation of a micro-macro landscape facilitating the swap of perspectives between creature and creator, an in-between dimension where people could outline and craft their and others spatial narratives.
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2021
Primordi Royal Academy of Art The Hague The Hague, Netherlands johannesequizi.com/primordi/ In this on-going project I imagined how 5 characters, belonging to a speculative society called “Primordi”, would inhabit the planet. I imagined and materialized their stories, professions, interdependencies and values through a repertoire of writings, drawings, performances, objects and tools. The installation's pieces could be therefore looked at backwards and frontwards: realized by the characters in order to present themselves. Embodying multi-layers of meanings and storylines they continuously unfold and reveal new perspectives upon notions such as marginality, independence and mutual aid.
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2020
Rituals Research Royal Academy of Art The Hague The Hague, Netherlands johannesequizi.com/rituals-research/ Together with J. Rousselot and E. Piazzi, we researched what rituals could be, especially as acts of togetherness, care and transition. The shared experience of inventing and participating in rituals became an occasion to dig into personal inquiries and to explore the process of collective creation. We designed and curated every happening with the experience gained from the previous ones; in this way each of us followed a personal research-thread and at the same time came across the other ones. Starting from a peer-to-peer equal position, such playful research helped us unfolding new understandings and meanings of what actually collective gestures could potentially be and generate.
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2020
Primordial Clepsydra Royal Academy of Art The Hague The Hague, Netherlands johannesequizi.com/primordial-clepsydra/ This project investigates the global issue of rural villages abandonment and tries to understand how speculative scenarios and role-play games could be intertwined to open up new perspectives about collective participation, mutual support and rural peripherality. Could the act of blurring the thresholds between life and game and between past, present and future facilitate the twist of social relations within a territory? With “Primordial Clepsydra” I imagined an alternative framework to share knowledge, skills and acts of care between the inhabitants of a rural village in South Albania. I experiment such scenario through a role-play game event taken place in The Hague.
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2019
2A Interzone Royal Academy of Art The Hague The Hague, Netherlands johannesequizi.com/2a-interzone/ This on-site project was an experimental investigation of an abandoned area in The Hague which I named “2A Interzone”. To become familiar with it, I spent time roaming there, collecting traces, writing impressions and sharing talks with passengers, playing with materials and objects found there. I started a written/visual report and delved into questions regarding the relationship between space and the meanings of care, freedom and ownership. The established interaction between my presence, the abandoned area and its social surrounding progressively shaped the research. Acting as a facilitator, I ended up inviting local residents to participate and self-organize activities to rise collective awareness about the nature and the unforeseen spatial qualities of such area.
International exchanges/Residencies
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2021
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2018
Publications
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2024Patatrac - Have you also become a we? Book Self Published Pangaea Collective - Johannes Equizi & Elisa Piazzi The Hague, Netherlands An ongoing and dialogical research on collectivity in the field of art, design and architecture.
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2022Ricordi Ancora Book Magazine NOIA magazine Milan, Italy www.instagram.com/noia.magazine/ "Ricordi Ancora" is a poem typewritten on an aluminium foil. It has been published on NOIA magazine Issue 02 whose topic was 'reassemblage'.
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2021Diario d'Esodo - emancipatory gestures of imagination Book Self Published Johannes Equizi The Hague, Netherlands issuu.com/johannesequizi/docs/johannes_equizi_diario_d_esodo_ma_thesis_def “Diario d'Esodo” (Exodus Diary) is an investigation upon the contemporary social and spatial tissue and the potentialities contained in the interstices of its mesh. The research-journey unfolds from the analysis of the capitalistic/authoritarian paradigms of spatial and social realms towards the analysis of the state of exception as a possible spatiality for collective emancipation. Such publication is an attempt to cross-over theories and visions of thinkers like M. Foucault, L. De Cauter, H. Bey, G. Clément and C. Ward as a base to critically build alternative realities. Moreover, writing this helped me to create a theoretical framework to contextualize the Primordi project.
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2019Architecture of the Abandonment - Outskirts rehab? Book Self Published Johannes Equizi Florence, Italy issuu.com/johannesequizi/docs/johannes_equizi_architecture_of_the_abandonment “Architecture of the Abandonment” is a research into the socio/spatial potentialities of what is marginal in the architecture realm. It starts as a repertoire of experiences, architectural projects and socio-political cases related to themes such as nomadic architecture, industrial archaeology, DIY and bottom-up participative processes. The intent was to investigate and reformulate them to rethink an alternative way for humans to inhabit and shape the built environment. At its end, I chose to analyse a siderurgic centre as possible site where to envision this experimental architectural scenario.
reviews
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2023Hoogtij #75 Blog/Vlog Niels Post - Trendbeheer The Hague, Netherlands trendbeheer.com/2023/12/04/hoogtij-75/
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2021
Awards and grants
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2023PRO Invest Stroom Den Haag The Hague, Netherlands
Secondary art-related activities
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2022 - --Freelancer technician/hard handler On-going
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2019 - --Freelancer architect On-going
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2019 - --Freelancer designer On-going