The Survival Project

Looking at cities can give a special pleasure, however commonplace the sight may be. Like a piece of architecture, the city is a construction in space, but one of vast scale, a thing perceived only in the course of long spans of time. City design is therefore a temporal art, but it can rarely use the controlled and limited sequences of other temporal arts like music. On different occasions and for different people, the sequences are reversed, interrupted, abandoned, cut across. It is seen in all lights and all weathers.

At every instant, there is more than the eye can see, more than the ear can hear, a setting or a view waiting to be explored. Nothing is experienced by itself, but always in relations to its surroundings, the sequences of events leading up to it, the memory of past experiences.

Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City ( 1960)

The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the famine.

— John Mitchel, 1848

The road to revolution is long and arduous. We may have to go on an arduous march, during which we will have to chew the roots of plants once again.

— Rodong Sinmun, North Korean state newspaper, 2016

Your dogs and swine eat the food of men, and you do not make any restrictive arrangements. There are people dying from famine and you do not issue the stores of your granaries for them.

When people die, you say — It is not owing to me, it is owing to the year. In which way does this differ from stabbing a man and killing him and saying — It was not I, it was the weapon?

— Mencius,  4th century BCE

The Survival Project is a multi-disciplinary exploration of resilience during extreme times. Delving into experiences that sustained individuals and communities through upheaval, the project draws from oral histories, local knowledge, archival material and original artwork to present techniques and skills for coping with a range of crises situations. The Survival Project places the fundamental quest for survival within a larger historical context, to address issues of place and place-making, home and community, memory and change.

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