She works and lives in a converted sea container that she moves to another location with every new assignment. Marlies Vermeulen spent months living on the Groene Loper, at the top of the Frankenstraat. She was asked to map out and connect the three neighbourhoods along the stretch of green. The districts concerned were the common Witte Vrouwenveld, the fancier Scharn and the less flourishing Wijckerpoort-Noord.
When doing something like this, visual artist Vermeulen takes no chances. Her sea container was there for months. The Belgian native, born in Kortrijk, talked to the locals, discovered how they viewed their neighbourhood, how they viewed the Groene Loper development, and how they use that space in their everyday lives. “I try to expose this invisible layer, and that requires time.”
Ambiguity
Vermeulen – who studied architecture - is one of the two artists doing a PhD at the UM, the other is Antye Guenther. Doing a PhD in the arts has been possible since this academic year with the founding of Merian, a network of three institutes: the UM, Zuyd Hogeschool, and the Jan van Eyck Academie. Merian means: Maastricht Experimental Research In and through the Arts Network.
The UM changed its PhD regulations especially. It is now possible to get a PhD title with an artistic end product. This has been an option in other countries for quite some time, but also at the universities of Leiden, Groningen and Amsterdam. Although Maastricht has its own style, says Ruth Benschop, lector of Autonomy and the Public Sphere of the Arts at Zuyd Hogeschool.
“The candidates – mid-career – come with their own ideas for the research question, but we want it to be problem-based, regional and methodologically innovating as much as possible.” The methodology is in the making, says Christoph Rausch, associate professor at University College and – with Benschop – one of the founders of Merian. “Experience is the best teacher. In all this, they are assisted by at least two supervisors, one from the UM and one from Zuyd or otherwise Jan van Eyck.”
Problem-based doesn’t mean that the research must be useful or provide a solution, says Benschop. “The added value of art is that it can summon up uncomfortable questions or expose a certain ambiguity. Look at the contemporary art about COVID-19. It doesn’t solve the health crisis, but it says something about how we view the pandemic, how we are living at this moment.”
Infectious diseases
Vermeulen does what she herself refers to as cartopology – a contraction of cartography and anthropology. In her PhD research, she has set up a definition and investigates the common ground and interfaces with other scientific disciplines. She also designs teaching material, for various target groups such as researchers, civil servants and students. She will be judged on that at the end of the journey, but there will also be a book.
She is a PhD student for one and a half days per week and at the same time she runs her own business, but you can’t separate the two. “The projects that I execute in my work, will also be represented in my research. It is all about the question: how can you become a good cartopologist? And how can you substantiate that?”
A couple of those projects are about the border regions. Together with Klasien Horstman, professor of Philosophy of Public Health Care, she is working on the research of Bacteria and Borders. They received the Mingler Scholarship worth 10 thousand euro for this; an award from the Akademie van Kunsten and De Jonge Akademie, both part of the KNAW. An award that Guenther, the other PhD student, also received.
In Bacteria and Borders, Vermeulen and Horstman will carry out ethnographic and statistical research into passenger travel, vaccination patterns and the spreading of infectious diseases in the border region. The various COVID-19 measures taken by countries will also be looked at, which is nowhere as visible as it is on national borders.
A related project by Vermeulen, together with Zuyd, is called Border Encyclopaedia. Borders are lines on a map, she says, but in the meantime the impact on daily life is great. Vermeulen collected ‘border experiences’ from residents in order to create “a richer cartographic image of the border”.