Formalizing the informal: ’structures of feeling’ in the work of Jeanne van Heeswijk 

This blogpost is a result of the graduate seminar “Interfacing the (In)formal City” 2021

Rianne Riemens 

26 April 2021 

Formalizing the informal:
’structures of feeling’ in the work of Jeanne van Heeswijk 

Within the field of urban humanities, there is often an emphasis on local experiences in urban  environments, and the ways in which these experiences relate to developments at larger scales.  By focusing on local, ’informal’ experiences, the ‘formal’ can be reconsidered. But the terms  formal and informal can be used in different ways and change meaning accordingly. Through a  discussion of the work of artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, this blog questions how the formal/informal  terminology can be helpful to better understand the work of Van Heeswijk, by relating the term to  Raymond Williams’ ‘structures of feeling’.  

Jeanne van Heeswijk is a Dutch artist based in the city of Rotterdam, who aims to create and  diversify public spaces in projects that she initiates in the Netherlands and abroad. As her  biography explains, Van Heeswijks’ “long-scale community-embedded projects question art’s  autonomy by combining performative actions, discussions, and other forms of organizing and  pedagogy in order to assist communities to take control of their own futures” (Jeanne Works  2021). In her work, Jeanne van Heeswijk draws on artistic and social methods to engage with local  communities. In the way she approaches her research projects, she tries to make that what is  informal, tangible. By doing so, she engages in a process of formalizing in order to make  marginalized voices heard, and their stakes represented. 

It helps to understand the work of Van Heeswijk as a way of formalizing the informal, in which the  notion of formalizing should be understood as a process of becoming. But to understand this  process and Van Heeswijk’s methodology more specifically, the work of Raymond Williams can be  of value. The informal that Van Heeswijk engages with relates to what Williams describes as  ‘structures of feeling’. When separating the social from the personal realm, Williams writes that if  “the social is the fixed and explicit—the known relationships, institutions, formations, positions — all that is present and moving, all that escapes or seems to escape from the fixed and  the explicit and the known, is grasped and defined as the personal: this, here, now, alive, active,  ‘subjective’” (128). The social, for Williams, is thus that what is fixed and formal, and that what is  personal is everything that escapes that category, that what is still being shaped. In her work, Van  Heeswijk engages with this second, personal category. Yet, Williams argues, it would be a mistake  to fully reduce the social to that what is fixed. Because, for Williams, there is a kind of thinking that  is social and material, but not yet articulated to the point that it becomes formal. These “changes  of presence” are what Williams calls changes in “structures of feeling” (132). This concept, he  argues, entails “that we are concerned with meanings and values as they are actively lived and  felt, and the relations between these and formal or systematic beliefs are in practice variable  (including historically variable)” (132). The experiences that are lived and felt, and their relation to  formal beliefs are the focus of Van Heeswijk’s work. She not only maps such structures of feeling,  but also engages with them by formalizing lived experiences. 

The term structures of feeling gives a temporal dimension to the formal/informal: when the  informal becomes formalized, the categories of the informal and formal change. This is a constant  process. As Van Heeswijk acknowledges, it takes time to change the constellation of the formal. In  an interview, she elaborates on the importance of spending time with the local experts of a  project: “By creating something collectively, by doing and making, whether it is a building or a  loaf of bread, once you start producing again, it moves people from waiting into action. For me it  is a very important condition for all my projects: to co-produce change, to co-produce an  environment. And for that you need to work together and learn together and you basically just  need to spend time” (Viviers 2013). Indeed, the process of becoming active, becoming  producers, is not only a temporal, but also a spatial project. Producing things and taking up space  is also a way to formalize presence. 

Important in the work of Van Heeswijk is that the formal is not necessarily the ‘other’, something  that opposes the informal. The relation between the two is more complex. Van Heeswijk argues:  “Sometimes you have to work with policy makers or lawyers, urban designers and governments.  You have to find ways to package everything that you found in the process so that it can be  translated back to power” (Viviers 2013). In this sense, the formal represents a certain language or  discourse, an institutionalized form of processing, for which informal experiences need to be  ‘packaged’ in order to be understood. The informal and formal are perhaps then not opposites,  but different stages of a process. Van Heeswijk’s work makes it possible to study these processes,  articulate local structures of feeling, so that new ‘formations’ can be formed. 

References 

Jeanne Works. (2021) “About”. Retrieved from https://www.jeanneworks.net/about/ 

Viviers, A. (2013). “Stop waiting, start making: Lessons in liveability from Jeanne van Heeswijk.”  Design Indaba. http://www.designindaba.com/articles/interviews/stop-waiting-start-making lessons-liveability-jeanne-van-heeswijk 

Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and Literature. Oxford University Press.