Kosmonaut
House, 2007. Wood, acrylic, 68 x70 x 27 cm.
Postwar
capitalism in the West has promoted its growth on the ideal of
house ownership (with recent
catastrophic financial effects) in a process of commodification of
necessities of life. Commodification of housing though, more than
being just a method of capital accumulation, resulted in the
reconceptualisation of public and private space. Pierre Bourdieu
describes a person’s existential relation to their position in
terms of the social status conferred by the appropriation/possession
of a particular extent of physical space: “Each agent may be
characterized by the place where he or she is situated more or less
permanently, that is, by her place of residence (those who are
“without hearth or home,” without “permanent residence” …
have almost no social existence—see the political status of the
homeless) … It is also characterized by the place it legally
occupies in space through properties (houses and apartments or
offices, land for cultivation or residential development, etc.) which
are more or less congesting … . It follows that the locus and the
place occupied by an agent in appropriated social space are excellent
indicators of his or her position in social space.
Nowadays,
in the wake of the recent housing crises which have subverted the
notion of housing as a consumer commodity,
co-housing and community projects emerge as answers to the “Housing
Question”. This shift towards collective solutions has been
addressed by artistic, architectural and curatorial initiatives that
over the past five decade have variously depicted and intervened into
this unevenly developing urban condition.
“Artistic
Practices: Housing as social agreement” is an ongoing
archive aiming to unfold a cartography of approaches by artists to
the notion of the house, investigate and challenge the ways in which
housing is not only imagined, but also effectuated
by artists. Furthermore intends to point out the ways in which
forms of cultural production can be reclaimed as tools with which to
design, defend and reinvent social space.
The
works featured in the archive are organized around four leitmotifs
:‘Housing
as utopia”, highlights the transformative, disruptive potential of
housing in the social imagination, as the first step to a radical
autonomy.“Housing as uneven development “raises
the issues
of
inequalities in the distribution of the right to housing. “Housing
as dystopic construction” illustrated by a series of projects that
explore the conflicts and correlations between the represented space
of and the social and political action.
“Housing
as community building” explores the role of artist as social
designer, the
statial
practices of commons, and arts based revitalization of
under-resourced urban areas.
Curated
by Giorgos Papadatos & Sofia Dona
Featured
works byRebecca
Agnes /
Jonas Dahlberg / Giorgos
Gyparakis / Tea Mäkipää / Artemis
Potamianou /
Kostis Velonis /
Erwin
Wurm /Angela Ferreira / Eugenio Tibaldi / Yiannis
Theodoropoulos /
Mona Vatamanu Florin
Tudor / Giorgos
Papadatos / Dorit
Margreiter / Errands
/ Taysir
Batniji/Kimsooja / Michael Rakowitz / Nicos Charalambidis / Róza
El-Hassan / Tudor
Bratu / Teddy Cruz / Raumlabor/Ahmet
Öğüt / Sofia Dona / Marjetica Potrč / Zafos Xagoraris / Rick
Lowe/ Project Row Houses
Parallel
to the workshop Co-housing practices/ Ιnventing
Prototypes for Athens
Hosted
by Greek Pavilion, Giardini.
26
October – 27
November 2016
15th
International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia
