Mirosław Bałka, Fire Place, 1986
This work was made by Mirosław Bałka, when he was living and working in his studio and former childhood home in Otwock, Poland. Concerned with the environments that humans construct for themselves and the materials and objects to which we give meaning, the sculpture depicts a body-like figure that host within itself a fireplace. Within the opening of the fireplace sits a single naked light bulb, which fills the void with heat and light from a tungsten filament. Pasted to the outer surface of the bricks are torn and layered newspaper clippings of recent obituaries that are collected by the artist at the time and place of the work’s exhibition. The carpet establishes a boundary to the installation, meant to be situated on the floor without any barriers, a domestic threshold that is reinforced by the carefully placed pair of cement shoes that sit at its edge. Despite some elements that indicate a human presence, the carpet gives off a strong sense of absence, of emptiness. The obituaries represent the memory, completing the traditional representation of the hearth that always awaits and protects. Nevertheless, the work does not aspire to create an idyllic representation as it is surrounded by a feeling of estrangement, of solitude and uncertainty.
Keywords: absence, uncertainty, mobility, memory
#mirosławbałka #hafh #research #archive #contemporaryart #architecture #home #design #exhibitions #artproject #artcurator #whatishome #arthistory #documentingspace
Bill Viola, Catherine’s Room, 2001
This video work is one of a group of pieces known as 'The Passions' which explores human emotions, inspired by early European devotional paintings. Specifically, Catherine’s Room draws a parallel with a predella by Andrea di Bartolo, presenting scenes from the life of St Catherine. The five screens show different times of the day and different daily actions performed by the female protagonist. In each scene, the tree outside the window is shown at different stages of its annual cycle, putting the woman's routine in the larger context of the cycles of nature. Light is used to set the time of the action but also to charge the everyday life with more intense and dramatic tones. The cycle is a more intimate work as opposed to Viola's monumental projects but it still tackles major universal topics as birth, death and regeneration. The house, archetypal symbol that crosses time and space, is the perfect context to bring together the micro- and macro-history, albeit presenting a very much culturally connoted representation.
Keywords: domesticity, routine, history
#billviola #videoart #hafh #research #archive #contemporaryart #architecture #home #design #exhibitions #artproject #artcurator #whatishome #arthistory #documentingspace
Project Row Houses, 1993 - ongoing
@projectrowhouses is a social sculpture, a neighborhood-based community platform located in Houston (Texas). The project was initiated by Rick Lowe, James Bettison, Bert Long, Jr., Jesse Lott, Floyd Newsum, Bert Samples, and George Smith in 1993 with the aim to empower people of the African American community through engagement, art, & direct action. Some houses serve as studios for visiting artists or exhibition galleries. A row behind the art studio houses single mothers within the framework of the Young Mothers Residential Program, initiated by Deborah Grotfeldt in 1996 to give single mothers one year of housing in order to allow them to finish their education and organize themselves. This program is particularly significant as it highlights how Project Row puts housing needs as the core of their discourse, encouraging art to be at the service of the community as a positive and creative force and really tackling the themes of cultural identity and art's impact on the urban landscape. Art thus manages not to become an instrument of gentrification - as it often happens with similar project.
Project Row Houses is a valuable and important example of participation and useful art. The house maintains its main function of place-making, protecting and creating a safe space for living and working.
Keywords: engagement, participation, politics
#projectrowhouses #hafh #research #archive #contemporaryart #architecture #home #design #exhibitions #artproject #artcurator #whatishome #arthistory #documentingspace
// regram @ugolapietra
Ugo La Pietra, Immersione Uomouovosfera, 1968
Designed as a place of isolation and decompression, diving can be here understood as an allusion to two opposing attitudes that were present in those years in the behavior of many: adhering to the transformative movements of society or withdraw. A simplification of the relationship between the individual and the environment. The isolation fostered by these environments should induce a series of sensory and symbolic operations which, on the one hand, make explicit the crisis of placing oneself within society and on the other the potential for the intervention of the form in the breaking of pre-established balances. Nevertheless, once entered the person is separates from the interaction with the surroundings, thus impeding any sort of action. The result is a crisis between the intention and reality, between meaning and agency. But it is precisely this ambiguity that makes this space a place of critical and fantastic self-reflection.
Keywords: isolation, shelf, radical design
#ugolapietra #radicaldesign #hafh #research #archive #contemporaryart #architecture #home #design #exhibitions #artproject #artcurator #whatishome #arthistory #documentingspace
Vito Acconci, Instant House, 1980
In order to fully manifest itself, Instant House has to be activated by the visitor by sitting on the swing at the center of the four panels lying on the floor. Pulleys attached to the swing raise the panels, becoming walls that enclose the individual. The interiors of the walls are plastered with American flags, but the person operating the work cannot see that the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union flag has also been raised, pasted on the exterior of the sculpture. While presenting itself as a playful act, this action actually define boundaries, sculpturally manifesting the myopia of isolationism. Seduce by a seemingly innocent piece of playground equipment, participants become, on one hand, stooges in the home they have essentially built, unaware of their complicity in spreading propaganda. For Acconci the house becomes a prison, in which we voluntarily lock ourselves up, conditioned by the messages of those politics that feed us with rage and fear in order to fragment the social fabric and create alienated and hostile citizens. An ambiguity that reveals itself in the overlapping of symbols and in the impossibility of always seeing everything as it is.
Keywords: propaganda, hostility, isolation, symbolism
#vitoacconci #instanthouse #hafh #research #archive #contemporaryart #architecture #home #design #exhibitions #artproject #artcurator #whatishome #arthistory #documentingspace
Tracey Emin, Tracey Emin C.V. Cunt Vernacular, 1997
As Emin narrates her story of trauma and abuse, mixed with pleasure and success, the video takes the viewer on a journey through the artist's home. The artist is not visibly present in person until the last frames when she appears curled up naked on the floor of her sitting-room at the feet of her mother. Together with Emin's handwritten CV, that pairs with the video, they constitute her self-portrait that unfolds through the various rooms, the furniture, the objects and the ornaments that inhabit the house. The house as a representation of the soul, lived, used, abused and consumed by others.
Keywords: body, family, domesticity, violence
#traceyemin #tatemodern #hafh #research #archive #contemporaryart #architecture #home #design #exhibitions #artproject #artcurator #whatishome #arthistory #documentingspace
