THE GRAND
DOMESTIC REVOLUTION

THE GRAND
DOMESTIC REVOLUTION

USER'S MANUAL

USER'S MANUAL

‘The Grand Domestic Revolution—User’s Manual’ (GDR) investigates the domestic space and its (changing) use through a variety of methods and disciplines, traversing the fields of art, design, architecture, urban planning, activism and theory. A number of artists and other practitioners contribute to this endeavour. Residents from 2009-2011 include Sepake Angiama, Paul Elliman, and Doris Denekamp who utilized neighbourhood and online research to create prototypes and interventions around the theme of (Green) Cooperativsm. Wietske Maas and Travis Meinolf experimented with Home Production; while 'interor' infrastuctural interventions for the furniture, library and hallways were created by ifau & Jesko Fezer, Mirjam Thomann and Graziela Kunsch. Current themes and residents from February–October 2011 include Kyohei Sakaguchi and Kateřina Šedá who will each investigate forms of usership in architectures; home and housing rights with Maria Pask and Nazima Kadir; the question of invisible and domestic labour taken up by Werker Magazine; Agency will continue its deliberations on copyright issues of domestic THINGS (gardens and textiles); and keywords in relations to food service work will be workshopped with Xu Tan. Parallel to this, the Read-in activity continues. Initiated by artist Annette Krauss and theatre maker, Read-in is an open reading group inhabiting a different neighbour’s home for every session.

LIBRARY

LIBRARY

The GDR library constitutes the backbone of our ongoing ‘living research’ and thus grows over time. The library offers points of engagement with the project and consists of different research materials such as books, articles, images and DVDs (artist’s video, films) that are available for viewing when visiting the apartment. The first installment was done by the GDR team and was later adapted by Sao Paulo-based artist Graziela Kunsch who suggested that the GDR team create thematic selections.

APARTMENT 18B

APARTMENT 18B

'The Grand Domestic Revolution-User's Manual' is a long-term project developed as Casco’s contribution to 'Utrecht Manifest: Biennial for Social Design'. The project deals with the evolutionary and collaborative process of “living” research in the contemporary domestic and private sphere – particularly in relation to the spatial imagining (or the built environment). It aims at re-articulating while exercising the notions of the social, the public and, eventually, the commons.

TOWN MEETINGS

TOWN MEETINGS has its genealogy in past regular GDR events from 2009–2010. These include Home Cinema, where the screening of films that touch upon different aspects of domesticity, neighbourhood organisation, urban planning and alternative politics, take place; Thursday Night Supper, occasions for cooking, eating and discussion with various guests, and the midterm manifestation GDR GOES ON which consisted of a series of events over four days in domestic, private, and public spaces in Utrecht.

IN AFFINITY

IN AFFINITY

Since August 2010, the GDR team have undertaken research in order to connect with the local neighbourhood on questions relating to peoples’ social conditions and material environments. Questionnaires, interviews, and conversations are the methods used to explore the themes and problems addressed in GDR, such as self-organised governance, co-operative living, and spatial organisation in and from the domestic sphere.

SEARCH

CHECK IN on weaving, gifting and craftivism

Hosted by Travis Meinolf and Kirsty Robertson
Friday 29 October 2010, 19.00-21.00
De Katoen Fabriek, Oudegracht, 382

De Katoen Fabriek

Self proclaimed ‘action weaver’ Travis Meinolf? (Berlin) hosts a weaving workshop as a continuation of his GDR residency entitled Cottage Industry: Making Accommodations, while art historian and researcher Kirsty Robertson? (London, Ontario) shares her knowledge through a conversation on the links between textiles, contemporary activism and networked technologies. Practised through experimental forms of exchange, modes of pleasurable production and appropriations of its stereotyped role as a conservative domestic activity, textiles are ripe with problems and potentials as subversive politicised action. Through weaving, talking and reflecting, Travis and Kirsty will contextualise the practice of ‘textiles as action’ with a discussion about its relationship to globalisation and alternative economies.

Weaving workshop

CHECK IN is a series of temporary communal occasions where key issues emerging from GDR research are discussed and re-articulated in close relation to specific domestic spaces in Utrecht, including the GDR apartment, the Rietveld Schröderhuis (RSH) and the house next door to the RSH. Each occasion highlights selected ongoing activities of GDR that create transgressive instances through performing their actions at the boundaries of private and public space. Hosted by past and future GDR residents/researchers and guests comprising artists, theorists, activists and other practitioners, the CHECK INs challenge perceptions of everyday domestic activities as diminutive, isolated and unimportant work; but also go beyond romanticised notions of this sphere. The event, the spaces and routes between them also ‘speak to’ and inform each occasion. 

The term ‘check in’ functions here as a way to touch base, reflect and take stock of the GDR processes and progress; as well as playing with its meaning of taking up temporary residency in, for example, a hotel.

CHECK IN is organised with the support of Dutch Design Double and Centraal Museum.

'The Grand Domestic Revolution GOES ON' is a midway manifestation of 'User's Manual: The Grand Domestic Revolution' (GDR), Casco's long term 'living research' project developed in partnership with Utrecht Manifest: Biennial for Social Design.

Related:

NOTES

THE FEMALE FACTOR
Working (Part-Time) in the 21st Century


UTRECHT, NETHERLANDS — Remco Vermaire is ambitious and, at 37, the youngest partner in his law firm. His banker clients expect him on call constantly — except on Fridays, when he looks after his two children.

Fourteen of the 33 lawyers in Mr. Vermaire’s firm work part time, as do many of their high-powered spouses. Some clients work part time, too.

“Working four days a week is now the rule rather than the exception among my friends,” said Mr. Vermaire, the first man in his firm to take a “daddy day” in 2006. Within a year, all the other male lawyers with small children had followed suit.

For reasons that blend tradition and modernity, three in four working Dutch women work part time. Female-dominated sectors like health and education operate almost entirely on job-sharing as even childless women and mothers of grown children trade income for time off. That has exacted an enduring price on women’s financial independence.

But in just a few years, part-time work has ceased being the prerogative of woman with little career ambition, and become a powerful tool to attract and retain talent — male and female — in a competitive Dutch labor market. READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

5 January 2011, 11.20 — posted by Casco


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