THE GRAND
DOMESTIC REVOLUTION
THE GRAND
DOMESTIC REVOLUTION
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.
With Phil Collins, Michèle Faguet and Tamar Guimarães
31 October 2010, 14.00-18.00
GDR apartment, Bemuurde Weerd oz 18b
Home Cinema at Apartment 18b
'Home Cinema' is one GDR's regular activities where the screening of films, that touch upon different aspects of domesticity, neighbourhood organisation, urban planning and alternative politics take place. On the occasion of GDR GOES ON, films that deal with domestic labour issues in the context of a global chain of labour economy will be screened in the intimate and informal environment of the GDR apartment. With screenings of ‘Soy Mi Madre’ (2008) by Berlin-based artist Phil Collins and ‘Canoas’ (2010) by Copenhagen-based artist Tamar Guimarães? in conversation with curator Michèle Faguet?, we hope to explore the aesthetic and structural affects of architecture, popular culture and the ways in which they influence our imaginings and realities of the experience of domestic service work.
Can such aesthetic investigations offer ways to rethink the potential agency of actors within these realms? Domestic workers and labour union organisers in the Netherlands are invited to join the post-screening discussion to bring to light local experiences and issues.
Screening of 'Asuncion
'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.
GDR Diary 2: Read-In for the possibility of community
Last Friday I participated in the Read-In and the group addressed several important issues from this experience in the feedback session after “reading-in”: the almost instant legitimization of the reading group when referred to as an artistic project, having as its consequence the access to an otherwise unvisitable private space; the legitimacy and ethical implications of bringing a preselected text into our host’s house versus following the host’s own suggestion, albeit with the risk of unexpectedly transforming a speculative action into the provision of a social service; the process of reading a text (its collective translation, interpretation and discussion) as a mediator of the interaction between hosts and visitors, and a subtle articulator of class, gender and ethnicity positions; photographic documentation that has archival intentions versus its possible interpretation as one of observation or surveillance and so on.
The search for community in Yang’s work is connected to a sense of place that is constructed by an individual experience struggling with abstract parameters. In this sense it is imaginary, but not utopian, and is best described through the notion of a “community of absence” or “negative community,” which is characterized by a lack or a denial of any sense of belonging. Einarsson and Yang use concepts of a dystopian, imaginary community in their work, which open up a space of potentiality. (…) The diversity and creativity of participation in experimental communities, the playful “care of the self” of informal communities, and the being-together of imaginary communities that build on the state of absence, correspond to a fragmented and agonistic public space. The concept of a “community” that refuses to function as a manipulative mass united by a common identity eventually implies the potential of resistance. (Nina Möntmann, “Transforming Communities”, 2007, pp. 50-1).
In “A Small Dictionary for Haegue Yang”, Doryun Chong (2008) also points to of the idea of community in Yang’s work. A community is an entity — a concept — that can be empowering and potent, idealistic and utopian, dysfunctional and even destructive. Despite the generally positive social implications it holds, the idea of community is at once complex and oversimplistic, strong and fragile. (…) Yang interprets what she calls the “community of absence” as a “community of the plural that shares nothing but ongoing self-examination and a strange kind of optimism”. Her interpretation is partly inspired by discussions between Maurice Blanchot and Jean-Luc Nancy around Georges Bataille, specifically in Nancy’s La communauté desoeuvré and Blanchot’s La communauté inavouable. Nancy’s reading of Bataille is critically indebted to Blanchot’s notion of désoeuvrement (…). Through this notion, both thinkers try to grasp Bataille’s concept of a community that does not rely on “work”, which is central to the idea of communism and necessarily defines human beings as producers. (…) It is in this light that Blanchot and Nancy try to steer “community” away from “work” and toward “inoperative” “nonwork” that must remain “unavowable” – that is, the community that refuses to acknowledge itself. Both see that when the community is recognized as such, it ceases to be. (pp. 143-4)
24 May 2010, 23.29 — posted by Mafalda
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