THE GRAND
DOMESTIC REVOLUTION

THE GRAND
DOMESTIC REVOLUTION

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

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

'RUE DAGUERRE IN 2005'

Agnès Varda
2005
film 23 min
courtesy CINÉ TAMARIS

We immediately thought of our own neighbours when viewing the DVD extra RUE DAGUERRE IN 2005, in which French filmmaker Agnès Varda revisits the street where she grew up and had, thirty years earlier, made the subject of her documentary film Daguerréotypes.

installation view at Volksbuurt Museum

Recounting the history of the Parisian street that once provided any kind of service one needed within a few blocks, Varda assembles a collage of shopkeepers past and present of which only a few, such as the grocer, remain. An interesting moment takes place when Varda recites to her hairdresser an old complaint letter about the film written by members of the same neighbourhood. In this one reflexive scene, the subjects of representation, objectification and homage come together. We also see how quirky the filmmaker herself is and imagine how she, herself, may have blended in with the charms of the street she was filming. Could the GDR have been that strange ‘shop’ in your district that you watched with a distanced affection?

installation view at Volksbuurt Museum

Locations: Volksbuurt Museum
Themes: Domestic Relations

All photos by Emilio Moreno unless stated otherwise

Related:

NOTES

Dymaxion Sleep

Dymaxion Sleep

Dymaxion Sleep is a structure of nets suspended over a field of aromatic plants. Rather than walking through the garden, visitors lie on top of it, translating the typically solitary experience of a garden into a public event. The structure that holds the nets is an unfolded icosahedron, formed of twenty steel triangles. Each triangle is large enough to support a single outstretched body, an intertwined pair, or a pileup of people. The structure is anchored to a timber footing which traces the diagram of the icosahedron on the soil. Mints, lemon geranium, lavender and fennel are planted below, mimicking the structure's topography and defining scented territories in which to relax.



The form of each layer of this double surface, planting and nets, is based on Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion World Map. If Fuller's Map reconfigured standard political representations of the world by refusing to define a fixed orientation, Dymaxion Sleep sets up a surface on which to lounge in undefined ways. Dymaxion Sleep takes its name from the title of a 1943 Time magazine article which describes Fuller’s regimen of polyphasic sleep - thirty minutes asleep, followed by six waking hours - a reconfiguration he used to dynamically maximize his body’s productivity. Our Dymaxion Sleep subverts Fuller’s focus on efficiency and work and instead maximizes the garden as a space for pleasure and dreams.

Collaborator
Walter Blackwell
Architect: Jane Hutton & Adrian Blackwell
Years of exhibition: 2009, 2010, 2011

1 June 2011, 11.59 — posted by Casco


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