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Martha Rosler, Housing Is a Human Right, short animation produced by The Public Art Fund, “Messages to the Public,” 1989<\/p><\/div>\n
A place apart<\/h2>\n
Some artists have managed to seize onto public housing, both its real-life dimension and its troubled, degraded imaginary. They try to understand the multiple issues arising from this social reality and its representation, specifically when it comes to collective housing, empty lots, or the urban outskirts, which artists approach in as many ways as there are theoretical paradigms. And so the last three decades have seen a shift toward the participatory, perhaps signifying the return of social-mindedness in terms of this observation: that artistic discourse blames social discourse for staying so stubbornly attached to existing categories, for focusing on political micro-gestures at the expense of art\u2019s sensorial immediacy as a potential place of de-alienation. Due to which two things become one: either social conscience dominates, or the individual right to question the social conscience. The relationship of art to social causes is either upheld by social morality or implies underlying creative liberty. And so the late 1980s and early 1990s mark a pivotal moment in representing public housing and approaching it through art. New York artist Martha Rosler\u2019s approach touches on a new process born from the neo-liberal redirection of American public policy. In 1990, there were about 70 000 to 80 000 homeless people in New York and 250 000 people at risk of losing their homes to the real estate market. Drastic reductions in public spending for social housing, combined with rising inflation due to the late 1980s global financial crisis and massive layoffs, resulted in the rapid pauperization of the middle and lower classes.<\/p>\n
Addressing this new context, Rosler\u2019s exhibition series If You Lived Here\u2026 (1990) not only ties the politics of the 1970s to the more hermetic policies of new institutionalism, but it also situates it at the dawn of artistic exploration centered on producing concrete and abstract elements. If You Lived Here\u2026 manifests itself as a kind of pathway with multiple entry points. The artist mixes public discussion zones, reading rooms and even a publication conceived as a project lab. Her theoretical contribution is compounded by several thematic exhibitions that bring visual weight to her proposition. She works transversally in a way that extends the art field. In exchange, she offers a practice nourished by field research and critical thinking that involves her in a cultural and social diagnostics, tied together in a political and singular artistic practice.<\/p>\n
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Val\u00e9rie Jouve, Grand Littoral<\/em>, 2003. 20 min, 35mm. Screenshot.<\/p><\/div>\n New ways of considering the \u2018grands ensemble\u2019 territory can be sensed early in 1999, in Marseille, with the series Grand Littoral (1999-2003) by Val\u00e9rie Jouve. The European equivalent of Martha Rosler\u2019s works on appreciating a changing terrain, the series involves the artist\u2019s characteristically sociological and anthropological perspective. In response to the building\u2019s monumentality, Jouve turns to the resident\u2019s faces, how they get around and move through the buildings, the territory of the housing complex and its environs. Grand Littoral consists of a film and a photo series that show the construction site of the shopping center that bears the same name, and the surrounding residents.<\/p>\n As coincidence would have it, Val\u00e9rie Jouve also photographed La Bricarde on this occasion. Indeed, the public housing project where I had the chance to work has nothing to do today with the reality depicted in her photo. La Bricarde, entirely neglected by the public authorities, has steadily deteriorated, even though it stands next to one of Europe\u2019s largest shopping centers. The man in the video who must cross a four-lane highway to get back to his home, is he not an omen of the isolation to come?<\/p>\n Pierre Huyghe (1994-2001) responds to this lively representation with Les Grands ensembles, a piece conceived as dioramas reconstructing the urban landscape of the late 1970s. In a permanent sunset, two towers seem to dialogue using a strange light code emitted by TV monitors blinking behind windows. Huyghe is thinking here of the isolation produced by housing policies and the residents\u2019 lack of a social universe, made even more palpable by the deserted streets. In this video, the artist aims to create \u201cthe hallucinatory image of a moment without representation, that of the \u2018grands ensembles\u2019, a weak hallucination like those televised interludes programmed to fill in a lull\u201d. He seeks to create a portrait and sketch the contours of public policy, and of the process of rebuilding a territory.<\/p>\n In 1993, exhibition curator Yves Aupetitallot organizes Project Unit\u00e9 at Firminy, inside a disinherited building at Le Corbusier\u2019s Cit\u00e9 Radieuse1<\/a><\/sup>. An encounter with institutional criticism, that is, the desire to think and create art off the well-trodden paths of museums and art centers. He continues to remain a kind of UFO in politics and art. The exhibition \u201crooms\u201d are, in some cases, occupied apartments, whereas the artworks echo, and not accidentally, emerging contextual practices. For the exhibit, Yves Aupetitallot unites a group of artists from Cologne that is all associated with Galerie Nagel and pioneers in relational aesthetics as conceptualized by Nicolas Bourriaud in 20012<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n \u201cCologne is the ideal place for combining the New York Whitney Program scene with the teachings of American theoretician Craig Owens. Hit by the market crisis and abandoned by different public programs in the USA, these artists, Ren\u00e9e Green, Mark Dion, and Andrea Fraser, among others continue their careers under more favorable auspices in Europe. Amongst them, Fareed Armaly has played a major role in building up this scene, such as with the Firminy project3<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d Yves Aupetitallot used these terms to recount the planetary alignment necessary for the project, of which there is unfortunately little documentation.<\/p>\n Some critics quickly pushed a hypothesis linking Project Unit\u00e9 to the thinking of Kontext Kunst, which in the 1990s, looked above all at the formal, social and ideological conditions for any creation. According to Yves Aupetitallot, \u201cits closest neighbor would probably be the French model of \u2018metaphorical space\u2019, one that engraves cultural fact into the public sphere, notably by looking at the political avant-garde.\u201d In these projects, there is also a need to cover a curatorial and theoretical spectrum spanning institutional critique to a possible perspective on the increasing commercialization of the art world. This could be presented as the in-between, a curatorial stance that pushes an organizer to be midway between different fields of research, different generations of artists, and different exhibition typologies.<\/p>\n Thomas Hirschhorn, Bataille Monument<\/em>, 2002, Kassel. \u00a9 RR<\/p><\/div>\n Thomas Hirschhorn\u2019s Bataille Monument conceived in 2002 for Documenta XI in Kassel is probably, with its Avignon alter ego Deleuze Monument (2000), one of the \u2018grands ensembles\u2019 participatory works to have received the most media coverage. The installation is dedicated to French thinker Georges Bataille and consists of eight interconnected elements: a wooden sculpture, a library4<\/a><\/sup>, an exhibition5<\/a><\/sup>, workshops, a TV studio, a concessions stand, and a transportation system to bring visitors and neighborhood residents to Documenta. The project was archived on a website with photos taken by webcams disseminated throughout the installation.<\/p>\n More than an art object, the goal was to create \u201cspace and time dedicated to dialogue\u201d, as Hirschhorn puts it. A precarious monument designed for visitors to inhabit it, animating it before demolition. Because it was scheduled to be destroyed, and despite its global intention (it was addressed to everyone), Monument ultimately only touched a limited community and rather seemed to dialogue in contrast with the monumental quality of the buildings. If in the long run, Hirschhorn was looking to create an open community and considered the works as \u201cco-signed\u201d by residents, or at least co-constructed, in his statements he paradoxically insists on the \u201cI\u201d, on himself as the artist or author.<\/p>\n The piece acts more like a time for restoration rather than construction, with a concept submitted to residents before being carried out: create a monument dedicated to Georges Bataille. The few remaining images from Hirschhorn\u2019s project selectively relegate the buildings to the background to focus on the collective and participatory aspects of the work, depicting a group busy building, consulting and discussing instead.<\/p>\n In total, Thomas Hirschhorn composed four pieces for the Monuments series: Spinoza Monument (Amsterdam, Midnight Walkers, and City Sleepers, 1999); Deleuze Monument created in 2000 for the La Beaut\u00e9 exhibition in Avignon in the Cit\u00e9 Champfleury housing project; Bataille Monument (Documenta, Kassel, 2002) and Gramsci Monument (New York, 2013). During each of their respective installation periods, these projects were discussed at length considering their intentions and ability to be integrated into their territories on the urban periphery. In this sense, Thomas Hirschhorn\u2019s oeuvre operates in the early stages of \u201ccommunity\u201d experience within a social housing project but also in the inherent artistic and political debate, notably following La Beaut\u00e9, when an entire panel of artists were seized or rejected by a social reality of which they believed themselves to be a part.<\/p>\n Deleuze Monument was dismantled before its completion, a target of vandalism and due to the abysmal relationship with neighbors. And so, in its guise as a failed project, it takes on a certain contemporary art legend status that Anna Dezeuze describes as A missed encounter. Despite all this, Hirschhorn sees himself as a social worker. A stance that allows him to promote his work as locally engaged, fieldwork done within a network of local organizations and residents. He \u201cfully\u201d participates in social housing life and the places invested by his Monuments. So we see him on location talking with young people, participating in moments of both presentation and restitution. The projects in these four countries showcase a participatory and societal \u201cformula\u201d: three installations out of four were created in public housing blocks.<\/p>\n In 2000, Danish artists Rasmus Nielsen, Bj\u00f8rnstjerne Reuter Christiansen and Jakob Fenger, working under the banner Superflex, launched the United Kingdom\u2019s first Web TV (The Superchannel), from inside Coronation Court, Liverpool\u2019s oldest public housing blocks. Against a backdrop of pitifully neglected buildings, guests and journalists use the \u201cstudio\u201d to produce interviews with residents. More than half the channel\u2019s programs are dedicated to the housing project\u2019s history, as well as to daily problems encountered by residents and topics related to the city\u2019s social housing, all on the eve of major renovations. The chroniclers were trained in camera and interviewing techniques.<\/p>\n The Superchannel is the fruit of a collaboration between Foundation for Art and Creative Technology\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (FACT) and Housing Action Trust (HAT) which manages the site. The artists talk in terms of an \u201cagency\u201d, a word frequently used in Anglo-Saxon art circles at the time, and which takes on a particular meaning in this context. Since the start, the project scope was long term, with salaries, a sustainable team, and a scheduled set for the following few years. It is the second Web TV experience initiated by the collective; the first took place at Artspace 1% in Copenhagen. The Danish artist project is designed, here and elsewhere, to take into account the participants\u2019 autonomy: it is through their self-organization that it can exist. Superchannel stopped its activities in 2005, but the program Tenantspin is still broadcasted today.<\/p>\n What is unique about the Superflex project embedded in the Coronation Court housing complex is that it could grow from participatory to collaborative, thanks to professional training and experience that enabled them to write and think the site\u2019s contemporaneity and history. The project is, therefore, an exception to what historian and art critic Claire Bishop calls the \u201cartificial hells\u201d of participatory art and rather succeeds in promoting collaboration and inclusivity. And so the inevitable conflict stages of the project, the differences in strategy and how each person is involved, are collectively managed so the project can remain viable.<\/p>\n Nathana\u00ebl Abeille, R\u00e9flexion<\/em>, 2015. La Bricarde, Marseille.<\/p><\/div>\n gethan&myles, fin #1 (Time projet)<\/em>, 2012. Sundial Synchronized on the autumn equinox\/luminous monument, Quartiers Nord, Marseille. Courtesy of the artists.<\/p><\/div>\n Ateliers de la Cit\u00e9 are artist residencies organized by the Fondation d\u2019Entreprise Logirem (the corporate foundation of a French employment agency) and the organization Sextant et Plus within the La Bricarde and Fonscolombes housing complexes in Marseille. The initial project was launched in 2009 in the city\u2019s 15th district before being \u201clumped\u201d together in the 3rd. In Marseille, La Bricarde is seen as a no-go area. The complex has seen years of drug trafficking and score-settling, just next door to the legendary housing complex Castellane (which brought us Zin\u00e9dine Zidane), and bordered by the Grand Littoral shopping center and CRS (French riot police) trucks that regularly carry out operations there. Ateliers de la Cit\u00e9 residencies were offered at La Bricarde from 2009 to 2016 and at Fonscolombes from 2014 to 2017, hosting 12 artists in studios allocated by the foundation6<\/a><\/sup>. Ten pieces were produced by the artists, nine installed on-site amongst the two housing complexes, and a book of fiction was published by Marielle Chabal (Alter Zeitgeist, Sextant et plus, 2014).<\/p>\n Three pieces created at La Bricarde were particularly well received by both art critics and residents. The first was by the duo gethan&myles in 2012, which included a book (Time Machine), a sculpture in public space (Fin) and a video (L\u2019arr\u00eat), each dealing with the history of the residents and the buildings. Fin (l\u2019aileron) contains 366 resident birthdates engraved in the plexiglass of a solar panel. In 2014, the piece Le Parlement by Stefan Eichhorn replaced an old dilapidated arbor in La Bricarde\u2019s shared garden area. This construction allowed residents to meet and talk. And in 2016, Nathana\u00ebl Abeille\u2019s piece R\u00e9flexion was made to reflect the light of the setting sun onto the eastern and northern facades of the building, which are usually unexposed.<\/p>\n Mohamed Bourouissa, P\u00e9riph\u00e9rique \u2013 s\u00e9rie P\u00e9riph\u00e9ries<\/em>, 2007. 80 x 120 cm. Mus\u00e9e national de l\u2019histoire et des cultures de l\u2019immigration, CNHI, Paris \u00a9 Mohamed Bourouissa<\/p><\/div>\n The political history of \u2018grands ensembles\u2019 as told by these artworks is one that, it seems, responds to the monstrous and disorganized city with purely functional urbanism that is planned from beginning to end, and sections off greenery, habitats, commerce, and transportation. This fiction evolved unchecked to the point of revealing the \u201chellish d\u00e9cor\u201d of a deconstructed scenario turned reality and episodically retold by a handful of artists. Most artistic projects that look at (deteriorating) social housing come to a head with the difficult meeting point between two stakes for the viewer: confronting oneself with social violence to which he is an outsider, or else observing how an author has viewed said violence. A new chapter in this unpredictable history began in the wake of the first urban riots sparked in 1981 at the Minguettes housing complex in Lyon. Mohamed Bourouissa\u2019s P\u00e9riph\u00e9riques series, created in the direct aftermath of the urban upheavals in France in 2005, and ongoing until 2009, takes us into the daily life of so-called \u201cproject\u201d youth. He starts a dialogue between his work\u2019s social base and what he calls \u201cemotional geometry\u201d which seems, once again, to come from the building\u2019s configuration. \u201cThere\u2019s an emphasis on how tension is placed and organized in space. It\u2019s a way of staging this neglected urban area as a conceptual, artistic object, in situations that ordinarily would be the stuff of photojournalism. By dismantling the clich\u00e9s surrounding this subject, I deal with the problem of power relationships and ask about the power mechanisms at play.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u2018grands ensembles\u2019 are monumental but difficult to perceive as monuments. While at La Bricarde, I was constantly lost, turned around, forced to retrace my steps. The places are intricate and much more different to live in than the standardization thought and dreamed up by their architects. Now that a policy of destruction has begun at Minguettes, followed by Courneuve7<\/a><\/sup> and Vitry8<\/a><\/sup>, today this standardization has a new face, like at Plan d\u2019Aou9<\/a><\/sup> and soon at Castellane. In sum, housing projects are dying too. There is a new page in visual history, one where a smoke cloud gradually fills the screen after a series of detonations. Like me, many artists undoubtedly adhere to this image, perhaps underestimating the attachment of several generations of residents to a housing complex that nevertheless remains condemned.<\/p>\n One of the art\u2019s social functions might be to crystallize an image or an answer to a blurry social situation and bring attention to its contours by establishing a collective memory of buildings.<\/p>\n The emergence of social connection around artistic practices is particularly striking in zones that are spaces where nearly all association of any kind is disregarded. My personal experience in Marseille encompassed responsibilities as an artist, social actor, teacher, and organizer; a mission that, on top of being political, is a cultural enterprise that unwittingly mitigates the effects of the public authorities\u2019 absence as landlords. The artists are therefore condemned to observing the lack or reduction in financing needed to rehabilitate these monumental buildings, these spaces that artists are meant to engage with.<\/p>\n No matter what, as the young man at the entrance to La Bricarde said to me upon my arrival: \u201cIt\u2019s all good\u201d.<\/p>\n Translation by Maya Dalinsky I first entered the La Bricarde public housing blocks in the 15th district of Marseille in early June 2014, armed with a part-time, work-insertion program position and a background as a curator and art critic. Back then, I was working for an organization and foundation started by a consortium of social housing landlords in the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101027,"featured_media":13944,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1843],"tags":[1876],"corpus":[],"post_types":[1206],"associate_editors":[],"authors":[1647],"class_list":["post-13892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","tag-architectures","post_types-investigation-2-en","authors-leo-guy-denarcy-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101027"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13892"},{"taxonomy":"corpus","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/corpus?post=13892"},{"taxonomy":"post_types","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_types?post=13892"},{"taxonomy":"associate_editors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/associate_editors?post=13892"},{"taxonomy":"authors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/authors?post=13892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Visual culture\u2026<\/h2>\n
A unique experience<\/h2>\n
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A limited community<\/h2>\n
From participation to collaboration<\/h2>\n
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Ateliers de la Cit\u00e9<\/h2>\n
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Social housing is also dying<\/h2>\n
\nCover: Cit\u00e9 Marseilleveyre, Marseille, France. \u00a9 RR
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"