For many, home is a space of precarious comfort and evictability. Fortified Comforts, Evicted Homes, exhibits research and spatial representation of the house since its modern creation in early 20th century, to ongoing housing struggles and increase of its financialization until today. The space of the home was made to fortify the privacy of the heteronormative nuclear family household, and maintain its rest, health, and reproduction; a minimized disciplinary space of living.
In Fortified Comfort, Evicted Homes curated by Leana Boven and Yusser Salih, WORKNOT! shares an iteration of two video essays that discuss two sides of the history of the modern (1920’s) house: the Family and the new (gendered) norms of living of the “living income earner” which centered around the labor of women as “housewives”; and Rent Strike as a practice of solidarity and resistance against eviction and arbitrary rent raise, which were mainly led by the same women.
Additionally, WORKNOT! presents a series of fabric works that echo the conversations around resistance against housing injustice and eviction, voiced specifically from an architectural understanding of the topic. During the exhibition, there re workshops and a panel discussion held to further discuss these topics.
* The video essays were initially commissioned by and produced for presentation of archival research at Nieuwe Instituut as part of Designing the Social exhibition (Het Ontwerp van het Sociale, 2021-2024).
* Image source: Archive of the Municipal Housing Department and legal predecessor, Amsterdam City Archives (inventory), 5293FO000981. Photo by: Swaager Nico (1910-1983).
* Poster design by Yusser Salih. Font used is BianZhiDai by Xiaoyuan Gao, notyourtypefoundry. Distributed by velvetyne.fr.
WORKNOT! 