{"id":44889,"date":"2017-01-26T11:35:24","date_gmt":"2017-01-26T10:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/?p=44889"},"modified":"2017-01-26T11:35:24","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T10:35:24","slug":"sleek-52-new-eelam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/sleek-52-new-eelam\/","title":{"rendered":"The Speculative Artwork Proposing Alternative Ways of Living"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long used as a site for social critique, SLEEK examines how young artists are reshaping ideas of the home in the age of Airbnb<\/h3>\n

 
\nAt the opening of the DIS-curated 9th Berlin Biennale<\/a>\u00a0this summer, an assemblage of sofas, plants and television\u00a0screens materialised on the second floor of Berlin\u2019s Academy\u00a0of the Arts. At first glance it looked like a business\u00a0suite or an image from an IKEA catalogue; yet in fact\u00a0it was \u201cNew Eelam\u201d, a speculative artwork by Christopher\u00a0Kulendran Thomas<\/a> and curator Annika Kuhlmann.\u00a0Envisaged as a collectively-owned housing subscription\u00a0service, it offers “members” access to a portfolio of homes\u00a0around the world, advocating for the \u201cluxury of communalism\u201d.\u00a0Inspired by the violent displacement of Tamil\u00a0people from the Eelam region during the Sri Lankan civil\u00a0war, and the increasing mobility\u00a0demanded by our current economy,\u00a0Thomas, an artist of Sri\u00a0Lankan origin, probes the urgent\u00a0question of how artists deal with\u00a0belonging\u2019 in a time of globalisation,\u00a0and can art effectively propose\u00a0alternative ways of living?
\n <\/p>\n

\"New Christopher Kulendran Thomas, “New Eelam,” 2016<\/p>\n

 
\nIt\u2019s no coincidence that contemporary\u00a0artists are actively redefining\u00a0the home. The creative economy,\u00a0populated by an army of\u00a0freelance digital nomads including\u00a0painters, film-makers, sculptors,\u00a0directors, writers and curators, is characterised by a demand\u00a0for extreme flexibility. One day\u00a0they\u2019re hot desking in studios, the\u00a0next they\u2019re renting temporary\u00a0accommodation via Craigslist and\u00a0jetting off on budget flights to collaborate in far-flung\u00a0destinations. Consequently, their sense of sense belonging\u00a0has splintered in correlation with the multiplication of\u00a0their working and living spaces, leading to what artist and\u00a0architect Luis Ortega Govela has called \u201cthe death of the\u00a0home and the rise of transient living\u201d.<\/p>\n

“Our company is not based on the ambition to build a new society from scratch, but on an alternative strategy of rewiring existing trajectories of capitalism”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThe art world has always been good at pioneering new lifestyle formats, such as loft living,\u201d says Thomas. Fifty\u00a0years after artists began renting derelict lofts in grimy\u00a0parts of downtown New York, repurposed industrial spaces\u00a0have become the ultimate luxury real estate commodity.\u00a0Yet, as with loft living, the current conception of the home\u00a0hasn\u2019t been around forever either. Rather, it\u2019s an ideologically\u00a0determined notion predicated on changing attitudes\u00a0to national laws, economics and social conventions. The\u00a0conservative dream of a property-owning democracy \u2013 a\u00a0fantasy that ran rampant in Thatcher\u2019s Britain \u2013 privatised\u00a0large quantities of public housing previously reserved for the working class. By the turn of the century, houses in\u00a0many Western countries were no longer places people simply\u00a0lived, but objects they could profit from. More recently,\u00a0the rise of Airbnb has exacerbated this trend in new\u00a0ways, pushing rents up and forcing local residents out.
\nAs a radical alternative, (artist) communes proposed\u00a0forms of collective living based on the sharing of property\u00a0and economic means. Some of these flourished during\u00a0the hippie years in Europe and America; most famously\u00a0Otto Muehl\u2019s Friedrichshof Commune,\u00a0a leftist art cooperative\u00a0outside Vienna that experimented\u00a0with collective forms of living,\u00a0and art-making until it was shut\u00a0down in 1992 due to cases of sexual\u00a0abuse.
\n <\/p>\n

\"New Christopher Kulendran Thomas, “When Platitudes Become Form x New Eelam,” 2016<\/p>\n

 
\nArtists also contribute, too. In\u00a0Ruth Glass\u2019s pioneering 1964 analysis\u00a0of gentrification \u201cLondon:\u00a0Aspects of Change\u201d \u2013 the study\u00a0that coined the term \u2013 the German-\u00a0born British sociologist identifies\u00a0artists as the shock troops of\u00a0gentrification, transforming quarters\u00a0once deemed unsightly by\u00a0middle class tastes into locations\u00a0ripe for investment by making\u00a0them trendy. Thus, it\u2019s often difficult\u00a0for creatives to engage with\u00a0this issue without seeming hypocritical. There are, however,\u00a0numerous exceptions. Martha Rosler, for instance,\u00a0accurately addressed it in 1989 with \u201cIf You Lived Here\u201d,\u00a0a seminal three-part exhibition at the Dia Art Foundation\u00a0in New York. Working closely with advocacy groups, artists\u00a0and urban researchers, Rosler created a vast repository\u00a0of documents investigating themes of housing and homelessness.\u00a0Later, in the 1990s, Andrea Zittel questioned the\u00a0social construction of domestic space through her series\u00a0\u201cLiving Units\u201d, as she attempted to reduce all human needs\u00a0into a compact, mobile system (her one-woman corporation,\u00a0A-Z Administrative Services, even set out to make\u00a0them commercially available to consumers). More recently,\u00a0Palestinian artist and film-maker Alexandra Handal has\u00a0investigated the displacement of her fellow nationals from\u00a0West Jerusalem in 1948 via \u201cDream Homes Property Consultants\u201d,\u00a0an interactive real estate website that provides those eyeing up the former homes of refugees the social and personal histories of the families that once lived there.
\n <\/p>\n

\"New Christopher Kulendran Thomas, “New Eelam,” 2016<\/p>\n

 
\nIn the early 21st century, however, gentrification has become\u00a0a major issue for artists, as space for studios and\u00a0project galleries becomes scarce and they are priced out of\u00a0housing. Thus, real-estate speculation once again returns\u00a0as a subject rife for artistic exploration.\u00a0Thomas and Kuhlman\u2019s pseudo-tech start-up is a prime\u00a0example. An amalgamated artwork-as-business, a flat-rate\u00a0monthly subscription gives its hypothetical members access\u00a0to a portfolio of homes around the world, while all\u00a0\u2018revenues\u2019 are re-invested back into the corporation. Real-estate speculation ensures an increase of value for its notional\u00a0citizens, developing\u00a0an ever-expanding share of\u00a0housing around the world.\u00a0Eschewing the private property\u00a0model, Thomas borrows\u00a0from the legacy of the\u00a0commune, applying it to a\u00a0globalised future in which\u201c homes are streamable,\u00a0just like music\u201d, as the hyper-aestheticised advert for\u00a0New Eelam proposes.
\n <\/p>\n

\"New Christopher Kulendran Thomas, “Platitudes Become Form,” 2016<\/p>\n

 
\n\u201cOur venture began with\u00a0the thought experiment\u00a0of asking what the idea of\u00a0Eelam could have been if it\u00a0had been based on a recent reading of Marx, rooted in\u00a0his understanding of the emancipatory potential of the\u00a0technologies of capital,\u201d Thomas explains. \u201cSo what could\u00a0a New Eelam be if it was understood as a distributed network\u00a0rather than a territorially bounded nation, a place\u00a0where citizenship is a choice rather than a hereditary\u00a0privilege? Our company is not based on the ambition to\u00a0build a new society from scratch but on an alternative\u00a0strategy of rewiring existing trajectories of capitalisation.\u201d\u00a0Of course, technology has been changing everyday\u00a0life for years through dating apps, health gadgets and\u00a0digital camera filters. But what sets Thomas and Kuhlman\u2019s\u00a0project crowd-funded, cloud-sourced social housing\u00a0art venture apart is the fact that its supranational\u00a0digital outlook undermines one of capitalism\u2019s oldest inventions,\u00a0the nation state.
\nGranted, this position has its limits: it is after all an aesthetic\u00a0rather than material project presented in the playful\u00a0guise of a business. And their undoubtedly utopian vision\u00a0glosses over important issues like implementation, security,\u00a0access and stability \u2013 something that would likely\u00a0drive off investors if it ever actually launched. Yet it is\u00a0also precisely this idealism that makes the enterprise so\u00a0evocative: behind their plans for a networked solution to\u00a0the global housing shortage is a stark reminder of the dystopian\u00a0effects of neoliberalism. In this sense, Thomas is\u00a0both drawing his audience\u2019s attention to this matter while\u00a0tentatively proposing \u2013 or at least toying with \u2013 solutions,\u00a0no matter how workable. And in this way he and his cohort\u00a0prove that artists can stimulate change through their\u00a0ambiguous register. \u201cPerhaps the future of work will look\u00a0increasingly like what artists do,\u201d Thomas concludes. \u201cThe\u00a0more that jobs are automated,\u00a0the more it could be the\u00a0home, rather than the factory\u00a0or office, that becomes a\u00a0primary site of production.\u201d\u00a0If so, perhaps New Eelam\u00a0will look more like a blueprint\u00a0for its radical potential\u00a0than an artwork.
\n <\/p>\n

\"New Christopher Kulendran Thomas, “New Eelam,” 2016<\/p>\n

 
\n 
\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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