The Grand Domestic Revolution

Casco is extending its space to an apartment in the neighbourhood (Bemuurde Weerd oostzijde 18b) for a year-long project entitled 'User's Manual: The Grand Domestic Revolution'. Developed in the framework of Utrecht Manifest - Biennial for Social Design, the project deals with the evolutionary process of “living” research into contemporary domestic and private sphere in order to re-articulate and exercise the notions of the social, the public and, eventually, the commons. The apartment becomes both a symbolic and functional base for this project.

The project appropriates its title from the book (1980) by architect and urban historian Dolores Hayden. Departing from the 19th century era in the United States, Hayden illuminates the feminist design practice, and articulates the momentum of socializing isolated domestic space and (domestic) labour, reorganizing neighbourhoods and cities which she names as “a grand domestic revolution”. Drawing from this work, the project questions the actuality, necessity, and/or possibility of contemporary forms of “grand domestic revolution”. This will be done with cross-disciplinary research, actual use and transformation of space, and multiple forms of activities.

A number of practitioners and colleagues including artists, designers, architects, writers, educators as well as institutions, organizations and "neighbours" are invited to be successive and temporary residents, hosts, guests or "users" of the Casco house in order to strategize and realize the issues at hand. A reading group, monthly “town meetings”, and other forms of ongoing collaborative projects are being organized. Accordingly, the Casco house will coincide and accommodate public use and visits to the usual visiting hours of the Casco: Tuesday-Sunday 12:00-18:00.

The apartment is equipped with a spatial device 'Many Furniture', designed by ifau+Jesko Fezer, who also designed Casco's interior architecture. ‘Many Furniture’ functions as a colour coded and flexible social system whereby a pallet of colours differentiates the abundance of "furniture" to prompt private construction, collectivity or publicity in support of both representative situations and informal ones. A growing ’GDR library’ consisting of different research materials such as books (including 'The Grand Domestic Revolution'), articles, images, dvds (artist’s video, films) is installed in collaboration with Annie Wu, artist and designer whose endeavour calls for neighbourly collaboration. A group of students from the Dutch Art Institute will join this year-long path with their respective approaches into the subjects as well.

For the opening month, amongs others, Ade Darmwan and Reza Afisina of ruangrupa, an artist initiative in Jakarta, are invited by Casco and Centraal Museum to make contribution. They will stay at and transform the apartment into ‘ruangrupa Huis’, alluding to a foreign cultural institutes such as ‘Erasmus Huis' and playing with its institutional agenda. In line with her ongoing project 'What can we achieve together?’, Sepake Angiama, curator and educator will stay over the weekend to held improvisational group performance. Artist Haegue Yang will host the screening of the film 'Marguerite, A Reflection of Herself' (2003) by Dominique Auvray. The film is a portrait of Marguerite Duras; her literary and political life intertwined with histories of families, relationships, and friendships. The screening will be accompanied by conversations and dinner.

Please check the agenda on both Casco and Utrecht Manifest websites, drop by or stay over, and be our guest or even host. For any further inquiry, please contact: Yolande van der Heide.