Housing is elementary – SEARCHING A HOME
Houses make cities, cities create desires.
SEARCHING A HOME thematizes the peculiarity of humans to settle down somewhere and live there, on the one hand, but also their disappearance from nature, on the other. We disappear into the bodies of houses, trains, cars and airplanes.
With skill and physical strength, a single, upright, adult human being was figuratively speaking tailored an aura of rubble on his body. The completed building was enlivened and celebrated for a short time, only to be torn down again at the end of the day as an unappropriate model, representing all existing houses.
Housing is not a human right. Article 13 of the human rights is on freedom of residence and freedom of movement. Incidentally, there is also no human right to clothing or shoes.
We need to sleep, we need to eat, we need a place to retreat to. We believe that everyone is legally entitled to a place to sleep in a house.
Buildings are bodies made of different materials. The SEARCHING A HOME project uses one of the most primitive construction techniques. It is built with the rubble available directly on the building site.
The erected structure is both a stage and a theatrical backdrop. Just as spontaneously as the structure was wrested from nature with diligence and sweat during the day, it is effortlessly torn down in the evening and released back into the natural environment.
Together with my supporters, we realized the project creatively on October 9, 1998 … The site chosen for the project was a dry bed of a creek in the Alps, an hour and a half’s drive from Zurich. The process of building, enlivening and demolishing an edifice for an upright adult took one day, from six in the morning until ten in the evening.
The process was documented on video by Sämi Scherrer. The edited video (11 min.) is published on Youtube (link see picture above).
SEARCHING A HOME Performance 1998 – The building is demolished again. Foto: Etienne de Graffenried
humanly livened up
Fire is what makes a house human. Making fire gives us humans a special position among living beings on earth.
In the SEARCHING A HOME project , the empty space with the outline of a human being like a stove is filled with brushwood, which is later burned as a bonfire. For a moment, the fire gives the structure the warmth inside that distinguishes it from the rest of the material. The rubble of the building gets the solemn stamp of the artifact through the art of fire-making.
Taking into account the many facets of subjective reality, the SEARCHING A HOME project is a meditation on the necessity of living. It also raises the question of the significance of the home in individual life.
Idea and construction supervision: Beat Huber
Contributors: Barbara Hiestand, Attila Missura, Daniel Ledergerber, Max Ramp, Stini Arn, Sämi Scherrer, Etienne de Graffenried, Barbara Tänzler
Video camera: Sämi Scherrer / cut: Beat Huber