Support curator: Sanne Oorthuizen(CasCoteam)
Contributing artists and other practitioners or practicing bodies: ASK! (ActieSchoneKunsten) with Andrea Siekmann and Justice for Domestic Workers (J4DW), Ruth Buchanan, Silvia Federici, Jinsuk Kim, Kleinespostfordisches Drama, Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, Our Autonomous Life?, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Haegue Yang, Werker Magazine a.o.
List of works:Charming for the Revolution (2009), Kamera läuft! (2004), Why We Work Together (since 2011),Wages for Housework (archive), Domestic Worker Photographer Network (since 2011), Gymnastics of the Foldables (2006), Manifesto for Maintenance Art (1969) a.o
Opening time:
Breg 22: 12am – 8pm (Tuesday – Sunday)
Azil Bookshop: 10am – 8pm (Monday – Friday)
Grand Domestic Revolution (GDR) is a long-term “living research” project developed by CasCo– Office for Art, Design and Theory in Utrecht, the Netherlands, since October 2009 and curated by Binna Choi in collaboration with Maiko Tanaka and with support work by Yolande van der Heide. GDR GOES ON refers to a special traveling form of this project that aims to find lines of affinity with other local contexts and initiatives and to further actualize the project’s endeavours.
Inspired by late nineteenth-century American “material feminist” movements that experimented with communal solutions to isolated domestic life and work, GDR has involved artists, designers, domestic workers, architects, gardeners, activists, and others in collaborative investigations and re-articulations of the domestic sphere, challenging traditional and contemporary divisions between private and public. The aim is to imagine new forms of living and working in common and putting them into practice. GDR shares its ongoing research with presentations of newly produced and referential art works, an exhibition as a platform for a series of public activities and/or the growing project library. In particular, the touring program of GDR – GDR GOES ON!– is conceived as a special form of international collaboration, embedding it within the local context of each host venue and creating closer ties between the organization and surrounding communities.
GDR in the context of the City of Women festival presents a selection of artworks and archival materials that bring different perspectives and sensitivities to work and labor performed “at home” under the post-Fordist conditions of our everyday life. The works do not only provide insights into the current and past struggles concerning the notion of invisible work and precarious labor but also evoke the possibilities of organization, solidarity, and composition. Here, critical seeing experience sentera practice of transformation that we believe is only possible throught he formation of a type of collective subject. (Binna Choi, Maiko Tanaka)
In addition to the exhibition at Breg 22, GDR GOES ON also takes place at Azil Bookshop. More information on the City of Women website at www.cityofwomen.org.
CasCo – Office for Art, Design and Theory is an open and public space for artistic research and experiments. We consider artistic practice as a way of engaging with the world we live in and as an investigative, imaginative, and inventive practice. The artistic practices we focus on are cross-disciplinary, open to collaboration, and process-driven. Our projects traverse other fields such as design, theory, and social work. Correspondingly, our activities encompass not only exhibitions but also research, varying forms of production, the development of new applications, workshops, forums, debates, actions, performances, screenings, education, and publishing. We were founded in 1990 and located in the city of Utrecht with its 300,000 inhabitants in the heart of the Netherlands. The local urban environment, including its various communities, histories, and contemporary development, is the foundational space for our engagement. Yet, integrating this relationship with our work, artists, and other practitioners from around the world, we actively take part in social and artistic development in various formal and informal networks intersecting across local, national, and international levels.
The aim of our work is to contribute to forming non-capitalist cultures and possibilities for life for which we believe art could play an essential role, not as an insular avant-garde but in alignment with other initiatives and social movements. Instead of accumulation, alienation, apathy, and competition, a culture that we envision is comprised of sharing, caring, and living and working together. In this light, we see our organization and space as a micro-society to reflect such vision. It’s a tough but worthwhile venture.
Organization: City of Women; In collaboration with: Squat Exercise Collective, Revolting Women Social Workers, Azil Bookshop.
Supported by: EU Culture.