The Grand Domestic Revolution GOES ON
12 September - 27 October 2012
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Workers Netherlands with Matthijs de Bruijne I WILL NOT ASK ANYTHING
ABOUT YOU, YOU WILL NOT ASK ANYTHING ABOUT ME, 2011, courtesy the artist |
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THE GRAND DOMESTIC REVOLUTION GOES ON
12 September – 27 October 2012
AND Publishing, ASK! (Actie Schone Kunsten), Domestic Workers
Netherlands with Matthijs de Bruijne, Enemies of Good Art, Andrea
Francke, GDR Library, Annette Krauss, Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad, kleines
postfordisches Drama, Travis Meinolf, Martina Mullaney, Christian
Nyampeta, Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, Our Autonomous
Life?,Read-in, Helke Sander, Joseph Williams, Rehana Zaman
The Grand Domestic Revolution (GDR) is an ongoing ‘living research’
project initiated by Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht
as a multi-faceted exploration of the domestic sphere to imagine new
forms of living and working in common.
Inspired by US late nineteenth-century ‘material feminist’ movements
that experimented with communal solutions to isolated domestic life and
work, GDR involved artists, designers, domestic workers, architects,
gardeners, activists and others to collaboratively experiment with and
re-articulate the domestic sphere challenging traditional and
contemporary divisions of private and public. Now GDR goes on, evolving
in different scales and extensions, taken up and transformed in
different cities, sites and neighbourhoods by those who desire to carry
on the GDR from their own home base or by those already engaged with it
in their local languages and practices.
At The Showroom an exhibition of contemporary and historical artworks
and a diverse and growing reference library will form a base for
workshops and events that will develop the GDR further, while they will
forge connections and affinities with The Showroom’s ongoing programme
of neighbourhood-based commissions – Communal Knowledge.
Exhibited works employ a wide range of methodologies to playfully
problematise domestic issues such as work at home, housing rights,
property relations, family economies, neighbourhood struggles, and range
from the satirical to social critique and activist actions. These
include GDR’s cooperatively produced sitcom, Our Autonomous Life?
(2010–11); Pauline Boudry and Renata Lorenz’s housewives’ manifesto
Charming for the Revolution (2009); Rehana Zaman’s Like an Iron Maiden
Trapped Between a Rock and Hard Place (2010); and a shadow-play work I
will not ask anything about you, you will not ask anything about me
(2011) produced by domestic workers in the Netherlands in collaboration
with Matthijs de Bruijne, and public cleaning actions by a group of
cultural workers intersecting art work and domestic work, ASK! (Actie
Schone Kunsten). A new video work by artist Joseph Williams, a member of
the homeless artist collective Seymour Arts, will be produced and
presented. A full list of works and events will be available on The
Showroom’s website www.theshowroom.org.
The Grand Domestic Revolution GOES ON is realised in the framework of
COHAB, a two-year project initiated by The Showroom, Casco - Office for
Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht and Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm,
supported by a Cooperation Measures grant from the European Commission
Culture 2007-2013 Programme. It has been additionally supported by:
Mondriaan Foundation, Arts Council England, Outset Contemporary Art
Fund, as The Showroom’s Production Partner 2012, and The Showroom
Supporters’ Scheme. Communal Knowledge is generously supported by Paul
Hamlyn Foundation, The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and John Lyon’s
Charity. Artnews.org
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