To glitch the home (to heal) - introduction
In German, the word “heim” is a part of the word “unheimlich”. In other words, you can’t speak about horror, without speaking about the home. When we look at the Dutch language we find the same linguistic ambiguity. The very first word that was used to refer to the home is “hol”. A hole in the ground was a place where our nomadic ancestors found shelter and hid themselves for danger. The word “hel” comes from this very same word, as it refers to a hidden worldaka the underworld. Again this link between horror and the home. The word hol/hel, however, was in Old English written down as “heal”. It is precisely this what the project aims to do: to heal the home.
This project glitches the home and the position that it entails in a patriarchal late-capitalist landscape. Between the Western European witch hunts in the middle ages to Poland that currently completely banned abortion, there have been consistent attacks on our homes, the places where we find shelter. Why is it that for minority groups the concept of home is so traumatic? From the oppressiveness of social housing architecture, the position of privilege that organised nature in cities entails to the exclusion of queerness in the nuclear family, inequality is seen whenever we think of home.
During the event in Kunsthal, a temporary environment is created — a real-life shelter with a digital skin — in which Gary & Karolien will host an associative journey through the research of the project.