Constructing Commons

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A house that build houses

Date
2020

Team
Sara Dean
Cristina Gaitan
Rafi Ajl
Rachel Weidinger

Constructing Commons explores the economy of temporary housing and the use of a Biennial to build local housing after it is gone. As part of the 2020 Shenzhen Biennial, the project was seen in the Shenzhen train station, and played on the aesthetics of the duty free store (or ‘party capitalism’ as we came to call it). Using ‘purchasing power’ to build collective funds rather than consolidate wealth, the project asks questions about the alternatives to capitalism through the structures of the market.

Surveillance and censorship became a secondary theme in the project, as the physical installation operated through QR codes linked to AliBaba e-wallet, but the QR codes kept getting stripped out by the Chinese cultural administration. The project became as much a conversation with the censorship limitations of the Biennale as with the topic of bottom-up housing creation and the potential of capitalism to undermine its fundamental assumptions.

Exhibitions

“Eyes of the City,” Shenzhen Biennale, 2020.

Publication

“Crowdfunding Commons,” Eyes of the City, Shenzhen Biennale Catalog.

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