LIFE / About a House
Residency at No Pressure Project Space / Trash the House.
In June 2017 I spent one month as a resident at No Pressure Project Space; located at the Helmersstraat in The Hague.
The inspiration for the exhibition came from the masterpiece Life, A User’s Manual (1978) by Georges Perec.
The book is a tapestry of interwoven stories and ideas as well as literary and historical allusions, based on the lives of the inhabitants of a fictitious Parisian apartment block. It was written according to a complex plan of constraints and is primarily constructed from several elements, each adding a layer of complexity (or so it says on wikipedia).
The exhibition was set up as an itinerary through time and focused on the sometimes weird life stories of a number of tenants, owners or events related to the house where the residency took place.
The six (major) artworks that highlight a person or an event were made (or constructed) with at least one of the following constraints (loosely based on the constraints as used by Perec to construct his novel) in mind:
A Graeco Latin square
A reference to an earlier work
A reference to work by another artist
A reference to something happening as the work was being made
A reference to something having to do with me
A list
A detailed description of every object and furniture in a room
Newspaper clippings or other documents
The Knight’s move
Clinamen
Association
Hints to a game or a puzzle
Pointing at each other or referencing each other
Kindly supported by Stroom