squatter my bath ...

the thoughts behind...

in order to focus on public space one needs to reflect on the private: in our society it became a dominant dispositive, economically as well as politically. The relation private – public gets more and more visible in cities but moreover it is played off against each other: private vs. public ownership, surveillance, cleaning the city of homeless, informell trade and/or unwanted persons. The protection of the private leads to its constriction, its borders are continuosly being changed and subject of debates, interference gets more vehement but invisible through embedding it into daily life.

Today, public spaces take over the characteristics of interieurs- and shoppingmalls. Pedestrian areas and public places are styled like the archetype living room or private rooms, and include very often the necessity to consume. These aesthetics lead to an exclusion of unwanted subjects until removal via private security agencies. Thinking further, this development makes private spaces become intimate rooms with the characteristica of retreat and protection. Nowadays, the bathroom is the symbol for the private, even privacy, the place of intimacy. Historically it developed from a collective to an individual place and even in times of big brother there is no surveillance allowed in bathrooms. The critic on the intervention in privacy via surveillance, inner security etc. fails short as it still moves within the dispositive of the private.

squatter my bath, on the contrary, opens a private room for the public and opposes the privatisation of public spaces.

Public space is known as places in a city which are reserved for unknown acts. As embodiment of uncontrolled, urban space guarantes publicity against growing tendencies of overtaking the city by private interests . It’s a public space’s task to stand against the tendencies of private, as only on it’s ground the play as experiment with open end is possible: activity as play and in space. Functioning public spaces keep the promise of unforseen moments, various meanings, diversity and ambivalence. These places invite one to enter, to squatter and to occupy.

squatter my bath assigns this function to a private room: private public disorder.

the project...

squatter my bath is an artistic experiment. Utopia in real. The aim is to create a political act  against closing of public spaces by opening a private room. 100 Inhabitants of 3 cities, which where chosen due to their city development during the last years, are invited to conquer and occupy my bathroom. Everybody who takes place in this experiment enters the artist’s flat and bathroom for the first time. It is an extraordinary moment. The fact of being in a stranger’s bathroom with doors closed transforms not only the room but also the intensity of the interaction of the individuals. It is an exclusive moment. A mix of courage, openness and letting go is needed. I accompany the squattering photographically, the photographs are haptically worked on and therefore once again squattered and made absolutely unique. After 100 shootings the squatterings will find their way back to open space via poster actions in public spaces of the 3 cities where the squatterings took place.

squatter my bath is a platform utopia for anyone to be, to make a statement or to experience.

until today 23 squatterings, 6 in Vienna and 17 in Berlin, took place.

the experience...

the utopia of a social platform taking place in my bathroom. private public disorder on 5.8 m2.

Timecapsule

the moments are intense as well as unique: the room is small and clear.  it allows fast to distort from the rest of the flat and regular daily live, the outer world.  the social utopia is usually created within minutes and manifests over the time of the squatterings.