Year: 2012 Curator: Ellen Zoete Location: Onomatopee gallery, Eindhoven, Netherlands Project assistants: Sarah Laaroussi, Jason Page Participants: Wendy Andreu, Olivia Gragnon, Andrea Leo, Germaine vd Sanden, Jan Pieter Kaptein, Sarah Lagrenée, Max Lipsey, Tamira Cahana, Franco Peters, Wout Wolf, Lena, Kate Booij, Joel Booij, Jason Page, Sarah Laaroussi
The Domestic Reuse workshop took place at the Onomatopee gallery (Eindhoven) as an experiment around the question of open-source design. It is part of Onomatopee’s Nest project entitled We Can Make It If We Try, Scenarios for design democracy.
Generally used to quickly put up partition walls, plaster tiles are the domestic building material par excellence. This readily available matter is used here as a crude medium to establish a three dimensional exquisite corpse production system, in which individual planning is to be challenged by collective labour. The tiles are being reshaped by various participants (armed with basic household tools) and piled up into moulds in order to slip-cast ceramic forms. Just like the surrealist method, the first tile is freely carved by the first participant. The top outline of the finished carved shape is transferred onto the bottom of the second tile in order to be used by the second participant as a starting point to carve his/her own part. And so on… Therefore, eventhough each part is conscientiously directed in accordance to the vision of its maker, the final outcome results from an ungraspable collective will.