2020 Recht auf Wohnen (AT)

The Housing Question: An Odyssey is a documentary video installation about contemporary urban living, the right to housing and the hidden financial entaglements of the urban housing market. The project deals with the privatization of our cities and the resulting gentrification processes, that more and more divide cities along monetary fault lines and class differences.

Synopsis

Viewers go on a journey with the artist, starting from a house in Basel, the tenants of which had to move out to make room for redevelopment, to discover the financial entanglements of the owners of the house which lead to a refugee camp in Burkina Faso where Doctors without Borders is helping internally displaced persons.

The work encourages viewers to think about their own living situation and introduces tools for research and resistance to affected persons. It does not only point to the concrete hardships of our current housing market, gentrification and the microphysics of power that prevail between landlords, tenants and real estate investors. It also reflects on the philosophical question of what dwelling is for us today and how we can think anew our relationship to the spaces we inhabit.