INTERFACE

REVIEW

Dreaming of a one-night house....

New Life Berlin Shop, Berlin
7 June 2008

Reviewed by: mary kate connolly

How many artists does it take to build a house? Answer: as many as show up at secret location in Berlin’s city centre at 10pm tonight! A Welsh tradition borne out of rural poverty, necessity and an ancient legal loophole forms the inspiration behind ‘Caban Unnos’, Horatio Eastwood’s and Terence Slater’s aka ‘No Fixed Abode’s’ contribution to the New Life Berlin festival. Yesterday they held an informal introduction to their project at Chloriner Strasse, outlining to the assembled gathering, their team, aims and objectives.  Whilst traditions of ‘one night’ dwellings have existed throughout Europe, No Fixed Abode have drawn directly from the Welsh incarnation of this phenomenon which saw people constructing houses overnight in order to stake an otherwise unattainable claim on a dwelling and its surrounding land. The crucial factor (or certainly one which seems to resonate with Horatio and Terry) being that smoke must have risen from the chimney by dawn to render the house safe from the laws and claws of demolition.  There are so many elements of this project which excite me. Alongside the wholesome ingredients of community and team work, there is the childlike pleasure to be derived from secret construction of a ‘house’….memories of huts, hideouts and gangs, and the telltale purple punctures of ensnared splinters in grimy, sunburnt hands hover somewhere near.  As a means of introduction to the one night dwelling concept, we are shown a documentary in which the inhabitants of a small Welsh village resurrected not only the physical traditions but also the spiritual ones of community and cohesion in their building of a one night house. Their modern clothing covered by rough rags and topped with flat caps and gentrified top hats in a nod to the garb worn by their forefathers, they toiled through a September night equipped with JCBs, mud, sticks, and above all, a unified singular purpose. Despite the documentary eliciting mirth over the Welsh native tongue and eccentric garb of its prominent characters, it provided a very tangible illustration of the inspirational roots of Caban Unnos. From this, No Fixed Abode led the audience further down their visionary path – how all of this translates into the here and now of sunny Berlin for these two artists. Enter Tony Broomhead and Dan Mc Tiernan, an architect and project manager respectively, both of whom have been previously involved in similar projects; the audio link up of two garden sheds, one located in the Yorkshire sculpture park and one in Portobello Market London, and the design and construction of a house made solely of waste materials. Alongside Horatio and Terry, Tony and Dan described the logistical process that has formed what is to be No Fixed Abode’s creative take on a one night build. Firstly the raw materials were discussed. In the case of the Welsh documentary it was striking to see the necessity of utilising the surrounding environment and attuning to the rhythms and limitations provided by nature. Thus a delicate balance was reached – weighing up the implications of the brief span of darkness afforded by a midsummer night countered with the pliable wetness of twigs and grass of Autumn in the UK. Watching this, the potentially unfertile nature of our present environment in Berlin’s city centre was all at once keenly visible, made all the more so by the rough wall fashioned by a wooden frame and black bin liners which leaned against the naked window frames of 89 Choriner Strasse; a crude attempt at shutting out the sunlight which bleached the video projection on the back wall to indistinguishable sepia flickerings. Every once in a while our makeshift screen would with a whoosh of wind, crash backwards onto the pavement reminding us all of the potential ineptitude of our building acumen and the temporality of our setting. But Horatio and Terry’s solution to this lack of natural materials will be to harvest the year round bountiful crop of the city…waste. In never-ending supply, waste provides a variety of raw materials to be manipulated however one might choose.  And so the Caban Unnos house will be built using wooden packing crates and water coolers. Rather than the rural idyll evoked by the thatched cottage creation in the Welsh documentary, the Berlin house- as depicted by Tony’s architectural plans- will portray a vision of urban cool; a structure that would be at home among the minimalist and light infused glamour of a contemporary art space. And the build itself? Tonight (7^th June) under cover of darkness, without permission and in a very central location…. The prospect of the one night build is undeniably exciting, and the combination of the geographical location and its situation within an art festival all infuse this project with an infectious element of risk and collective fun. There are however further implications to be considered given the project’s position within a canon of art practice. Is this art? Does the fact that Horatio and Terry have actually had to buy some of the waste materials involved encroach on the ethos of their project? Will the build in fact happen or will authorities intervene to send artists and crates packing? This afternoon No Fixed Abode will hold a panel discussion to tease out some of these broader issues. They anticipate there will be productive dialogue between project organisers and participants. Brass tacks - presumably reused ones - will be got down to, and the thorny debate of process vs. product might even rear its artistic head. Then it’s to work…‘Pob Iwc’ (good luck in Welsh) or should one say ‘Viel Glück’? 

This text was developed as part of the Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin critical writing initiative http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog/

Writer detail:
Mary Kate Connolly is a freelance writer and movement practitioner based in London

mary11378@yahoo.com |

Venue detail:
New Life Berlin Shop

Back to top

Post your comment

No one has commented on this article yet, why not be the first?

To post a comment you need to login

Back to top

Back to reviews »