Pverty Housing. Americus, Georgia MAK-Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna – curated by Andreas Krištof
Poverty Housing. Americus Georgia
MAK–Museum for Applied Arts Vienna
with Rebecca Baron
curated by Andreas Krištof
October 2008–March 2009
Installation views:
@ Wolfgang Woessner/MAK
Film stills:
@ Rebecca Baron/Dorit Margreiter
MAK–Museum for Applied Arts Vienna
[…] Enter Rebecca Baron and Dorit Margreiter's Poverty Housing. Americus, Georgia, a film installation on the subject of the global housing that asks "what is a picture?" — this time in the realm of contemporary aesthetics. Walking into the installation's first room, the viewer is confronted with an elaborate projection apparatus looping a 14-minute 35mm film. Since the projector faces a partition wall, bifurcating the projector from the projection, the viewer sees the film apparatus in advance of the film's projection. Moreover, as the apparatus evokes the monumental objectness of sculpture, it is fitting that this first room is brightly lit and painted white. Moving beyond the projector and partition wall, the viewer enters a second room, unlit and painted black, where the film is projected. The installation thus consists of two rooms, one containing an object, the other an im-age. The projected image presents a second object. Only this one is virtual: a one-to-one replica of an existing South-African slum that Baron and Margreiter filmed at the Global Village & Discovery Center theme park in Americus, Georgia (USA).
Organized by Habitat for Humanity International, a nondenominational Christian ministry that facilitates the building of low-cost housing in 89 countries, the Global Village & Discovery Center reconstructs sample poverty houses from Africa, Asia and Central America. If the idea is to give people a first-hand experience of the poverty that strikes so many global communities existing at the margins of free market capitalism, then extreme realism is their method of choice.[…]
Text by Juli Carson