LOOKING FOR A HOME

Kristyna and Marek Milde

part of the Express + Local project

curated by Tara Mathison

March 15 – June 30, 2011

Looking for a Home, Installation view, 2011, found furniture and household Â objects

The installation project Looking for a Home by Kristyna and Marek Milde is a lounge environment accommodating the different needs of its users; working, resting, and chatting, the common situations taking place in the realm of domesticity. In this project, these activities are based on exploring our daily activities and their connection to the mechanism of consumerism along with the culture of disposal. The project commissioned by the Queens Art Center at the Queens College Library is created solely with found furniture and domestic objects dumped in the trash on the streets of New York City. For a one-month period, the artists were looking through garbage for useful pieces and gradually adding them to the installation. The selective mechanism in the collecting had only one rule: only pieces were collected that the artists would have wanted to take home themselves. The Mildes explain:

Creating the installation “Looking for a Home” recalls our experience of collecting furniture on the streets and furnishing our apartment with these finds after we moved to New York. The furniture, besides its functionality, provided a connection to a history grounded in the city by becoming the bridge to local memories and associations. After leaving behind most of the familiar and personal, the found objects, originally pieces of somebody else’s home, helped us to overcome the feeling of displacement by connecting us through the object to the local context; the people and their stories.

The found objects have been cleaned and if necessary repaired before putting into the installation. The objects have been cataloged and the location of the find has been marked on the map of Manhattan displayed along with the piece. The discarded mostly still functioning objects, which assumingly have been replaced by new commodities, are, in Looking for a Home, kept alive, revealing a personal layer connected to the story of its users and their environment.

The artists state: “While the sale of anonymously mass-produced household objects is encouraged by the supportive framework of fictional stories around the objects and designers, “Looking for a Home” focuses on the stories of the objectsâ€™ lives and their use, adding an enriching personal layer of a real story connected to specific people and their environment.”

The lounge developed into a fully functional and somewhat luxurious living environment that includes a comfortable leather sofa, palm plant, or modernist classic pieces such as the Breuer’s Cesca chair inviting to sit down and relax, for a longer stay there is a bookcase and fully functional TV set with a collection of DVDs. Finally, a catalog titled ” THE NEW YORK SPRING COLLECTION 2011 ” in the form of a lifestyle magazine has been produced, following the story of each object localizing its specific context. While Looking for a Home serves the Art Center and Library visitors for gathering, resting, and studying, the project addresses the issue of a fast-paced cycle of consumerism and the impermanence and the interchangeability of things, where actual ownership often represents a short-lived affair before rejection. It points out the state of abundance and rejection recalling environmental awareness in the realm of domesticity.

PHOTOS AND INFO ABOUT THEÂ NEW ARRIVALSÂ

PHOTOS FROM THEÂ INSTALLATION PROGRESS

LOOKING FOR A HOME PROTOCOL:Â

1. To create a lounge environment for the Queens College Art Center, which represents an island of private sphere within the public institutional space.

2. All objects are found on the streets of New York City by the artists during the period of one month.

3. The pieces are selected with the criteria, that the artist would like to have them at home.

4. The objects are repaired and cleaned and gradually added to the installation.

5. Each object is documented and categorized in the Records of the Finds and the location of its findÂ is traced on a map.

6. If Â during the search period a better piece is found, than one already included in the installation, it may replace and upgrade the previous one.

7. Finally a catalog following the process of the project is produced.