FLIP-HOUSE
Flip-House I, installation view, The Red House, Syracuse, 2018
Mixed media installation, dimension variable, 2009
Flip-House* is conceived in response to the current economic crisis in the US, changing living conditions globally and the state of emergency resulting from those processes. It utilizes survival strategies borrowing from communities in continuous crisis and takes the form of a house. One strategy is a form of social mimicry by which one temporarily adopts the texture of a specific place to pass for the other. Flip-House will move to different locations and will be altered each time. This process will be documented with photography and video.
Flip-House is a convertible hybrid (the walls are connected with hinges and can be flipped around horizontally) and combines oppositional models – those of suburbia (formal) and underground (informal**). The house is nomadic (mobile) and dynamic (changes its function when positioned in a new environment). Being in code with the place it temporary occupies, it can pass for suburbia home, shanty, street market or something else.
The installation at the Red House, Syracuse*** reveals the problematic nature of homogenizing western models and their relationship with the local tradition. The interior of the house which becomes exterior when flipped around) is uniformed and completely covered with vinyl siding – a sign of suburbanization, is juxtaposed with the evolving under-construction exterior — market, storage, speakeasy. A video inside the house shows the process of transforming my home in Bulgaria, built in traditional for the region style and materials to a suburban (Western) home covered with vinyl siding. Watch a video except here.
This work draws parallel between societies in different stages of capitalist development (East and West) and looks for crossovers in the form of hybrid cultures and architectures.
* Flipping is a term used primarily in the United States to describe practice of buying an asset and quickly reselling (or flipping) it for profit. Though flipping can apply to any asset, the term is most often applied to real estate and initial public offerings.
** Informalism is a way for individuals to exert direct agency over the basic facts of their daily lives and remix their immediate reality, it is a catchall term that combines notions of the informal, or underground, economy with popular, vernacular modes of remaking objects, buildings, and lives. (Urban China, curated by Benjamin Godsill, New Museum, NY).
Flip-House was produced for the exhibition, XAYC, Red House, Syracuse curated by Natalia Mount, 2009. XAYC stands for Hybrid Authenticity Under Construction and was a dual show with the artist and dj Joro-Boro.
