A Paper House Installation

2001 Rotterdam - Het Papieren Huis

A collaborative project by Jeanne van Heeswijk/Rolf Engelen/Siebe Thissen/Frans Vermeer/Innbetween, A Paper House began as a collage of documents, posters, pictures and photographs relating to old and more contemporary groupings, movements and individuals who squat in Rotterdam. The sculpture, made by Rolf Engelen, is built up from panels that were sawn out of the thick layers of posters that were illegally pasted up, year on year, on a recently demolished kiosk in Rotterdam city center. The collage shows the varied stories of activists, artists and young people who fought against capitalism and housing shortages, establishing their own communes, initiating campaigns, and searching for a different, perhaps better world, one which they had at least organized for themselves.

JEANNE VAN HEESWIJK

2004 Taipei - Do you believe in reality?

With recent interest in the Paper House by the Taipei Biennial 2004 “Do you believe in reality?”, the idea of A Paper House has been reworked to travel to different international cities physically collecting stories and material from local freespaces in an attempt to stimulate greater public awareness and discussion of these places. In Taipei, a new “room” has been added to the Paper House juxtaposing very different strategies and struggles of the local freespaces with the initial Rotterdam spaces.

IMAGES FROM TAIPEI BIENNIAL

2005 Vienna - Freibesetzt

A central project in the freibesetzt exhibition, the Paper House installation will visit the Kunsthalle Exnergasse in the WUK with the aim to collect the diverse freespace stories of Vienna. In collaboration with members from such “freiräume” we will construct a third “room” in the time leading up to the exhibition in July 2005. Various individuals, organisations and spaces (past and present) have been or will be contacted. For the Paper House Vienna “room” in freibesetzt, we would like to have the freiraum stories and materials from:

Aegidi-Spalo, Arena, EKH, FLUC, Freiraum, GAGA, (ex-public) Netbase, Tuewi, VEKKS, WUK

A clear definition of a “freespace” is evasive and we do not want to dictate what is or isn’t a freespace. And we know that this list is not complete rather an initial “cross-section” of examples. We would appreciate any comments and suggestions.

Documentation: The Paper House consists of as much “original” documentation as possible (which is treated with the utmost of care and will be returned!) but reproductions are also fine. For each space, the important elements which best tell the story of the space are often different but there are some common denominators.

• a brief text about the history (year when founded/evicted, social/cultural/political motivations, activities enabled by the space etc.)
• a brief text about the organisation/model (number of people, living and/or working space, verein/legal body etc.)
• photos of the space/building, people, activities, events etc.
• posters & flyers from diverse activities
• audio/video material (CD/VHS/DVD format)
• zines & publications
• newspaper clippings

Submissions of Materials: > Kunsthalle Exnergasse Büro, Währingerstrasse 59, 1090 Wien
or CONTACT: innbetween@hotmail.com / 0699 19741076 [christine~peter]
(We can provide some photocopy and digital printing possibilities for materials.)

IMAGES FROM FREIBESETZT PAPERHOUSE

+ Paper House Zine 3: Accompanying the exhibition will be the third edition of the Paper House Zine which includes the documentation, images, stories and various related texts.