Apparatus, Inhabitation and Tooling.

Apparatus, Inhabitation and Tooling: Composing the Commons at Casco from the Grand Domestic Revolution to We Are the Time Machines: Time and Tools for Commoning.

The Grand Domestic Revolution (2010–present) is a multifaceted ‘living research’ project developed by Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory that explores notions of the commons and reconsiders approaches to reproductive labor. Inspired by the late nineteenth-century ‘material feminist’ movement in the US that experimented with communal solutions to isolated domestic life and work, GDR began with the rental of an apartment in Utrecht where artists worked and lived. It has since toured the world with its comprehensive library and in being housed and expanded by other spaces.

With reference to the project’s subsequent publication: the Grand Domestic Revolution (2014) Yolande van der Heide will detail projects including Read-in and Town Meetings featured in Chapters 1 and 2 of the publication and relate them to the notion of “Tooling” as put forth by the current exhibition at Casco” We Are the Time Machine: Time and Tools for Communing (14 November - 13 March 2016). Herein Casco’s concern with potential sites for the commons (dubbed as the space between private and public space during the GDR project) will be reflected upon in light of the central questions of We Are the Time Machines, namely:  “How can artworks and other activities taking place through art institutions be shared as knowledge—embodied and practical—for the commons? How should art and art institutions act if they intend to practice the commons, rather than only reflect on it? More specifically, how can an exhibition, the most prominent form of public sharing by art organizations, work toward building—and sustaining—the commons?