Critical Spatial Practice

Dissolving the Dwelling (2021–2)
  • Christine Bjerke | Vienna and Copenhagen

  • Christine Bjerke, Dissolving the Dwelling (2021–2). Exhibition view, Photograph by Simon Veres (2021). Christine Bjerke, Dissolving the Dwelling (2021–2). Exhibition view, Photograph by Simon Veres (2021). Christine Bjerke, Dissolving the Dwelling (2021–2). Exhibition view, Photograph by Simon Veres (2021). Christine Bjerke, Dissolving the Dwelling (2021–2). Exhibition view, Photograph by Simon Veres (2021). Christine Bjerke, Dissolving the Dwelling (2021–2). Exhibition view, Photograph by Simon Veres (2021). Christine Bjerke, Dissolving the Dwelling (2021–2). Exhibition view, Photograph by Simon Veres (2021).
  • Dissolving the Dwelling (2021–2)
  • Christine Bjerke | Vienna and Copenhagen
  • ‘Connected to the history of capitalism, there are histories to be found that provide evidence of critique, resistance, counteracting, experimentation with alternatives, and lived realities of diverse economies.’

    Angelika Fitz and Elke Krasny, eds, Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet (MIT Press, 2019)


    The domestic is often seen as a place of privacy, enclosure, and constancy – yet it is being disrupted and transformed by the both invisible and visible layers that are added through global connectivity and disproportional access to a private and safe realm. This digitalisation of domesticity is rapidly challenging the physical framework of the dwelling as it increasingly expands the outline of the home beyond its built space – producing a constant roaming through spatial temporalities.

    Flows of technological data, information, and markets are repeatedly being introduced into the private realm – changing how it is possible to navigate both the interior and exterior. Online is a space of privilege; it holds excessive spaces where unequal value systems thrive while perpetuating unpaid domestic labour. Meanwhile, the digitalised dwelling also has the potential to unleash new ways of creating alternative actions of exchange, furthering modes of potential for gendered and financial equity.

    Dissolving the Dwelling seeks to explore transitional spaces in-between the private and the public, the virtual and the physical, the official and the unofficial – all within the intangible notion of what a private realm might be. Through built reflections on spaces and objects, the exhibition constructs a series of incomplete zones dissolving the dwelling into the city.


    Biography

    Christine Bjerke is an architect and educator based in Copenhagen, Denmark. She graduated with M.Arch from The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. 

    She is co-founder of the international think tank In-Between Economies and in 2020 she founded Christine Bjerke Studio. Her interests focus on the intersections of the built environment, domesticity, labour, economic development, technology, design, and architecture.

    She is currently teaching on the Urbanism & Societal Change Masters Programme at The Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design, Conservation. She is a frequent writer on architecture and design with contributions to MacGuffin, ED, Archinect, among others. She is also the initiator and editor of the longterm research and design project The FX Beauties. 

    www.christinebjerke.com

    christine.bjerke@gmail.com


    Practices

    In Christine’s practice, she aims to investigate a spatial approach through writing and designing which addresses larger societal changes such as changing value systems, the digitalisation of labour, and how the domestic is being redefined. Key to her practice is an exploration into how to bring in more perspectives, while at the same time, retaining awareness of one’s own blind spots.


    Keywords
    Domesticity, labour, reflections, digitalisation, equity

    References

    bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (New York: Routledge, 2015.) 

    Louise Bourgeois, Cell (Eyes and Mirrors) (1989–93).

    Toyo Ito, Pao I & Pao II (1985 and 1989).


    Other projects
  • Visible vs Invisible, (2022–)
  • Naisten Kaupunki – Työkaluja oman tilan valtaamiseen, (City of Women — Tools for Occupying Space) (2022) 
  • Moonfuture: Migration, Images and the Geological Interior (2022)
  • Dissolving the Dwelling (2021–2)
  • Washing White (2021)
  • Um Slaim Collective (2021)
  • Sonic Acts of Noticing (2021)
  • MGM_OurStarterCulture_5
    Our Starter Culture, (2021)
  • Milan Gender Atlas, (2021)
  • Making Map I: Animals and Anachronistic Architectures, development in progress (2021–)
  • Collateral (2021)
  • The Wandsworth Food Bus, (2020)
  • Progetto Minore. Alla ricerca della minorità nel progetto archiettonico ed urbanistico (2020)
  • 1-DMZ
    Architecture and Co-Existence: DMZ as Site, (2020)
  • Time on Site (2019)
  • Stori Mwd (A Story of Mud), (2019)
  • not nothing (August 2019)
  • Hungry Mothers, En La Frontera (2019 – present)
  • Exchanging Values at Bank (18 October 2019)
  • Cybiog: locating the digital self, (2019/20, 2 mins 45 secs)
  • Civic Pedagogy, learning as critical spatial practice (2019)
  • An Independent and Flexible and Precarious and Overworked Rehearsal, (January – December 2019)
  • An environmental history of La Guajira (2019)
  • A Weird-Tender in progress (2019)
  • Cecilie Sachs Olsen
    A walk in your words (25.01.2019)
  • Portal Zaryadye: A Portal Not Only to Heaven, But Aslo To Hell (24 July – 12 August 2018)
  • Text-isles: sowing an idea, October (2018)
  • Gilly-image-1
    Silent Conversation, (2018 – ongoing)
  • Objects removed for study (2018)
  • Female Futures Lexicon on Space (2018/2019)
  • 5, Big Bang 2 / Mid Graemetruby
    Bank Job, (2018–2020 and beyond)
  • Natalia Irina Roman, Tick Tack, Berlin (2019). Photographer: Natalia Irina Roman
    Along the Lines (2018–)
  • windwoundweatherwovenwirewoman [performance] (2017)
  • Viscous Myths (2017/2018)
  • The Pass (October 2017 – June 2018)
  • The House Alice Built (2017/2019)
  • Productive Withdrawals: Art Strikes, Art Worlds, and Art as a Practice of Freedom (December 2017)
  • Request for the unrequested voluntary interlinguisticality (2017)
  • Caring for Communities (2017 – 2019)
  • Bodies + Borders (2017 – present)
  • a place called … (Spring 2017)
  • Uppland (2016 – 18)
  • Music for Masterplanning (2016 – 17)
  • P | A | N – Proyecto Amasandería Nacional (2016)
  • Make Me Yours: How Art Seduces (2016)
  • Island Icarus (2016–2019)
  • In My Mothers’ Garden: Memories and practices of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp (2016)
  • Having not felt like eating, but eaten, I sat down to eat / tea … (2016)
  • Desiring the Dark: Feminist Scenographies, the City and the Night, (2016–2019)
  • Bamboo dialogues (2016)
  • ASSET ARREST (2016)
  • Alternative Arrangements: Walking the Border in Ireland (2016 – ongoing)
  • Matter of the Manor (2015 – 19)
  • The First World Congress of the Missing Things (2014)
  • Private Choices, Public Spaces (2014)
  • Hanging Matters (2014)
  • Act#5 & Act#6: What does Mai Mai Mean? (March 2014 – December 2016)
  • 03-FLATS (2014)
  • (small memorials), 2013–15
  • Mount Patawerta
    Gardening for Untold Ecologies: A Manual for Making an Arid GARDEN Out There, (2013)
  • A Game of Dominoes (2013)
  • Lina & Gio: the last humanists (February – June 2012)
  • Learning-through-Touring (2012)
  • Empty Words Build Empty Homes (2012)
  • Ridley’s (2011)
  • Hustadt project, 2008 – (2011)
  • Palimpsest Performances (2010 – 2014)
  • Negotiating Conflict: Bordering Practices in a Divided Beirut (2010 – 2014)
  • Expanded Architecture (2010 – 2014)
  • Unfixing Place: A Study of Istanbul through Topographical Practices (2008)
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