Shelter - day 01

Shelter - day 02

Shelter - day 03

Shelter - day 04

Shelter - day 05

films construction

© Ramona Poenaru & Odeta Catana

FR
A Berlin, nous avons travaillé à partir d’une idée chère à Thoreau : la maison commune - une maison-abri ouverte à tous, sans portes intérieures, ni cloisons, ni placards, où tout est visible et accessible et s'organise de façon organique, selon les occupants. En partant de cette idée de la maison commune nous avons construit un grand abri fait de boîtes en carton dans l'espace public berlinois. Thoreau a construit sa cabane dans la forêt - notre abri a été installé au milieu de la ville, dans la jungle urbaine que nous, habitants du XXIe siècle, occupons majoritairement. La proposition était de bâtir cet abri avec la participation du public, qui inventa au fur et à mesure des façon de l'habiter.

La construction s'est faite sur 4 jours et a été démontée en 1 jour.

EN

In Berlin, we worked on one of Thoreau’s key ideas – the communal house : a shelter-house open to everybody, without inside doors, partitions or cupboards, where everything is visible and accessible and that its occupants will organise in their own organic fashion.Based on this communal house idea, we choose to build a large shelter made of cardboard boxes in a public space in Berlin. Thoreau built his cabin with his own hands in a wood – our shelter has been set not in a wood, far from noisy people, but in the middle of the city, in an urban jungle, where most of us live in the XXIst century. We constructed this shelter together with the general public, who invented ways to live in it.

The construction was made in 4 days and was pulled down in 1 day.

"I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without gingerbread work, which shall still consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one’s head (…) a cavernous house (...) where some may live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg, that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, storehouse, and garret (...) A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird’s nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house."

H.D. THOREAU - WALDEN or LIFE IN WOODS

concept, performance | Ramona Poenaru, Gaël Chaillat

production | Des châteaux en l’air

supported by  | Romanian Cultural Institut in Berlin

sponsor | DS Smith, LP12 Mall of Berlin