Grand Domestic Revolution is a multi-faceted long term ‘living research’ project initiated by Casco - Office for Art, Design and Theory that calls for an interrogation of the domestic sphere in order to imagine new forms of living and working in common. From 5th March till 19th April Careof will address the notions of interiority, urban space and city dwelling, ecology and sustainability through the lens of the traveling exhibition Grand Domestic Revolution (GDR) GOES ON.

Inspired by the US late nineteenth-century material feminist movements that experimented with communal solutions to isolated domestic life and work, GDR involves artists, designers, domestic workers, architects, gardeners, activists and others to collaboratively experiment with and re-articulate the domestic sphere, challenging traditional and contemporary divisions of private and public. In the Milan iteration - which follows those in London, Londonderry, Ljubljana, Stockholm and Malmö – GDR GOES ON takes on a different configuration and comes into contact with Careof’s extensive video archive, with documentation and works by Italian artists and architects, generating a new entangled view of the urban and the domestic sphere.

The set for the GDR GOES ON exhibition in Milan has been developed by the Italian designer collective AUT with the artist Christian Nyampeta. Designed as a house, the works are displayed as a series of discursive events during the show, this production develops a new formulation of the concept of “living space”. At the eve of the Milano EXPO, taking account of all its possible repercussions, the project starts from the analysis of the local context and time, in its interaction with the Careof spaces and the city of Milan.
Will the exhibition GDR GOES ON - Milan be an occasion to reflect on the idea of “home” as a social issue? Is conceiving a collective form of domesticity possible? Starting from these key questions, the articulation of the exhibition space is developed from some exemplary aesthetic traditions that emerged from radical practices in Milan - and in Italy - around the end of the 60s, and tried to find answers to the need of forging a wider social materiality. The setting of GDR GOES ON - Milan at Careof is conceived starting from an inspiration suggested by the cathartic models of self-production released by Enzo Mari in the early 70s, as well as by the experiences of the artist, architect and designer Ugo La Pietra, who defined new interactions and alternative systems of habitability of public space, or again by collective experiences and workshops conducted by Global Tools in the mid 70s.

The core of GDR GOES ON - Milan at Careof consists of the GDR library, which is also the backbone of the project’s ongoing ‘living research.’
It offers points of engagement with the project itself and consists in a growing collection of over 200 books and documents considered to be “revolutionary” tools concerning domestic labor, modes of self organizing, artistic and (interior) architectural methods of participation and cooperation, urbanism and sustainability, feminism, alternative economies, feminist utopian science fiction, and philosophical inquiries into community. The works presented in the exhibition act as “catalyst” of these issues, developing a reflection in the space of the show and do an implicit referring to the GDR Library, which visitors are encouraged to read and consult, developing their own path through the project.

Alongside the work of dutch and international artists already presented in previous editions of GDR GOES ON - including Katerina Šedá, Matthijs de Bruijne, Helke Sander, Travis Meinolf, Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere - some Italian artists who work on the issue of community and urban space have been invited to contribute to this presentation in Milan: from the historical experiences of Ugo La Pietra, to the most recent works of Adelita Husni Bey and Park McArthur and Ludovica Carbotta. In dialogue with the texts and works presented in the exhibition space by GDR GOES ON, Careof Video Archive and the already (but recently) opened bookshop are part of the project as well. The first contributes with a selection of videos by Italian artists. Careof bookshop hosts a number of recent publications selected in close dialogue with the themes of GDR GOES ON by De Rooie Rat, a library in Utrecht specializing in political and social sciences.

For this occasion, Careof also invited dutch artists Doris Denekamp and Jimini Hignett for a residency, which will run from mid February onwards, to continue their long term research into the relation between beekeeping and urban space, a study they began in the Netherlands last year which culminated with the publication If Bees are few.… In May, the dutch artist Wietske Maas will also be in residency at Careof to develop a research on the topic of ecological sustainability in the urban space, which she addresses by mapping the presence of wild flora and vegetables in the city area and considering their edible potentiality - in relation with the different cultural traditions cohabiting in the territory of Milan.

During the exhibition a series of discursive events, presentationsand a screening will take place at Careof to expand the dialogue between the works, the device of the thematic library and the community - intended as a group in the making, which is reconfigured every time and for each event, following the interests, desires and urgencies arising from the themes on display.
In this series, to coincide with the opening, there will be the presentation of the Grand Domestic Revolution Handbook, which will be followed by a Read-in event with a selection of texts from GDR Library and a screening of the cooperative sitcom Our Autonomous Life, that offers a humorous glimpse into the interpersonal conflicts and political struggles of a fictional squatter living group in The Netherlands.
Two lecture performances in the form of convivial tastings will also take place in may as presentation of the residences of Doris Denekamp and Jimini Hignett and Wietske Maas.

Sponsor Campeggi, Bricoman
Thanks to Fabbrica del Vapore workshops

with the support of Nederlandse ambassade in Rome and Nederlandse
ambassade in Rome