The pursuit of public Housing provision was one of the
20th century's redeeming contributions. Yet, in the
first decade of the 21st century, public housing as
an ideal is a contradictory territory resulting from policies that
value entrepreneurial charities or a subsidised private sector over
state funded and administered housing.
Estate is a timely contribution to the debates
entangling millions of individuals and countless neighbourhoods.
The starting point is a visual essay on the Haggerston West &
Kingsland estates in Hackney, east London, in the process of
demolition and re-building. The 56 photographs document the spaces
left behind when people were moved out. Despite residents living in
limbo for over 30 years as refurbishment plans were continuously
proposed, shelved and re-proposed, the images highlight their
innovative solutions to the difficulties of continuing to live
while an idea and a set of buildings were being abandoned around
them
Texts from Paul Hallam, Cristina Cerulli and Victor Buchli contextualise the artists' project through a set of questions resulting in a work that refuses to settle, creating dialogue between photography, archaeology of the recent past, autobiography and critical theory.
Myrdle Court Press, 2010. ISBN code '978-0-9563539-2-4'