Martina Schmuecker

Project Title

Negotiating the Home: An artistic autoethnography of 4th wave Urban Housing Co-operatives

Project Description

This research explores the lived experiences of members of a '4th wave' housing co-operative in the UK from an autoethnographic perspective, using an art practice as a method of investigation. I aim to contribute to a deeper understanding about a sustainable, self-organised form of housing in the UK that is under pressure from internal and external conditions. Narratives of a better future and critique on existing structures are central to the investigation, examining and making visible the complex relations between inhabitants and their buildings over time, as individuals and collaborative groups are engaged in their self-organisation in the contemporary urban environment of ever-increasing housing precarity. The resulting outcomes of the investigation in the form of installations, archive work and writing, will make a useful contribution to the work of communities themselves in the imagination of new co-operatives in the future. 

Supervisors

Rose Gilroy

Catrin Huber

James Craig