Charlotte A Morgan new site at http://www.charlotteamorgan.co.uk: Caban Unnos Interview

Caban Unnos collaborators No Fixed Abode, Tony Broomhead amd Dan McTiernan, interviewed by CAM and Anga’aefonu Bein-Vete

INTERVIEW - CABAN UNNOS
No Fixed Abode, Tony Broomhead and Dan McTiernan of the project Caban Unnos, interviewed by and Anga’aefonu Bain-Vete and Charlotte A. Morgan, Berlin 5th June 2008.

Caban Unnos. Photo (c) Jonathon Groeger. Courtesy Wooloo Productions

Caban Unnos is a collaborative project between Sheffield (UK) based artist collective No Fixed Abode (Horatio Eastwood and Terry Slater), Tony Broomhead, architect and partner in Amenity Space, and Dan McTiernan, project manager of free online waste exchange whywaste.org.uk. The project is centred around the design and construction of a one night house in Alexanderplatz; Berlin, and is taking place as part the New Life Berlin festival, organised and facilitated by Wooloo.org. Assistance from participants and volunteers has been initially brought together through the Wooloo.org network. This interview takes place two days prior to the build, which is scheduled for 07.06.08.

Charlotte A. Morgan (CAM): Can I start by asking you to introduce the initial concept of the project and talk more about the folk tradition of the one night house?

Horatio Eastwood (HE): Well the reason that we say belief and not law, is that the one night house tradition doesn’t have any founding in law anywhere in the world though it is a worldwide phenomenon. It is believed that if you can construct a house between sunset and sunrise without being disturbed, you then obtain free copyhold of that land. Different countries upholding this belief stipulate different conditions, for example in Wales the house has to have smoke coming from the chimney by sunrise, and in turkey you just need to have a roof.

Anga’aefonu Bain-Vete (AB-V): Is there a specifically German one?

HE: Probably, we haven’t found one; it is all over Europe…

Terry Slater (TS): A lot of people seem to know about the Turkish one over here as there’s such a massive Turkish community, but we’re bringing it from a UK perspective I suppose, so it’s a contribution to what’s already circulating really.

AB-V: How do you see this project as being specifically relevant to the location of Berlin; having a one night house in the city? I’m thinking in terms of local people, beyond the actual build and inviting people to participate that way. How did you come to choose the location?

TS: I suppose there are a couple of things there. Initially we’d obviously been invited to do it here, and the relevance to Berlin came quite late through our research. We found books by certain people that were working in similar ways in Berlin just because of the nature of the city and how much disused space there is. The space is so contested and you don’t really get that anywhere else to the extent that you do here.

HE: One of the key things we’ve found, though we didn’t specifically intend to do the project in Berlin, is that there are a lot of spaces that are produced in a similar way through a community of interested parties, and they will claim land or buildings through various means. Something that’s happening in Berlin is that it’s starting to receive serious money and be developed because of interest in the art community, and the socially produced spaces or free open spaces are beginning to disappear. It’s completely by coincidence that we’ve come at a point, but then again you could argue that maybe it isn’t, and that this is the reason that the festival’s happening.

TS: This is one of the things, when you ask, ‘could it be done anywhere else?’ Well yes, it probably could…

CAM: …but it would have taken on other issues?

TS: It took route with us in Sheffield through long term research and we refined it into a project for Berlin. Sheffield has had major investment and all of a sudden is becoming a completely different place, and in many cities you may encounter similar issues. Even in terms of materials used, we’re looking for this urban vernacular material and they’re probably quite similar in many places.

Caban Unnos. Photo (c) Andreas Bastiansen. Courtesy Wooloo Productions

Tony Broomhead (TB): I think architecturally, the fact that the build is in Berlin was a big draw for me. It’s one of the few cities that have been split down the middle for decades and architecturally the two sides to the city are very different. In the last fifteen years or so that has begun to change; this new wave of development and gentrification, and of unifying of the two halves architecturally and in terms of city planning, have completely changed the nature of the city. Projects like this help people reassess what’s happening to their city, and by creating something that’s essentially made of scrap, rubbish or a material that everyone can identify with, quite interesting questions start to be posed as to what we’re building cities out of and how much control we have over that development. Plonking something in the middle of a main city square is quite provocative.

CAM: Tony and Dan, as you both come to this project as architectural or environmental practitioners, I’m wondering how this kind of project might open up possibilities for your own professional exploration that maybe wouldn’t be possible within your own practices. The notion of functionality is quite prominent within a lot of current discourse surrounding the relationship between art and architecture, and perhaps this project allows a certain amount of freedom from the legal and functional elements of your work that have real implications in what you can produce.

AB-V: You’re also moving more into the realm of what I would consider to be art that architecture, because of the paradox of constructing a space of shelter and yet this space then being impermanent.

TB: I’d argue that this project is more relevant architecturally than most architecture projects are as it's driven by artistic desire and a sense of social responsibility. Also, the design has grown out of the materials that are being used, where it can be placed and how long it takes to be built. It’s taking on a lot of architectural issues; the difference is that normally there’s someone paying the bills, making demands that affect architectural creativity, and the social implications of placing a building permanently are far greater.

CAM: So this kind of project opens up a space for criticality in your work that goes beyond the structure itself?

Dan McTiernan (DMc): I think that architecture should do that anyway. Maybe the problem is that it doesn’t always, and this work is kind of pure architecture – it’s about what a building means in a space and how people interact with it.

CAM: When you speak of the networks or communities that you want to build or insert yourself into, what interests me is the mode of participation that you used and how important this element is within the work. Originally your call out through Wooloo.org and other networks seemed to intend to create a group of participants that would all influence the project in different ways, and this process would build some kind of shared experience. Perhaps the fact that Tony and Dan were personally invited makes them collaborators rather than participants.

TS: Definitely, yes.

Caban Unnos. Photo (c) Andreas Bastiensen. Courtesy Wooloo Productions

AB-V: How much of the participatory element is based on keeping the ball rolling and egging each other on throughout the night, and how much is conceptually based and focused on collective activity?

TB: Well it needs a lot of people to get it done.

DMc: The reality is that it has to be collaborative and it has to be organised.

AB-V: So if it was manageable with one or two people to do it alone?

DMc: But that’s the whole point; it isn’t, building never is.

AB-V: Conceptually though, how much weight does this have in the project; the participatory act?

TB: That’s the key thing; it’s literally the weight of the materials.

CAM: So they are just helpers then.

DMc: Of course they’re not because it is a collective endeavour, and building used to be a social endeavour as well and that’s what we’re generating. Even if it’s an imported Sheffield community I don’t think that matters.

TB: If you’re building a house for someone, everyone has input and that’s what’s important, even if it isn’t artistic input. They still take pride in the work.

DMc: That’s quite in-keeping with the notion of the one night house anyway isn’t it; it’s friends and family that would have pitched in.

CAM: A limitation of the Wooloo.org context may be that it wasn’t possible for you to put the call out to people from non-art backgrounds who may have been interested in helping.

HE: Martin [Rosengaard, co-curator of New life Berlin] did suggest that the community on Wooloo.org was not strictly art based; I can’t possibly comment on that really. We have tried to do a lot of participatory things and get people involved before, but we’ve learned to question why these people would want to be involved if they don’t necessarily have a vested interest or get any obvious benefit from it. We have worried what we are actually offering this group of helpers, but the majority really do just want to help; they don’t need artistic input.

CAM: It can mainly be other artists interested in the experience or the project. We’ve discussed many aspects of the project in its present sense now - how do you expect the build and the finished house will be represented in the future? There’s been some debate surrounding how the Wooloo.org site will be carried on - will the work receive any publicity outside of this context and how important is that to you?

Caban Unnos. Photo (c) Jonathan Groeger. Courtsey Wooloo Productions

AB-V: You’re going to start a revolution…

HE: It’s difficult to say as it is in the future… This is the first project we’ve done that we feel we could do again in another context where techniques can be refined or explored. We will archive it on our website and these guys [TB and DMc] might too, I haven’t really thought about it.

TB: When you’ve done something physical, it will lead onto other things. Even if the house falls down or whatever, we’ll have learned something from that, and the reason that everyone is sat around this table today is the desire to ‘build a thing in Berlin’. That’s incredibly credible by itself, but no doubt more will come from it.

Charlotte A. Morgan is an artist and writer, currently co-developing and curating Transit Projects, a mobile project space based in Sheffield UK and online.

Anga'aefonu Bain-Vete is a practising artist, collaborative curator and cross-disciplinary writer, currently completing a Master's in Visual Culture at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
www.angaaefonu.com

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