EVERYDAY SHORTCOMINGS

We reach home, turn the light and the heating on. We use hot water to take a shower and wash our clothes and dishes. We take such things for granted. But what about  those who are not given access to these basic utilities and services in Hungary? How do these shortages shape their lives and perspectives? Focusing on a specific segregated setting, with the active involvement of local communities, the project Everyday Shortcomings maps the existing living conditions  arising from the lack of public services and exposure to harmful environmental factors, while highlighting  the local responses to the given situation. Inactivity, resignation, and apathy are common features of the dominant mainstream visual representation of communities living under such conditions. Very few would think how active and creative a person needs to become in order to cope with the situation. Countless individual and community-based daily practices are invented that necessarily but ingeniously adapt to often particularly challenging circumstances.

In these places, space and time exist in a different dimension. The concept of private and public spaces is transformed. The interior of a home is narrow and multifunctional, the kitchen is often used also as a bathroom, while the yard is already a communal space. In the absence of utilities, activities such as getting the firewood or other solid fuel for heating, fetching water from a public well, carrying it home, heating and using it, add several extra hours of housework to the life of a local family. In addition, maintaining living spaces built of poor quality materials is extremely time-consuming and costly: the walls keep getting wet and mouldy, they require constant repainting, and pieces of furniture are quickly destroyed.

An interactive exhibition and a series of workshops will enable the visitors of the OFF-Biennale to meet and experience the challenges of the situation and to learn about the ingenuity and creative coping mechanisms of segregated communities.

For other opening hours, please contact pad@pad.network.

Please indicate you arrival, accessibility can be arranged (pad@pad.network)!