the House Project

The House Project in Pori, Finland took place in 1993 in close collaboration with the staff of the Pori Art Museum, local artists, and volunteer workers.

I once read somewhere that John Cage had taken one meter of recording tape with part of a Mozart Opera on it, cut it into many small pieces with a razor blade and then fixed them at random back together again.

Similarly, my idea was to take apart a wooden house and put it back together in another way. The house would still be a house (made of the same parts) but functionally speaking it would no longer be a house.

Shortly later, a small wooden house became available not far from the railroad tracks. It took a lot of work to take the house apart, clean the wooden parts, and get all the nails out. Once that job was completed, some of the workers reconstructed the house close to the museum. After a couple of weeks the installation was dismantled.