Place of Happiness. Castle of Dreams. Paradies. // Karina Andree

 

A confrontation with the other

With the humming of the heat pumps in the ear, replaced by the buzzing of the automatic lawnmower robot in summer, one can see through the anthracite grey corner glazing into the gleaming kitchens with cooking island against the television-facing sofa corner. Interrupted by garages, two-storey, white-plastered detached houses line up in the new housing estates nestling on the edges of the villages. City villas and gabled-roof houses alternate, sometimes with wooden cladding that visually connects two windows to form a continuous band, sometimes with a canopy attached. Enclosed by a well-kept piece of greenery, these offer enough space to provide a home for a family of three to five. The construction of these homes usually marks the beginning of a new phase in life, after professional training has been completed. Where there is nothing yet, there is a lot of building activity, with signs from various companies on the plots, including Weber, Bien-Zenker, Allkauf, House&Country, Maier and Schwörer. These are all names of vendors selling designs and plans of a future home. While for many they respond to the "modern man's desire for a family-like petit bourgeois idyll", for others they represent "the epitome of de-individualised, alienating mass culture". (Cf. Wilhelm in Gill 2010: 7)

The audio play "Glücksort. Traumschloss. Paradies." is a reflection on the single-family house or prefabricated house market in Germany. As the author of this work, as the observer of the situations, as the curator of my thoughts, as the commentator of it all, as the speaker of the voices and as the model house assistant, I am the one who reflected and questioned, understood and misunderstood, and therefore also, along with sellers and buyers, the protagonist of this work.

Contact info graduate: karina.andree@gmail.com