
ARS ELECTRONICA 2020
Festival for Art, Technology and Society
Rebecca Merlic
TheCityAsAHouse
9.9.2020 - 13.09.2020
Vast amounts of pictures, sounds, videos and 3d-scans are organized as environments in Rebecca Merlic’s The City as a House, in form of an interactive visual novel. A work about the experiment of a white European 30-year-old heterosexual human while not inhabiting a private apartment in Tokyo over a period of time. A speculative exploration of the possibilities of abolishing known forms of habitation. In 1903 Hermann Muthesius said: „Japan is in many respects the country that comes closest to one’s dream of paradise.“ The current situation in Tokyo allows for the emergence of a turbo-dense, capitalism-driven space generator for satisfying one’s personal longings and needs. Is a new form of nomad living not only being constructed in digital and virtual space, but also in concrete space? Shifting privacy in non-domestic spaces can lead to different architectural consequences. The City as a House depicts an illusion of private ownership of a place, we call home and transfers it into the cityscape where the human occupies a certain amount of space while moving or resting depending on time and need. What does it mean to be freed from the urge of craving a nest? A strategy of successfully surviving without being bounded. It is a proposition of a new form of society. The next self- improvement of humanity or going back to our roots. A visual novel build with a Game Engine to open up digital space for the human user to relive the experience ones created and open up new spaces.

a talk about feminism and experiencing the abolished private
Artist Talk about the feminist aspects of The City as a House, an interactive visual novel, an experiment of a white European 30-year-old heterosexual human, living in Tokyo without inhabiting a private apartment over a period of time.
PARALLEL VIENNA 2020
VENT gallery vs WAF gallery
AETHER
by
Lisa Jäger and Philipp Pess
22.9.2020 - 27.09.2020

