Settlements, 2010
It is said that every ideology is an utopia. Both of them distort reality so far as their ideas do not fit into reality: ideology because it conceals reality, utopia because it exceeds its limits. The prime examples of this vision are the mass housing constructions implemented into many European countries - a remarkable trademark of communist and postcommunist- era.
Communistic ideology was about abolition of class division, enforcing social justice, liquidising poverty, and nationalising the private value/property. The aim was to create a new classless society structured upon common ownership: everyone as equal, with the same needs and everyone can live in the same conditions.
Notion of individuality created by communist authorities became a fiction and pathology in the same time. Paradoxically what was promised by communist regime was simultaneously destroyed, by creating infrastructure such as mass housing estates, which worked against postulates of individual expression. Lack of pragmatism and concept of human nature within the attempt to create common living in utopian conditions caused one of the biggest issue which reality of people from „commie blocks“ had to deal with. It is an issue of identity or actual non-identity and dehumanization.
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C-Type Prints,
mounted on aluminium,
100 x 120 cm
Uniques
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This vision of society was very influcial for the french architect Le Corbusier. Based on this idea he designed housing estate in Marseille „Unite d’Habitation“. „Vertical village“ for up to 1600 people brings together Le Corbusier's vision for communal living with the needs and realities of post-war society. Le Corbusiers's most famous work was enormously influential and is often cited as the initial inspiration of the Brutalist architectural style and philosophy.