Hestia was the Greek god who got the hearth – the fireplace – and also the home as her divine domain. Hestia, as the ruler of fire, was honored by the Greeks before each sacrificial rite. Her fire, burning in every home and every town hall, was never put out.
The work is presented as an installation at the bookstore Anti, activated at two occasions in a performance where a monologue I is performed, and as a study group (partly in Swedish) at the Inter Arts Center.
The starting point for HESTIA is a written monologue, where a bitter and neglected goddess tells about the self but also about the history of the home from antiquity to the present day. She does this to remind us that myths and rituals invade the idea of domesticity also in our present time. Her story accounts for bloody sacrifices and household deities, collective dwellings and utopian projects, and of homes that are no homes but investments in the era of market capitalism.
The study group at Inter Arts Center offers an opportunity to close read some of the project’s source texts. The selected texts reflect an interest in different mythologies surrounding the notion of the home, and what social and political implications such myths entail.
Study circle at Inter Art Center
Date: 21, 28 September & 12, 19, 26 October at 19.00, limited to 10 participants.
Send notification to hnscarlsson@gmail.com. First come first served. Texts will be distributed upon registration. The study group will be in English if required by the participants, however one of the texts is in Swedish.
Installation on view at antikvariat Anti
Date: 26-27 September 2020 (Malmö Gallery Week), 12.00-18.00
Performance at 15.00 both days
Address: Drottninggatan 6b, Malmö
Literature and schedule
21 September
Jean Robert, ”Hestia and Hermes: the Greek imagination of motion and place”, I The International Journal of Illich Studies, vol 6 nr 1, 2018.
Arin Murphy-Hiscock, The House Witch, Your Complete Guide to Creating a Magical Space with Rituals and Spells for Hearth and Home , 2018, s. 83–100.
28 September
Jennifer Johung, ”Returning to the Hut: Dan Graham’s Two-Way Mirror Cylinder Inside Cube”, i Replacing Home From Primordial Hut to Digital Network in contemporary Art , 2011, s. 1–33.
12 October
Richard Sennett,Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilazation, 1994, pp. 70–86, 338–349, 370–376.
Hannah Arendt, ”The Public and the Private Realm”, iThe Human Condition, (1958) 1998, s. 22–73.
19 October
Ingrid Sahlin, ”Bostadslöshet som politiskt resultat”, i Fronensis: Hemmet och bostaden, nr. 42–43, 2013, s. 53–78
26 October
Kahina Amal Djiar, ”Locating Architecture, Post-Colonialism and Culture: Contextualisation in Algiers”, I Colonial Modern: Aesthetics of the Past Rebellions for the Future2010.
Dipesh Chakrabarty, ”Family, Fraternity, and Salaried Labor”, I Provincializing Europe: Postcolonigal Thought and Historical Difference, 2000, s. 214 –237.