The Institute of Dwelling was a year long artistic enquiry devised by artists Marilyn Lennon, Colette Lewis and Elinor Rivers. The enquiry investigated ideas of ‘dwelling’ and ‘being’, to excavate its ontology and foreground embodied knowledge and human agency within the current discourse around the construction of homes and dwellings in 21st century Ireland. In this period the public imagination has been colonised by a dominant narrative of housing provision. The research practice endeavoured to problematise a market driven model of building or designing a home. Our enquiry opened up a critical space for encounter, dialogue and engagement with the collective imagination.
As a tactic of enquiry the ‘construction worker’ aesthetic was appropriated and reconfigured as a ‘Dwelling Agent’ figure enacted by the three artists. The ‘Dwelling Agent’ figure subverted the construction worker aesthetic by appropriating and feminising the workwear, wearing red boiler suits and ‘magical’ headgear and using dwelling agent construction tools as performative objects. A series of public interventions were carried out as performative actions generated from vernacular and folk practices, playing with the landscape that lies between ritual and routine, the absurd and the sublime. These actions focused on the intelligence and sensitivities inherent in the body and functioned as playful entry points and devices to provoke and harness the collective imagination. The artistic enquiry included a number of site specific, public performative actions and exhibits.
