In 1990, after the fall of the Iron curtain 30 years ago, most of Eastern Europe’s citizens were faced with a phenomenon they had never been bothered with before: homelesness. The previous regime criminalized homelessness and dealt with it by either incarcerating people or institutionalizing them in mental asylums.

Thus, after the revolution, the visibility of the homeless was a shock to the public eye and as they are “trapped” in the public realm, they must perform commonly private activities under the judgmental gaze of everyone around them. Such innocent activities as sleep became morally polluted just by being misplaced on the public space - private space axis.

Year: 2020
Type: other
Status: ongoing

Yet, sooner or later, due to increasing housing costs, more and more people will be faced with repositioning themselves on this axis, by moving more and more activities into the public eye.

As we see in highly-densified areas across the globe, inhabitants are re-negotiating their social contracts with the world around them by performing various “living-room” activities in public space: dining with friends, exercising, consuming mass-media, the rearing of children, doing laundry, etc.

And all of this to the bettering of the public spaces that welcome them, since the health of such spaces are measured by how inclusive and flexible they are.

PRAGULIC: Ivana Zittová, Václav Šíma, Roman Baláž, Tereza Jureckova, Petra Basova
Video and editing: Tomáš Svoboda