Abstract
Topological Intimacies and Acts of Building Home is a durational site-responsive and lens-based project documenting my family’s act of building a home on a specific ecological site in suburban North Shore, Tāmaki Makaurau.
The project invites a gentle shift in place-making narratives based on the imaginings of house and home in Aotearoa. It aims to make visible the links between memory, history, place, space and belonging, to form a topological intimacy in the building of a home.
The specificity of the site leads the practice. The use of installation and interventions become way-markers and responses to the temporal shifts, affective complexities, and ongoing productive tensions. My durational lens-based methods include walking and gathering, temporary site installations, photo and video, documentation and archiving. The practice takes on as- pects of social engagement and participation, engaging an audience through proximity.
I employ Donna Haraway’s call to action ‘Staying with The Trouble’ to nav- igate the affective complexities of homemaking in contemporary times.1 ‘Staying’ becomes a means to engage gentle feminist actions and rituals involving flowers and building materials to situate the trouble (home) as an active site of ongoing political and social tensions.
These ‘acts of building home’ with flowers and string lines aim to engage reciprocity with the land and become a conversation between the topological intimacies of the site, the house and myself. The work and investigations are underpinned by a feminist worldview that seeks to intervene with the home.
