HOME-MADE DADAISM

text by Marta Benvenuto. image “Casa” by Freddy Ventriglia

The harsh battle between mankind and manmade was staged several times on the silver screen. However, it is the man of the future who will sign the armistice, and who will use tools to empower his race by making them available to all.

This is the topic of a film made at the dawn of cinema, in the distant 1920’s. One Week was the first short movie shot by slapstick comedy genius, Buster Keaton.

The houses depicted in “Stone-face” Buster’s movies are never solely houses. They are partners, sometimes spiteful of each other, that trigger and support the comic actions that surround them. In this way, they become the means for communicating a metaphysic and visionary view.

Did you ever have to assemble an Ikea closet? It’s definitely a traumatic experience that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone.

But, what if the Ikea factory workers that checks the boxes prior to shipment was also a jealous ex-lover, who got satisfaction by mixing up the instruction manuals and rearranging the plans, making mounting outcomes unpredictable.

And what if what you had to assemble was not only a closet, but an entire house?

It’s getting complicated, isn’t it?

This is exactly what happens to Buster and his wife in the movie.

Once assembled, the house stands on its foundations, but becomes a Dada artwork, with the malicious intentions of an evil goblin.

It’s no longer considered a house because it does not play the role of a home; it’s not a place to rest and does not even provide shelter. It’s a place where each operation is extremely arduous because its function has changed, becoming a machine, a trap, a game, a cue to sharpen your wits.

Can a building that does not fulfill its function still be called a building?

Breaking the rules and then reinventing them gives birth to forms of living in, which take place in deformable geometric structures where harmony springs from chaos and the unexpected.

Where the artifice sparks interest, where functionalism becomes formalism, where we disregard the rules, that is where architectonic works shine on.