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EDC Project Awards Entrant– Solarpunk Dollhouse
Hi All– This is Alexi putting on my artist hat & hoping I am finally navigating the forum correctly.
The problem I am engaged with:
I am thinking a lot about our capacity to imagine a world where the climate crisis is actually solved. I have found it is incredibly difficult for most people to do. For many, it is easier to imagine the destruction of humanity than humanity living in harmony with nature. There are many who find solace in this ecofascist rhetoric and consider themselves at peace with humanity’s demise. I am interested in adreinne maree brown’s imagination battle– and trying to provide opportunities to imagine the survival of humanity AND nature.
Project:
The project I am proposing is a solarpunk dollhouse.
I believe play is a great space for us to expand our imaginations. The first barbie dreamhouse was incredibly powerful– allowing young women to imagine themselves as single homeowners, yet unheard of at the time. I find a dollhouse is a powerful way for us to imagine new ways to live.
The solarpunk dollhouse could take the form of upcycling a found dollhouse as a single unique interactive sculpture, collaborating with other artists on individual rooms. This could also take the form of making multiple copies of a pop-up book dollhouse, again inviting different artists to take their own illustrative spin on different rooms. I am happy to pursue the latter if it counts as more ‘design oriented.’
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14 Replies
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Hey @CrowsNestStaff Alexi, I love how this project centers the notion of play as an important way to both process and express emotion, learning, and action in the present state of eco-polycrisis. I feel like this is a great extension of the Artist Talk from @Jia at the Crow’s Nest brining forward the importance of both womanhood and girlhood and playful exploration as a means to make sense of current conditions, especially in times of ecological grief. Exciting to see how these ideas take shape! 🌻
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Hi Lindi! Thank you so much for your reply and for attending Rejjia’s talk! I’m very interested in play as a worldbuilding space– the act of designing the dollhouse as collaborative play (pro version of crafting with friends) as well as its use afterwards!
I’m also very inspired by Noel Phyllis Birkby’s “Women’s Environmental Fantasies” https://www.architexx.org/subtexxt/flashback-feminism-phyllis-birkby-and-womens-environmental-fantasies
architexx.org
Flashback Feminism: Phyllis Birkby and Women's Environmental Fantasies — ArchiteXX
By Stephanie Schroeder"It appears that if you were a man, you should be studying architecture." With that dismissal, in 1948 Noel Phyllis Birkby’s suburban New Jersey high school career counselors squashed her career aspirations. Based on their rigid notions of … Continue reading
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Oh, as another thought… This also reminds me of an exhibit put together by @Lyss and others last fall that transformed an old office space into a sort of playscape using collage. It was almost like a life-sized dollhouse that invited play and exploration in each room. So many cool ideas here.
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Lindi, thank you for introducing me to Alyssa’s work! Her portfolio is completely revelatory.
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Hey Alexi!
Love how the dollhouse inherently suggests play and imagination, which seems to be exactly what we need when envisioning futures. I also love the collaborative aspect, allowing for many visions of the future to be shared a collective “house”….perhaps the house is a metaphor for the world that we share.
Some artists that come to mind (at the moment)
-Rose B. Simpson “Dream House”
– Pepón Osorio “Home Visits”
-Do Ho Suh
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Hi Rachel!
Home Visits is such a tender and powerful series, I hadn’t heard of it before– thank you for all the references!
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Hi Alexi,
I love this idea, and as you posted on our project post, we are very aligned in our work. It would great to talk more about how we can collaborate. I love the idea of the dollhouse – are you thinking this will be an art display for people to interact with?
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Hi Kate,
I would love to have the dollhouse as part of an interactive event or gallery exhibit. It’ll depend on how hardy the materials used end up being, which one always has to balance.
When I was a kid I loved designing and endlessly rearranging my dollhouses. I had a dollhouse made out of old ikea shelves and craft paper that I picked out with my mother. I would love to use this project to share that childlike wonder, feeling empowered, place-making, and more, while orienting the audience with restorative and eco-friendly elements, even if more fantastical under the ‘solarpunk’ umbrella.
One other idea to make the element of play more accessible to more folks while still getting to have artistic control for myself is to go the accordion book route and to share the template for free (maybe printing off limited copies for a workshop). The base of the furniture/rooms would be ‘stuck’ in one spot as this would essentially be a pop-up book template, with decoration fluid for whoever wants to make their own.
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Hi Alexi, I would love to collaborate on this with you! I work a lot with digital fabrication techniques and printmaking which would be great for designing and fabricating the architecture of the doll house and things like interior furniture/decor. Using a laser cutter would be a great option for using reclaimed materials as well.
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Hey Emerson! So great to see you on here. Would be so grateful for your expertise!
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Hi all–
Just double checking I’ve done enough to count for stage 1.2 before I make my stage 1.3 post. I am affirming collaborating with Emerson Goheen for this project!
I’ve shared some inspiration in the replies, and wanted to really thank Rachel Stein for the excellent references, all of which affirm the power of miniatures, home, and play as worldbuilding:
Tracey Snelling is an artist I’ve been interested in for awhile who works at the intersection of dollhouses/minatures and fine arts. This piece in particular, “Disaster Proof Mobile Unit” which came from a collaborative workshop, “contemplates the uncertainty, displacement, and disenfranchisement that frames the present day. How do we find a safe place, protected from bad weather and circumstance, in an era of floods, fires, violence, abuse and pandemics?”
https://traceysnelling.com/section/512284-Disaster%20Proof%20Mobile%20Unit%20and%20Workshops.html
As mentioned above, I am also interested in Phyllis Birby’s “Women’s Environmentalist Fantasies” project.
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This post is for the 1.3 requirement! I started typing this all out in 1.2, then realized I was getting into the weeds of the project.
I think this is also a good place to describe how I would define a “solarpunk dollhouse” the design of the house would take inspiration from various periods of biophillic architecture and Eco-architecture movements, including Art Nouveau, Earthships, and the work of Friedensreich Hundertwasser.
Other climate solutions, such as a mixed-use building (making a room on the bottom floor a daycare or food pantry) would be incorporated into the design.
Structure wise, I am interested in the accessibility in replication of a paper dollhouse. The ability to share the template would allow other artists to respond to the base structure of the house like a coloring book, which would have several solarpunk features built in, while allowing them the autonomy to bring their own sense of play to the design. Space for DIY and mutal resource sharing is another solarpunk philosophy we hope to embody.
In this way, the dollhouse would not only be solarpunk in terms of design, but in terms of publication. The dollhouse made by Goheen & I would be finalized with DIY and recycled craft materials, such as old beads, collaged paper materials, and other repurposed materials often found in crafting of this scale. Our dollhouse would serve as a model for anyone wanting to make their own.
While it would be fun to do a program or a workshop where others decorate their dollhouses, the goal for EDC would be simply to make the first dollhouse with Emerson Goheen, who has extensive experience with both book arts and lasercut. I would be bringing my knowledge of solarpunk design and illustration. Both Goheen and I are baltimore-based artists, the funds would help us dedicate the appropriate amount of time for artwork and design labor, alongside materials.
hundertwasser.com
Hundertwasser - Friedensreich Hundertwasser
Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000) Hundertwasser, a visionary and responsible creator, mobilizes the power of his art in order to spread his message for a life in harmony with nature and the individual creativity. He is a symbolic figure for a non-conformist … Continue reading
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So great to see some budding collaborations! I really enjoyed looking through your references, Alexi! Some of the architectural details and living elements remind me of the imagery from the short stories in Afterglow: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors. The authors weave so much rich description and consider very different formulations of far-future homes and colonies.. from sky dwellings poised on long, stretching ladders, removed from a now dried and hostile earth environment, to a multi-species coral-human blended dwelling/being.. I love the fantastical part of this project and how it invites imagination.
thenewpress.org
Hopeful and forward-looking futuristic short stories that explore how the power of storytelling can help create the world we need “This is a glorious book that challenges our conceptions of bookmaking as much as it questions our conceptions of world-building. … Continue reading
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Hi Alexi,
This is such a cool idea. I am reminded of my last year of college back in 2019. I wanted to make a kind of dollhouse with elements capturing my childhood foundations and such. One of my inspirations at the time, which I put in my visual bibliography was:
Janine Antoni’s 2009 ‘Inhabit’ piece.
I am excited to explore more of your inspirations. Also, happy to talk more!
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