House without a maid

Significantly, the house is the site where the relationship between master and servant is formed and maintained. In each city where To Serve is presented, a house is located and temporarily inhabited by art installations and performance works commissioned especially for the project as well as talks/conferences that are organized anew and with a local perspective subject to the respective city.  While an everyday perception of the relation between the server and the served might be understood in binary terms, House without a maid wishes to break open this logic to discover other nooks and crannies, hidden corners where the multiplicity of artists negotiate a more delicate terrain, finding ambiguity and nuance within. Originating from a strong desire to include others in the thinking and development of work around the theme of domestic servitude and always in the hope of deepening understanding or producing surprising connections, Jorge and Simone invited six artists to create and exhibit/perform their work in the context of House without a maid. The artists’ works undergo certain transformations or adaptations according to the nature of the homes where they temporarily reside. Very often the houses they inhabit translate the social constructions that organized the life of its former occupants; the social-spatial divisions remain and become acutely visible in the context of House without a maid for both the visitors and the artists.

The Talks:

Beside the performances and installations come moments of meeting, talks with field workers, thinkers, witnesses, psychoanalysts and others who are actively engaged in reflecting upon all aspects and perspectives of the employer/ employee relationship in the domestic sphere. In House without a maid, the ‘maid’ has left the residence but we are haunted by her symbolic presence.
The first series of talks were coordinated by Isabelle Dumont in Brussels, they took place in Maison des Arts during the KunstenFestival des Arts 2010. Amongst the people invited were Geneviève Fraisse (philosopher), Florence Aubenas (grand-reporter) Valérie Piette (Historian), Angel Enciso (psychoanalist) …

The latest series of talks were currated by Jennifer Sigler and took place in Huis Sonneveld in Rotterdam and addressed the following themes:

1) The Politics of the Home
2) The Geography of Domestic Labor
3) The Legal Rights of Domestic Workers.

Participants included Irene Cieraad (NL), Aife Murray (USA/ author of Maid as Muse, on Emily Dickinson’s relationship to her servants) , Rosie Cox (UK), Sabrina Marchetti (IT/PhD on home as a micropolitical location; how power and intimacy affect behaviour) Rhacel Parrenas (USA), Marije Meerman (NL), Nicole Constable (USA), Moira Zoitl (DE/visual artist), Coring de los Reyes (PH, NL), Rebecca Pabon (PR, NL), Sarah van Walsum (NL), and others. Aife Murray , Sabrina Marchetti Susan Raes and Hristina (film De Huizen van Hristina, about a Bulgarian maid who becomes a photographer), Lucy Gallagher (researching literary examples of domestic space and women’s connection to “mess.” )

So far, the Talks in House Without a Maid gathered sociologists, historians, activists and union organizers, legal experts, filmmakers, anthropologists, artists, writers, and gender studies scholars as well as domestic workers and their employers to share their perspectives and experiences.

In a chain of short presentations and discussions, House Without a Maid has explored what it means, and has meant historically, to be a domestic worker, internationally and in a local culture. We’ve discussed migration and the legal rights of undocumented domestic workers. We have considered their global trajectories and the related economic patterns, social networks, and family structures. We have looked at the maid’s place in the city and the home, and at the many relationships from intimacy to exploitation, from alienation to enmeshment between the maid, her employer, the home itself, and the objects it contains.