The meaning of ‘Home’ has become ever more elusive, threatened and complex, especially in these times of financial uncertainty, globalism, hyper technological development, terrorism, environmental shifts and rapid urban change.
The goal of the HomeBase project, a site specific urban art project exploring the notion of home established in 2006 in New York City, is to become a vital platform for awakening a new cultural awareness fostering interconnectedness in society through contemporary art.
HomeBase address Home as a foundation of humanity, with the underlying assumption that through this exploration a greater understanding of the ‘other’ can stem. To pursue this goal, HomeBase has established a unique artistic operational model and a far reaching vision of responsibility towards cross cultural dialog, social integration and community cultivation.
Each year HomeBase relocates to new international cities, inhabiting vacant spaces in neighborhoods undergoing change with a group of international artists. Through a site-specific creative process of exploration, an artist-in-residence program, an educational program, and a public cultural program, HomeBase transforms the sites into interactive cultural platforms. It’s program inspires creativity and enriches a deep cultural and social dialog among artists and the public while revitalizes under-served neighborhoods in the urban setting. It delivers insights for the ones working in the context of city development and public policy.
At the heart of the HomeBase project is a group of outstanding international artists and social entrepreneurs who function as a seismograph of society and as agents of change. Through their creative / constructive processes they reflect on various notions of home - from intimate questions of identity and belonging, to detecting the meaning of home in the immediate urban and human setting around them, to confronting wider ethical and political questions in regards to real world problems, such as urban change, environmental issues, homelessness and human rights. The direct interaction and site-specific exploration around these topics provokes a dialog that crosses over social status and through cultural boundaries. HomeBase nurtures its surroundings with contemporary art and innovative vision of social awareness, spreading core human values such as responsibility, dignity, tolerance and sustainability through the HomeBase experience. The experience as a whole is larger than the sum of it’s parts.
Artists, thinkers, scholars, neighbors, art lovers and city dwellers from many walks of life become part of this home, activating the space as a multidisciplinary platform, a combination between a commune, an art venue, a culture house, a social space, a house of study, a research center, a neighborhood joint, a salon, and a dynamic stage.
After traveling for over five years through neighborhoods in New York City and Berlin, receiving prominent acknowledgment from the art world and the press in venues such as The new York Times and VOLTA as ‘a leading model of public art’, and functioning as a source of inspiration for other leading artists initiatives, organizations, institutions and communities world wide, we are excited to be building here at Thulestrasse 54 in Pankow, Berlin, at the old Engelhardt brewery, a home for HomeBase.
To open up the path for years ahead, to gain more sustainability, and deepen the cultural impact of the project we are currently continuing the nomadic project and in the midst of establishing the HomeBase LAB, a year round base for HomeBase in Europe, which functions as the research center and headquarters of the project, generating knowledge, expertise, skill and leadership.
HomeBase vision for the future is conceived in relation to other innovative organizations and entrepreneurial social enterprises such as Doctors Without Borders (http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/), Habitat for Humanity (www.habitat.org), and TED (www.ted.org) and is inspired by leaders such as Jane Adams Hull house in combination with Joseph Bueys concept of social sculpture and alternative university.
Like these ground breaking initiatives we believe that HomeBase holds the potential to become the next artistic and human movement leading to a cultural awakening and social change, a beacon of light and creativity in these critical times of uncertainty.
