Film Screening: The Housing Question

Date: Wednesday, 16th October 2024

Time: 4:15pm—5:15pm

Location: Chau Chak Wing Museum

Join us for a special screening of ‘The Housing Question’, followed by a short discussion featuring Dr Ann Stephen, Senior Curator, of the University of Sydney’s Art Collection, and Helen Grace, filmmaker.

The Housing Question is a collaborative video work by Helen Grace and Narelle Jubelin that takes its title from Friedrich Engels’ seminal 1872 texts addressing the severe housing shortages in his native Germany. After nearly 150 years this question remains central to contemporary social and political debates.

Grace and Jubelin explore these issues through two exemplary modernist homes: Harry and Penelope Seidler’s house in Sydney’s Killara (1967), and Casa Huarte (1966) in Madrid by José Antonio Corrales and Ramón Vázquez Molezún. The two houses are almost exactly contemporary statements in modernist architecture, made thousands of kilometres apart in markedly different nations and political circumstances. Yet despite their dissimilar contexts, the Australian and Spanish architects shared globally influential aspirations to create more equitable societies through the provision of excellent and widely available housing. Both architects created important social housing projects, which the artists explore, using rare original materials.

The focus on the two houses, in Australia and in Spain, leads to considering modernist town planning and mass housing more generally, the role of social housing, and, importantly, the urgent issues surrounding access to shelter, given today’s movements of refugees and asylum-seekers. Rich in historical imagery and intimate footage of both houses, The Housing Question connects broad social issues with the personal and emotional impact of modern and contemporary ideas about house and home.

Speakers

Helen Grace, Associate, Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney

Dr Ann Stephen, Senior Curator, University Art Collection, University of Sydney

Chaired by

Dr Greta Werner, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Henry Halloran Research Trust at The University of Sydney

Helen Grace (b Gunditjmara Country) is an artist, writer and teacher, based in Sydney (Wangal Country) and (formerly) Hong Kong. She was the Founding Director of the MA Programme in Visual Culture Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong and is now Associate, Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney; in 2012-13 she was Visiting Professor in the Department of English, National Central University, Taiwan on a National Science Council Fellowship. Helen is an award winning filmmaker and new media producer. Her photo media work is in the collections of Artbank, National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of NSW and Art Gallery of South Australia as well as private collections nationally and internationally.

Her recent projects include Justice for Violet and Bruce, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, 2022, The Housing Question (with Narelle Jubelin), Penrith Regional Galleries, Home of the Lewers Bequest, 2019, Thought Log, SCA Galleries, Sydney (2016) and Map of Spirits, Gallery 4A, Sydney (2015). Her recent books include Culture, Aesthetics and Affect in Ubiquitous Media: The Prosaic Image (Routledge, 2014) and Technovisuality: Cultural Re-enchantment and the Experience of Technology. (Co editors, Amy Chan, Kit Sze and Wong Kin Yuen) IB Tauris, 2016)

Dr Ann Stephen's curatorial career over four decades has been in public and university museums. She joined Sydney University Museums as the senior curator of the University Art Gallery in 2009, and has been responsible for the University Art Collection and developing the art exhibition and publication program.

As President, Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (2011–14), Ann has been a mentor for early career academics as well as many colleagues in art history and art curatorship. She has an established national and international publishing record in modernism and conceptual art and in 2015 was invited to join the Scientific Committee of the European Network for Avant-garde and Modernism Studies.

She has been awarded two ARC grants and many prizes for her academic work. She was appointed a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2009. Since 2014, she has been chair of Art Monthly Australasia.

Dr Greta Werner is a Postdoctoral Research Associate. Her research examines the social and economic processes that inform urban development including transport and residential infrastructure. Her PhD research project compares the discursive and political fields in which social housing is constructed in Sydney, Australia and Vienna, Austria. In alignment with her research interests, she has both a theoretical and practical interest in both academic and civic governance. In 2024 she was elected Co-President of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee 43 – Housing and Built Environment. She has been a community organizer for many years and has led local campaigns for parks and urban infrastructure and in December 2021 was elected to Bayside Council, a local government in Sydney’s inner south. She was elected to the Australian Local Government Women’s Association Executive Committee in 2023.

Festival of Public Urbanism 2024

Great cities are defined by the quality of their public realm. From parks to civic architecture, well designed public infrastructure supports and enables the social, cultural, and economic dimensions of urban life. But are these public assets, along with public processes of urban governance and planning, under attack? Over the past fifty years key legacies of the modern urban project – such as publicly funded housing and urban infrastructure; or comprehensive planning for new development – have been eroded by waves of political and economic reform. Faith in market based ‘solutions’ has reduced public planning processes to ‘red tape’ and replaced public investment in rental housing with subsidies for private investors and households. At the same time, digital transformation under ‘platformisation’ has seen private corporations able to evade domestic regulations, disrupting every facet of urban life and governance.

The Festival of Public Urbanism will debate these topics and more. Join us to engage with academics, activists, politicians, industry leaders through our program of panel discussions, walking tours, and podcasts across Sydney and Australia.