Breaking and Entering

An interdisciplinary study of contemporary artists and filmmakers whose work examines the increasingly precarious subjects of house and home.

---

As climate change, economic recession, war, and mass migration destabilize the world and create a less certain future, notions of home and shelter loom large. Breaking and Entering considers how contemporary artists and filmmakers address anxieties and vulnerabilities around housing and the house by prying open both physical and metaphorical domestic structures. Deploying tactics that range from cutting into the surface of actual buildings, to making and manipulating "real" and virtual architectural models, to filming urban decay, the artists under discussion dismantle traditional domesticity to expose what remains hidden and to explore what might be salvaged and recycled. The contributors' central themes include exile and homelessness, narratives of belonging and exclusion, domestic rituals, memories, furnishing and hoarding, invasions of privacy, pleasures and perils of home ownership, utopian visions, and playing house. Broached from a variety of methodological perspectives drawn from art history, architecture, and film studies, the essays in this book invite us to contemplate what we can salvage from historical experiences of dwelling and help us find shelter in the future.
Contributors include Sandra Alfoldy (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University), Bridget Elliott (Western University), Shelley Hornstein (York University), Claudette Lauzon (Ontario College of Art and Design University), Trista E. Mallory (Whitney Museum, New York), Anthony Purdy (Western University), Stephanie Radu (Western University), Charles Rice (Kingston University), Kirsty Robertson (Western University), Christine Sprengler (Western University), and Malin Zimm (White, Stockholm office).