11 Alessia Bertini Margherita Marri Seeking for belonging is intrinsically rooted in human nature and reflected in the necessity for inclusion in certain categories. When it comes to public objects, such as buildings or language, the representational power of the message is carefully weighted. In the private realm, the necessity for representation is equally present, though the expression is more subtle and unclaimed. Although ubiquitous in everyday life and deeply influential, these representations and meanings remain unspoken, making it difficult to initiate a public conversation. But questioning is a tiring exercise when it comes to everyday preoccupations and the quest for what one authentically and humanly longs for, beyond the necessity of belonging, is set aside. This week, we will explore the emotional spatiality of the private house and its reflection on the public sphere. What support do everyday spaces offer? What do they hinder? What are the outdated ideas they perpetuate? Extending through vast geographies, the territory of the single-family house does not only manifest the dream of escaping urban rules; it is the material expression of how we occupy and consume land as well as the record of an emotional geography. We are so familiar with everyday constructions that we largely confine them to normality, automatically assuming that they don’t deserve our active gaze. Unobserved and unquestioned, they appear irrelevant in the panorama of symbols, signs and structures constructing daily life and defining the importance of shaping a sense of belonging to the desired identity or to a social class. Ordinary Fiction wants to look at the everyday through a macro lens to reveal the predominant narratives of these ambiguous geographies and their meanings. For decades, the detached house has been a symbol of security, offering a tangible way to store family wealth and providing a private heaven. This belief has shaped much of the countryside. Suburban houses rose from the tension between the desire for autonomy and the reproduction of sameness. The bigger project of living emerged pushing forward the equation wealth=independance and these ideals gradually encouraged towards atomization of society and the elimination of any form of aggregation, except for the collective rituals embedded in consumption. In changing environemental, social and economical conditions, symbols of belonging are called to be questioned. What does your garden stand for? What do we belong to? And what do you long for?
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