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The House for Doing Nothing

The House for Doing Nothing

Also known as Slavoj Žižek's House or The Responsible House.

The House for Doing Nothing

Based on an observation by Slavoj Žižek the responsible house is a place designed to follow the Slovenian philosopher’s comment about responsibility nowadays. Following Žižek’s remarks, the global condition of nowadays cannot orient towards any concrete political attitude: the most appropriate action in order to undertake a political responsibility would be to do nothing. Doing nothing (far niente) was proposed as one of the most elevated experiences by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his “Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire” when he describes his isolation in a semi abandoned lake island. In Greece there are many deserted islands that could host such populations of responsible houses: they would look like exile places, like banal livable internet stations and in the same time like paradise options: all representing a responsible condition for today, this includes an ironic look to Žižek's approach and the fact that Žižek is describing something existing. A condition of exile, promoted as necessity for balancing a future responsibility and, in the same time, the culmination of a desired condition is linked to an idiosyncratic inaction. The responsible apartment intends to propose a view of a population of such units for doing nothing. Are all those descriptions of inaction present in this design? A body culture is evidently the left over of a condition of the self. The Internet structures invisible communities that could all act in similar ways and form together juxtaposed responsible apartments in semi abandoned areas. Following this rationale the project is supposed to function in a double bind: from the one side it shows a possible condition or a materialization proposed by an exaggeration of Žižek’s remark; from another point of view it could be read as a counter project commenting already Žižek's argument.

The apartment is structured as a unified single space divided by mobile elements and curtains. A swimming pool is supposed to give a rhythm of a body’s temporality. Printers and a good connection form the material part of the common world and the invisible public sphere. All services are performed through the existence of a “courrier” system that distributes products to the units on demand.

 

In collaboration with Katerina Koutsogianni, Kristy Garikou and Alexis Georgiadis

A N T O N A S: The house for doing nothing

The attitude described by Žižek is not determined uniquely by the refusal of commitment to the community: there are many ways for doing nothing. We can retire to refuges in different ways. The withdrawal should not be seen as a political attitude per se but already in its political context. We recall three literary heroes of withdrawal. The first shows a different way to conceive “doing nothing”, in antithesis with the hero of Žižek. Jean Jacques Rousseau describes himself in his Rêveries du promeneur solitaire in a happy condition of isolation, in the almost deserted island of Saint Pierre that some call "l’île de la Motte". Rousseau locates a kind of happiness on his isolation days on the island. “Far niente”, the inactivity of this period is the biggest pleasure he experienced, present in all its sweetness. Devoted to inaction, he could not hold any communication or correspondence, and yet this period is described by Rousseau with great nostalgia. The inertia of his voluntary exile to a place where the author is hiding safely offer delight and a distance from community matters. While the withdrawal is described as enjoyable, it cannot be associated with any technique of responsibility of a political philosopher. Rousseau does not expect the distance to help him recognize new common problems or investigate anew about politics. He lives on the island in order to avoid the community which is presented as a menace and he enjoys this pause of the community life as a happy, early death that makes the hero’s problems disappear. Žižek's hero is not a hero of the “far niente” neither is he negating the community.

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