DOMIE as a socio-artistic and architectural-economic experiment of collective care manifests the needs for good practices and services in the field of contemporary art, culture and sociopolitics.
DOMIE promotes approaches that generate critical reflections and perspectives on contemporary socio-urban and political issues, emphasizing the need for supporting the most vulnerable, marginalized groups and strengthening the idea of local solidarity in Eastern Europe.
DOMIE is a two dimensional project, both equally essential: DOMIE Welcome and the collective’s curatorial program and agenda. The space is dedicated to young artists, students, seniors, migrants, diasporas, but in particular LGBTQIA+ and FLINTA communities and its individuals. However, a space does not become queer-friendly because we plan to do so, it becomes that when it is recognized as one by the community.
Accommodating struggles against various forms of dispossessions towards a creation of new realities and constantly forging new alliances redefines a notion of capital and hierarchical models of power. Reconciling mutual education. Location where alternative learning spaces are being created through critical pedagogies. Decentralizing notion of knowledge and discourses in a favor of dialogue. The DOMIE’s community co-produces the narrative of the project itself and constantly transfigures its shape.
DOMIE Welcome generates ideas and applied knowledge and preserves bonds. The space is understood as an open source which welcomes everyone and anyone who believes in the idea of processual collaborations, openness, regardless of their capital and resources.
DOMIE is a refuge for all those who need to work, exhibit or share their process, therefore in the period 2018 – 2023 DOMIE has hosted more than 300 artists and 80 musicians, which emphasizes how much an open source space is needed and used. The main principle is that the space exists as a non-monetary common, usage of the space in any capacity is free of charge and an act of key-handover is working purely on a basis of trust and understanding the space as our mutual commons. These principles practiced for 5 years catalyze the community to enact collective care.
The space is named DOMIE. In polish language dom means home, however the noun is masculine. We created an alteration of the word mutating it into neutral form, which is based on outdated declension, which nowadays in daily use is commonly understood as lack of education, characterizing the dynamics between the bourgeois and the rest.
DOMIE was initiated by Katarzyna Wojtczak in 2017 and co-founded with Martyna Miller in 2018, nowadays run along with Goś Patalas, Jakub Kosecki and Rafał Żarski.
Text by Katarzyna Wojtczak, 2023
DOMIE is a social-artistic-architectural-economic experiment of collective self-care, focusing on a 10- year plan of reclaiming a building in the center of Poznań, which due to long-term neglect has been falling into disrepair since 1988.
The founders of the project undertook the daunting task of renovating the building without any personal funds, spreading the responsibility among various – both formal and informal – entities. In this respect, an ongoing dispute is taking place with the municipality, local tenants and community emerging from the project. For its own purposes, DOMIE is turning the category of renovation into a work of art and expanding the notion of “capital”.
DOMIE is 400 square meters intended for artistic experimentation. It features studio and exhibition space, space for sound work, recreation and accommodation. The building undergoes free and continuous transformation, becoming an artistic medium in itself and provoking site-specific activity.
DOMIE welcomes everyone and anyone who believes in the idea of openness, regardless of their cultural capital, origin, nationality, sex, age, etc.
DOMIE is a place requiring care, a difficult, ghastly place, but one that responds to the sense of uprooting, chronic nomadism, housing crisis and poverty among artists. Domesticity and ownership have ended. It is now a time of post-habitation, zombie-communities, unstable domiciles.
Text by Martyna Miller, 2020