CHECK IN' (2018)

As in the case of other forms of the sharing economy, sharing housing between private individuals has rapidly spread so far and wide that it has begun to affect the organisation of communities. In increasing numbers of cities and countries, it has triggered heated political and economic debate on ways to manage and limit it. On the political side, there is clearly an intention to claim back part of the enormous profits for the community, but what does this new way of using apartments mean on personal level? Where does the “sharing” approach end and where does interest in the “economy” part begin? Where does one draw the ambiguous line between private and public, intimacy and coexistence?
I went on a paradoxical journey through the city I live in, Turin, staying just one night in rooms I chose, booked and payed for in the digital Airbnb platform, a technological-economical device that is capable of opening up private universes. The work is divided into home-nuclei, minimal visual narratives ranging between individual exprerience and voyerism, anthropological analyses and possible suggestions, symbolism and memories. The result is an attempt to decipher the traces of housing by means of a collection of signs, symbols and signals of a perceptive and object-based language of living, as though they were clues, even though with a meaning that is elusive and ustable, and not pre-established.

The project was winner of the call ABITARE and realized with the support of Mufoco – Contemporary Photography Museum Milan, La Triennale di Milano, MiBACT.