This could be your story as well.
Is it appearing real when you look closer? What do you see in the blurriness of shapes and colours? A living room, a bedroom, kitchen, corridor? In The Netherlands the right to have a place to live is treated as a fundamental human right but the housing market itself is a quite different reality almost impossible to navigate – especially for newcomers, students and people with low income or lack of capital. In our investigation we are looking at the outskirts of this wide topic – housing scammers. Who are they and how do they operate? Scammers are multiplying the number of houses in the virtuality, in an already polluted housing marketplace, in which there are a ton of empty houses, non-reachable houses, virtual houses, fake houses, and a lot of people without a roof. This practice can be seen as a parasite that is part of the bigger, rotten organism. Through deep analysis of methods and aesthetic of this scam we tried to grasp a bigger picture of this structure. We are presenting bits of stories that you can assemble yourself to find out what the scam is. We hope you will find a house soon.
Dario, Marcin, Lance
Boys Behind Screens
[FROM RUBEN PATER]
In the light of the current housing crisis in the Netherlands – only the wealthiest can afford to live in the cities – and the construction of the RoBa tunnel and the subsequent gentrification of the Binckhorst for middle and upper class citizens, we are focusing on those in need of housing but don't have the (inherited) financial means to participate in the realestate market. The city has become a networked zone of exclusion for the privileged classes who access the financialized realestate market through platforms like Airbnb, Funda, and other online auctions. This situation stands in stark contrast to the utopian ideas of the internet to enable citizens to become 'urban nomads' in the twenty-first century mobility of the 'network society'. (Castells, 1991)
Project by
Dario Di Paolantonio
Lance Laoyan
Marcin Liminowicz
Supervisor
Ruben Pater
Non-Linear Narrative KABK