Jana Brsakoska, The Faculty of things that can’t be learned, April 2023
The project of performative installation in a public space called THE CITY AS A STAGE – Lost modernist utopias offered a newly established methodology, an attempt to read a building, and by that enabling a better understanding of its meaning. The subject represents an abandoned architecture that needs to be put in the spot, to change its momentary condition and become approachable, usable, and ecologically sustainable.
The case study was the building so-called “Domche”, as a lost modernist utopia from the Socialist period. Different research approaches were used, involving the local community, as well as experts from different fields. With different stage means, the object and its context transformed into a stage on which the problems of the community were “performed”. In this manner, the public space became a place for intervention and promotion.
The following is an excerpt from the organization’s website, announcing the event that was held on the 19th of November 2022 in the building yard:
“On July 3, 1973, in Skopje, a building was put into use, belonging to the brutalist post-earthquake architecture, the building of the Taftalidze local community and also a cultural center, which the citizens call “Domche”. “Domche” is perhaps the smallest brutalist building in the world, where in the first years after its construction, served to accommodate families whose homes were destroyed by the earthquake in 1963. This facility later served the needs of the community of all residents of the settlement… The building “Domche” is a concrete horizontal sculpture, a monument to the memory of the community in Taftalidze. When I first saw the building, it reminded me of Mies Van Der Rohe’s pavilion in Barcelona, or perhaps the monument built in honor of Karl Liebnicht and Rosa Luxemburg, dedicated to the Spartacist revolution of 1919 in Berlin. At the Mies monument, the tragedy and heroism as a memory of the historical event is represented through the composition of abstract brick forms, as a reminder of the brick walls where the Spartacists were shot.
“Domche” a building/sculpture/monument with clean and clear abstract forms, was cast in concrete, immersed in the middle, below, between the trees, in the community, close to the street, on the ground floor, almost invisible, but important. In Skopje as the city of solidarity, the use of concrete as a building material, become a symbol of optimism, light, and freedom of expression. In 1926, the brick monument of Mies was demolished by the Nazis, today (the 1990s), the “monument” of Kiril Muratovski “Domche” is occupied (privatized) by the “capitalists”. These are the historical analogies of nausea. The “text” in the form of twelve stories entitled “Domche”, was written as part of the long-term artistic interdisciplinary project entitled THE CITY AS A STAGE – Lost Modernist Utopias. The project through the methodology of reading the building, using different research approaches, involving the community and experts from different fields, and using several means, transforms the public space into a stage where the problems of the community are “performed”. The stories are written through a research process, work meetings, and workshops as well as the use of archives, libraries, video and audio interviews with users of the space, conversations, archival private videos, and photos of citizens who were part of the life of “Domche”.”
