A house: A shelter from the heat, the cold, the rain, thieves, indiscreet people. A light and sun receiver.
A room: A surface to walk around freely, a bed to lie down, a chair and a table to work on, cases to arrange quickly everything in its place.

Vers une architecture, Le Corbusier

The exhibition takes place in a shop-window in Psyrri, a neighbourhood at the historical center of the city. The Psyrri area manifested swirling commercial handicraft and commercial activities. The shop-window relates to the products on the ground floor and the workshops on the upper floor. This shop-window functioned as an independent place of commerce, accessible to all passers-by. Today its function changed: it is as a place for hosting unique and temporary art events, adjusted to the idea of the specific space.

The PRIVATE MEASURES-PUBLIC METERS is a conjectural suggestion aiming to redefine the concept of space. Although the interior of the shop-window is not physically accessible, seeing it is constantly possible. The social issue raised by this work concerns the housing of socially excluded people. If we consider the contemporary urbanization, which transforms a number of places such as basements, ground floor shops etc. into habitation, then we can think and define the shop-window itself as a form of residence. But what is a residence? For the PRIVATE MEASURES-PUBLIC METERS is the quest for privacy.

Why, in this 3 square meters, space, is there no installation of a real residence but just its representation in the form of a cover of the shop-window itself?

The concept of residence is transformed into a two-dimension representation. Its space isn't actually shown but insinuated. The graph papers that cover the surface of glasses don't correspond to the actual walls (enclosure) and windows (openness) depicting an actual house but the play a dual role.

If a habitation is mainly a shelter, a residence like this, in a transient place, it would need to be protected from indiscreet glances. A place of residence is defined right on the line distinguishing the public and the private. The shop-window is self-refuted as an exhibition place and the residence is formed as an internal, personal place surrounded by opaque surfaces. Glances cannot intrude the interior. The concept of residence is shown with the use of designs of the internal facets, but its realistic representation is absent. The spectator, through one's own visual angle, can develop his/her imagination thus shaping the atmosphere of the interior through two sets of opposites: order - disorder, empty-decorated walls, presence-absence of personal belongings.

The PRIVATE MEASURES-PUBLIC METERS installation is a quest for the idea of habitation and, more specifically, of the residence for the socially excluded groups. It gives the identity of a minimum residence, sets the limits of private-public, while it does not allow glances intruding the privacy of a residence but triggers the spectator's own interpretation.

Aliki Spyropoulou