Shell Stacks

The ceramic Stacks were inspired by an oft-recounted anecdote by the mathematician Bertrand Russell, and a popular children's book by Dr. Seuss, but for me, they found their most apt counterpart in this exhibition I made with the photographer Frank Stürmer. Frank's slideshows of architectural photographs of residential facades in Berlin brought out a social dimension in the stacks, which in turn, provided the photographs with an element of partisanship. Together, they evoked the contemporaneous struggle over housing in the city, in which many working class groups have come together to fight the wave of real estate speculation which holds thousands of apartments empty while many people remain homeless and average rent rises sharply. Frank and I created a number of posters in support of the protests as well.