Dusting off the archives: an interest in the political archiving of collective housing struggles| Céline Drieskens (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
We provide dessert for the break after the seminar. Please register if you want to join and/or enjoy the dessert! Online participation will be arranged upon request, you can indicate this in the registration form as well.
In Brussels, swelling rental prices, a loosely regulated private rental market, considerable deficit in social housing stock, heightened interest of international investors and further criminalization of squatting, pushes individuals into an ever-deepening housing crisis. In response, activist and squatters' collectives, community unions and advocacy platforms for housing rights call upon individuals to struggle collectively for their right to housing in the city.
As part of the housing activist scene myself, I wondered what role the past can play in informing and shaping these contemporary mobilisations for housing. What can political archiving bring to housing movements in their attempts to organise the masses?
Creating a compilation of visual and textual archives of housing struggles in Brussels between the sixties and today as part of my research has been a way to (I) amplify and contextualize housing movement histories by seeking to remedy erasures of the past, (II) trace back legacies of the housing movement and draw practical lessons from past actions and (III) counter existing narratives of historical inevitability and political pessimism with proof that many struggles continue.
My work with the archives has culminated in a temporary exhibition, which was set up on the occasion of the housing protest held in Brussels in March each year (2023 & 2024). The exhibition has acted as a space of resistance and collective memory through its content, but also as a space of care and healing as individuals shared their individual and everyday struggles in finding and keeping their homes in the city, thereby finding resonance with the wider political demands of the housing movement over time.
My presentation during this Cosmopolis Lunch Seminar will reflect on the exhibition as a method, and the use of archives as a political tool for mobilisations.
Céline Drieskens is a PhD researcher in the field of critical urban geography. Her research is part of the FWO-funded joint research project “Reconceptualising the right to housing from a neighbourhood and personal perspective”. She divides her time between the Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research (VUB) and the OSA Architecture and Urbanism research group (KULeuven).Céline Drieskens is a PhD researcher in the field of critical urban geography at the Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research (VUB). Based on a critical understanding of both the ‘right to housing’ and the notion of a ‘housing crisis’, her research further cements her dedication to urban housing and spatial justice. She concentrates her work on the various ways radical housing politics and urban housing movements function in, against, and beyond the state and capital in their claim for a right to housing and a broader right to the city. Her involvement in various housing collectives and her personal lived experiences support an engaged ethnographic action research approach, enabling her to foreground local specificity and uphold reciprocity.