“Exercises in Losing Control” is a multimedia exhibition/installation, hosted in one of the most emblematic historical buildings of Thessaloniki – today’s Ypsilon.
The artist Karolina Breguła has for years been attempting in various ways to document an international and dark social phenomenon, that of expropriations, mass evictions, demolitions and loss of homes.
In this project, she is focusing on the strategies of contractor landscaping and the possible tactics of resistance against them, the social processes taking place in demolition sites, and -most importantly- the experiences of those losing their homes.
Through her documentary strategy, Breguła sets up a visual installation leaving open all fields of interpretation regarding the most simple, fundamental, yet complex human need: the existence and the sense of home.
She seeks to capture the life-changing moment, as well as the subsequent uncertainty and instability experienced by the inhabitants of areas undergoing such changes, architectural, social and quotidian.
She explores and captures the sounds, images, senses and the experience of such a loss and what it represents; both as a life experience and as a metaphor, both as a psychological and as a broader social trauma.
The global phenomenon of gentrification is changing microclimates, neighborhoods and lives, architectural, economic, social, historical and even working environments. Who is critical of these changes? Who anticipates or provides for their long-term social consequences? Can people actually exercise the loss of control?
Breguła’s oeuvre draws attention on the lived experience of people -and herself, too- living through similar changes and displacements, structuring a micro-historical analysis that aims for macro-historical conclusions.
