Home / Work

The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated precarious and individualized forms of work like micro-tasking and telework. At the same time, housing in Athens, in the iconic form of the so-called ‘polykatoikia,’ might nurture potential responses behind its concrete walls. “Home / Work” is a short fictional documentary, and a work of design fiction. The scenario focuses on two friends who perform telework, a telephone worker and an English teacher, each one renting a flat in Athens. In an attempt to tackle the isolating nature of telework, they decide to live together in one of the flats, and work from the other. With the passage of time, the workspace has slowly transformed into a social working collective. Through the casual everyday interactions, they are exposed and contribute to each other’s work, maintain physical aspects of labor, experiment with spatial interventions, and stand in solidarity in times of struggle. By balancing between proposition and provocation, “Home / Work” aims to enact reflexivity on the latent potential of the city and its people.

Is it possible that the house may replace the office, the workplace, or even the school? Is teleworking our future? And at what cost? How do we imagine these changes in the context of the Athenian ‘polykatoikia’? The supposed slowdown of the quarantine period was followed by a huge change in the way we live and work. This mocumentary, devised by Paris Selinas and directed by Pavlos Stamatis, follows the lives of two women who cannot bear the isolation’s burden, and decide to turn their flats into shared living and working spaces. The work is critical on these changes and considers the pros and cons of this ‘new normality.’