Hybrid INhabit: home – Home – HOME

Hybrid Inhabit: home–Home–HOME is a transdisciplinary research project combining artistic and scientific methods to examine the socio-spatial experiences of two forcibly displaced individuals. Drawing on the triadic concept of home developed by Brun and Fábos (2015) and adopted in the
project Architecture of Asylum I (2022), our definition of “home” is conceived not only as a fixed place but also as a shifting constellation of daily practices, memories, and contested forms of governance:

home: as day-to-day practices
Home: as values and traditions
HOME: as structures of power

The project explores homemaking processes before, during, and after displacement. We interviewed two participants about their home in Syria, life in refugee accommodations in Germany, and homemaking in their current apartments.

The project builds on Simone Rueß’s artistic methodology, which maps the process of homemaking across time and space in so-called timescapes. The multimedia installation visualizes the complex entanglements of home and displacement. Through narrative interviews, participatory mapping, and visual tools, participants co-created maps that reveal homemaking as both personal and political. Our analysis translated their narratives into circular diagrams, and an animated visualization expressed their experiences in three dimensions, where temporality unfolds vertically and homemaking unfolds horizontally.


The unexpected fall of the Assad regime in 2024, shortly after our interviews, raises new questions about potential return to Syria, memories beyond the war, and belonging to a changed homeland. (text by Maureen Abi-Ghanem, Qusay Amer, Layla Dadouch, Simone Rueß)

Round Tables ID01, 2025, by Simone Rueß, Qusay Amer, Layla Dadouch, Maureen Abi-Ghanem.
Print on acrylic glass. 1,2 x 120 x 120cm and 21 x 120 x 120cm.
Round Tables ID01 & ID02, 2025, by Simone Rueß, Qusay Amer, Layla Dadouch, Maureen Abi-Ghanem. Print on acrylic glass. 1,2 x 120 x 120cm and 21 x 120 x 120cm.
Concept: Simone Rueß, Qusay Amer, Layla Dadouch, Maureen Abi-Ghanem.
Artistic design: Simone Rueß
Layout and design: Hanna Grodner
Icons: Simone Rueß in collaboration with Hanna Grodner.
Interviews and Narrative Mappings with two refugees: Qusay Amer, Maureen Abi-Ghanem, Simone Rueß.
Transcription and translation: Layla Dadouch, Qusay Amer.


Hybrid Home-Timescape ID01 & ID02, 2025, videos by Simone Rueß in collaboration with the AoA researchers. 11.30 min each, loop.
Artistic concept, camera set-up, editing and animation: Simone Rueß.
Icons: Simone Rueß in collaboration with Hanna Grodner.
Vector illustrations: Hanna Grodner
Animation effects and post production assistance: Hara Shin.
Narration concept and voiceover: Maureen Abi-Ghanem.
Interviews and Narrative Mappings with two refugees: Qusay Amer, Maureen Abi-Ghanem, Simone Rueß.
Theoretical concept: Qusay Amer, Layla Dadouch, Maureen Abi-Ghanem, Simone Rueß.

ZUHAUSE/HOME

People with experiences of flight and migration often create a new home in temporary forms of housing such as container villages. At the same time, they remain connected to their homeland through memories and contacts with those “back home,” while seeking ways to live out their cultural everyday needs.

In a workshop at Kunsthalle Tübingen, I invited participants from Afghanistan, Albania, Armenia, Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Nigeria, and Pakistan to share memories of a home, to explore mental images of their current (hybrid) home, and to imagine visions of a future form of living. These individual ideas were captured in a collective large-scale drawing and documented in a video – both as a creative process and as a vision of communal life.


Menschen mit Flucht- und Migrationserfahrung schaffen sich meist in temporären Wohnformen wie Containerdörfern ein neues Zuhause. Gleichzeitig bleiben sie über Erinnerungen und Kontakte zu „Daheimgebliebenen“ mit ihrer Heimat verbunden und suchen nach Möglichkeiten, ihre kulturellen Alltagsbedürfnisse zu leben. In einem Workshop in der Kunsthalle Tübingen lud ich Teilnehmer*innen aus Afghanistan, Albanien, Armenien, Türkei, Irak, Libanon, Nigeria und Pakistan ein, Erinnerungen an ein Zuhause zu teilen, mentale Bilder eines derzeitigen (hybriden) Zuhauses zu erkunden und Visionen einer zukünftigen Wohnform zu imaginieren. Diese individuellen Vorstellungen wurden in einer gemeinsamen großformatigen Zeichnung festgehalten und in einem Video dokumentiert – als kreativer Prozess und als Vision eines kollektiven Zusammenlebens. 

In addition, together with the participants, we explored their inner images of home in narrative interviews, which I then translated into drawings. In this way, mental spatial images emerged that make visible both personal sensitivities, hybird identities and the socio-spatial conditions of refugees.


Ergänzend ergründete ich zusammen mit den Teilnehmer*innen in narrativen Interviews deren innere Bilder vom Wohnen, welche ich anschließend in eigene Zeichnungen übersetzte. So entstanden mentale Raumbilder, die persönliche Befindlichkeiten, hybride Identitäten, ebenso wie sozial-räumliche Gegebenheiten Geflüchteter sichtbar machen.