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)