TOWN MEETINGS has its genealogy in past regular GDR events from 2009–2010. These include Home Cinema, where the screening of films that touch upon different aspects of domesticity, neighbourhood organisation, urban planning and alternative politics, take place; Thursday Night Supper, occasions for cooking, eating and discussion with various guests, and the midterm manifestation GDR GOES ON which consisted of a series of events over four days in domestic, private, and public spaces in Utrecht.
'The Grand Domestic Revolution-User's Manual' is a long-term project developed as Casco’s contribution to 'Utrecht Manifest: Biennial for Social Design'. The project deals with the evolutionary and collaborative process of “living” research in the contemporary domestic and private sphere – particularly in relation to the spatial imagining (or the built environment). It aims at re-articulating while exercising the notions of the social, the public and, eventually, the commons.
For this purpose, an apartment in Casco’s neighborhood (Bemuurde Weerd oz 18 b, Utrecht) was rented to be both a symbolic and functional base of the project. The actual use and transformation of space and multiple forms of activities in and out of the apartment intertwine with cross-disciplinary research and imaginative practices.
The apartment is no longer rented for the project, but many of the projects created there are part of the final GDR exhibition. Check out the exhibition page for more information
The Grand Domestic Revolution team
Binna Choi (Director/Curator), Sofia Evans (Intern), Urok Shirhan (Intern), Maiko Tanaka (Associate Curator),
Yolande van der Heide (Curatorial Assistant), Cindy van Rooijen (Organisational support)
Website design
Scott Ponik (Graphic Design)
Ivan Monroy Lopez (Programmer)
Past Interns
Sumire Kobayashi, Elsa-Louise Manceaux, Constança Saraiva, Mafalda Damaso
Casco
Office for Art, Design and Theory
Nieuwekade 213–215
3511 RW Utrecht, NL
T/F: +31 (0)30 231 9995
info@cascoprojects.org
www.cascoprojects.org
Utrecht Manifest
www.utrechtmanifest.nl
'The Grand Domestic Revolution-User's Manual' is generously supported by Stichting Doen and Casco's structural subsidies from the City Council of Utrecht and the Mondriaan Foundation. Institutional partners include SKOR and Utrecht Manifest.
Wormery
If you don’t have enough space for a proper compost heap, you can build your own Wormery or Vermicomposting system. For the Casco balcony I use two mayonnaise buckets which I collected at the local cafetaria. Look for two buckets who can sit into each other in such a way that the lower bucket forms a reservoir.
Drill holes in the bottom of the upper bucket. In this way the liquid which forms 80-90% of our kitchen waste can escape. This leachate will collect in the lower bucket. You can use the leachate to fertilize your plants if you water it down ten times.
Drill some holes in the upper part of the bucket as well for ventilation.
Now connect a tap to the wall of the lower bucket. This is used to tap the leachate. I found a perfect tap at the local hardware store. It is called ‘garden hose connector tap’:
Cut a hole in the lower part of the buckets side. Due to the rubber rings the tap will close water tight.
The structure is ready. Now cover the bottom of the upper bucket with pieces of cardboard, small branches, torn newspaper or hay. This layer has to be 5 centimeters thick and very loose. Sprinkle this layer with water until it is 70% wet.
On top of this layer you put a layer of compost with worms. You need the ‘tiger worms’, worms that live in compost heaps. I will try to bring them tomorrow from my own compost heap in Rotterdam. You will need a few hundreds of them, but I trust my worm family will take care of that themselves.
Leave the Wormery for one week in order to give the worms time to settle themselves in their new home. After one week you can start with adding some kitchen waste. Don’t put large quantities and not too much of the same thing. Worms like diversity. The eat coffee, teabags, peals.. They don’t like bread, meat, fish and citrus peels.
Empty the leachate reservoir regularly. To harvest the worm compost, you have to remove the upper layer of fresh kitchen waste. Then remove the compost layer where the worms are in, and keep this apart. On the bottom of the bucket will be a layer of dark crumbly worm compost. Distribute it to your plants or store it in a spare bucket for later use. To start the process again, add a new bottom layer of cardboard an put the worms back in.
Put the bucket on a place protected from the sun and free from frost. I will keep the Wormery for now in the storage room. The Wormery will not smell unless it is too wet, than add some dry material like sawdust. Take care the compost doesn’t get too dry, because the worms will die.