Beauty and the Right to the Ugly

Beauty and the Right to the Ugly is a cinematic experiment set in the multifunctional community center, Het Karregat, in Eindhoven. Het Karregat, designed by architect Frank Van Klingeren and completed in 1974, is situated in the center of a neighbourhood of new housing and sought to propitiate communal forms of habitation. The design was an open-plan space wherein different activities and functions –a library, a school, a café, a health centre, a supermarket and communal area– would be connected under the same superstructure. Wendelien Van Oldenborgh examines the devenir –and partial failure– of this utopian architecture, while conceiving and implementing a filming methodology that translates architecture premises such as “open”, “user-led” and “participative” into cinematic devices.

Van Oldenborgh’s piece is a continuation of the artist’s interest on filmmaking as a perfomative device and of her ongoing engagement in discussions on collectiveness, its intersection with the private and the role cultural production plays in this.