One year has gone by since the pandemic has narrowed our freedom of movement and connections.
In this uncomfortable world situation, it is very easy to lose our motivation and don’t be able to see anymore all the small things that have always inspired our life path.
So we have to keep our spirits up!
And for this today I want to tell you the story of a wonderful project that is a symbol of courage, strength, and optimism.
It is the project of the little traveling house of Discuvry.
The story of discuvry tiny house
My husband, Yukihiro Taguchi, and I built this tiny house at the beginning of 2013, on the occupied area in Cuvry Straße, called precisely Cuvry-Brache (Cuvry-Fallow), in Berlin, an empty lot that was for a long time the last free piece of land on the Spree’s riverside that managed to resist the big gentrification process.
Building an illegal house in the center of a European capital just using scrap found wood and the strength of our hands? Yes, why not!
That time I was a fresh graduated building engineer just arrived in Berlin, and just met the crazy and fearless Japanese artist that, years later, would have become my husband. And so the Discuvry project born, as a daring and optimistic mixture of what we could have done better and together.
The project moved from a combination of different factors:
- the wish of creating a big art project able to generate a strong life-changing united to the desire to merge our art practice with the simple and essential sides of life;
- a great interest in the spontaneous process of society development, free of conventions imposed by the contemporary civilization;
- and, of course, the difficulty and limited possibility of renting an apartment in Berlin for artists and freelancers, especially stranger, summed to the increasing price of the house in the city for the strong and fast gentrification.
Every single piece of wood that compose our house was collected by us on the streets of Berlin, cut by hand with our Japanese saws, and assembled by hammer and nails.
We didn’t imagine that our little house would have generated a chain reaction: many others started to build their own houses till the creation of a multicultural village with more than a hundred inhabitants!
Our life was re-organized according to the resources and characteristics of the place: living in the middle of a capital city like Berlin without having home electricity and running water; sharing our space and our time because in Cuvry-Brache there were no borders.
We have lived there for 18 months, and this time, when our life and our art are inextricably linked, is documented by the stop-motion video created by Yukihiro.
In September 2014 a big fire was set in the camp and the illegal anarchic village was evicted.
But the happy end of our story is that we could dismantle and save our house as artwork and since then it has been the happiest and luckiest house, traveling and been exhibited around the world, from Germany to Denmark even up to Japan!
None of us would have imagined that this small house, born in not the most favorable conditions, survived to the fire and bulldozers, would have such a long and adventurous life!
Moral of the story: don’t let the most difficult situations scare your passions and keep taking action to make your dreams come true. Action fuels motivation!
And now the great news!
Last year Discuvry house came back to Germany and waited for one year in Bochum to be built and lived again. And the time has come!
The Discuvry project will stand again on the beautiful beach of Silbersee II, in Haltern am See, in the frame of the open-air public exhibition Ruhr Ding: Klima organized by Urbane Künste Ruhr, an institution for contemporary art in the Ruhr region.
Ruhr Ding: Klima will be open to the public from the 8th of May 2021, in the safeness and respect of all covid hygiene measures.
Please visit us and our tiny artsy home on the beautiful lake in Haltern am See, and follow the project updates on Discuvry Instagram profile.
If you are curious about the origin of Discuvry check the full story on the project’s old website.
For more information about the exhibition please visit the Urbane Künste Ruhr Facebook page.
Ruhr Ding: Klima – flyer.1 
Ruhr Ding: Klima – flyer.2
Waiting to meet you on the beautiful Silbersee II and have a nice chat on the terrace of our tiny house, I wish you the most beautiful and inspiring spring!
