Martha Rosler

This video was made for the group exhibition of Unité, one of Le Corbusier’s biggest social housing projects, at Firminy, in south central France. The artists were invited to show their personal view of this project, which has become a memorial to the failure of utopian theory and social practice, but which is roundly defended by many of its tenants and those in the architecture and social-planning communities. A sweep with the camera shows the housing project and finally focuses on a wing of flats that has been closed for ten years, looking for traces of the former inhabitants. Rosler lets the inhabitants of Unité speak for themselves and asks them in particular what adaptations they have made to the building and themselves. (Sabine Breitwieser)