“We’ll Build A House, (we’re good at that)”

In July 2011 the Sociable Science collective built the façade of a typical Irish ‘Ghost Estate’ house outside of the Werkatelier Gallery in Den Helder, whilst living in a caravan behind the construction. The façade and caravan will be left in place until the end of July and the gallery walls will be gradually filled with advertisements of houses currently for sale in Ireland.

The false facade of the body-less house appears to be a humourous comment on the myths of the Irish boom years and how the Celtic success was built on questionable foundations. However it becomes an eerie and forlorn structure; a ghost not just of Irish financial disasters, but of the epic losses across Europe. Countries such as Ireland, Greece and Iceland, previously the golden child of the economic west; now face suffocating austerity measures. If Ireland’s economic boom was a lie based on falsely inflated house prices and banking corruption, then the thousands of “ghost” houses lying empty reflect this false front and the calamitous fate of all countries slipping away from the economic “west”.