Comment est-il possible d’analyser un phénomène aussi complexe que la crise immobilière et du crédit aux États-Unis? La réponse de ce reportage visuel du Journal Le Monde offre un tableau ethnographique d’une situation très locale d’un quartier de Baltimore, de ses habitants et de ceux qui, soit restent, soit quittent leur quartier. Cette lecture individualisée d’histoires de maisons donne à voir les enjeux sociaux et urbains de la crise immobilière. Journalistique et hyper réaliste, cette illustration est pourtant peu représentative des analyses du phénomène de la crise, cherchant à en montrer son ampleur et son échelle.
"During a year-long residence at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies, designer Damon Rich, founder of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), surveyed the darkening realm of real estate markets: foreclosures, pro-formas, chains of title, block busting, exploding ARMs, and the obscure history of the mortgage, Old French for death vow.
In the resulting installation, the head of Frederick Babcock, pioneer appraiser, gazes over a scattered field of diminished Detroit houses, still showing damage from 1960s real estate scandals. Looming behind Babcock, the flicker of a neon sign – BUY LOW SELL HIGH – reveals the spikes and troughs of a wall cut by the 20th century’s prime rate, the sharp line between lenders and borrowers. Projected videos haunt the gallery with the apparitions of financial engineers, federal regulators, and anti-foreclosure activists.
Today, what has become known as the Subprime Meltdown continues to spread, pushing people out of homes, wasting neighborhoods, bankrupting institutions, and threatening global economic crisis. Red Lines aims to broaden and enrich the urgent conversation about how our society finances its living environments." >> full text [source]
>> The exhibition ' Red Lines, Death Vows, Foreclosure, Risk Structures: Architecture of Finance from the the Great Depression to the Subprime Meltdown' is an exhibition curated by Damon Rich and the Center for Urban Pedagogy commissioned by the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the MIT.The MIT Lawrence project participated actively in the show. [see video below]
