Squatter's HE-Art

2010 Collaboration between Fernando Matoso and heArt / London UK

This Photoshoot was realised during the rehearsals of circus show performances, part of a community event called Trash Time organised by local squatters who had occupied the empty local pub Rose Crown and invited people to come join their workshops, performances, and exhibitions.

This group as many reclaimed empty properties, refurbishing them and back into community.A shelter is mandatory for us to develop and bloom. When gentrification turns cities into ghosts and local people are forced further and further away, few swim against the current and reclaim empty spaces for living and growing their heArt.

The UK Squatters Movement 1968-1980 December 1968 a small group of homeless people and libertarian anarchists calling themselves the London Squatters Campaign occupied the rooftop of a luxury block of flats in East London to protest the inherent contradiction between empty property and homelessness. 

This event is generally acknowledged to have marked the beginning of the UK squatters' movement which, over the next 15 years, transcended local protest activity to become a national social movement, with tens of thousands of people housing themselves in empty property across the UK. 

By no means the first squatters’ movement the UK had witnessed (there were movements after both the first and second world war, also involving homeless families and left-wing political activists) it was the most sustained, and found parallels in squatters’ movement across Europe. “Gentrification, in some ways, followed squatters,” says Vasudevan. 

“They were taking over run-down, dangerous buildings, conferring an edge and social capital, which eventually brought in more capital and investment.”

Not all the squatters were artists, he says. Many were experimenting with ways to live collectively and find cheap housing. But they all shared a creative engagement with the urban landscape and city buildings."Along with the community garden movement, Vasudevan makes a case for squatters being “custodians of the urban fabric,” who not only brought new energy to wherever they lived and worked, but also cared about the urban built environment and older buildings. 

A surprising number of squatters were architects or planners, he says, and it shows in the places they occupied and repaired.<br>The heart group: Daniel Goncalves, Francesca Martello, Rita Sarzedas, Salomè Abreu, Oihana Garde and Rocco the dog "A history of squatting - The staying power of temporarily taking over urban space" by Patrick Sisson. https://archive.curbed.com/2017/5/2/15517922 

Urban Squatting’s History is more Radical than you imagined https://newrepublic.com/article/142863/urban-squattings-history-radical-imaginedhttps://vimeo.com/18552018