Honey, I’m Home: Writing on Property, Ownership and Access

A collection of essays exploring ownership, property and access from students in the Critical Writing in Art & Design program at the Royal College of Art, London. How do we live, protest, work, or determine the origins of objects and ideas under a logic in which the only stable thing about ownership is that it is always in question, indeed, always a question? This varied collection of writings attempts to arrest the flow of exchange value, to abolish it, to shake it up and destabilize it — if only for a moment — to recover from it a sense of belonging. Something simple like standing still in public space to insist on its publicness; to say: colonial violence cannot be bought and resold as afternoon tea; to test: how many subjects can I produce, how many homes can they find? ‘Honey’ is probably at work, and you, well you have simply arrived at your latest investment, your current dislocation. The true name of this place is not Home but Property—a home as exchange value. From the waistband on your underwear to your radical politics, everything, first and foremost, is exchange value, and nothing belongs to you in a simple way. Honey, I’m Home asks where ownership lies, then, and what is more: what happens to life in this paradigm. Introduced with a preface by Jack Self. With contributions by Alex Bennett, Nadia Quadmani, Skye Arundhati Thomas, Oscar Gaynor, Liza Weber, Thea Smith, Polly Gregson, Niamh McCooey, Emily Pope, Kristian Vistrup Madsen, Rosanna Mclaughlin, Izabella Scott, Molly Richards, Marianne Hanoun, and Antonio de la Hera. Designed by Oliver Dickson & Kristoffer Halse Sølling Conceived and produced by students in the Critical Writing in Art & Design program at the Royal College of Art, London, 2016 Printed in a limited edition of 500 copies 236 pages, color illustrations, 4.5 × 7 inches ISBN 978-19-1064-216-0