To ask questions is a motif; to search for answers is a process that negotiates variables between various points of reference. DOMA, which translates from the Macedonian language as house (куќа, дом) or home (дома), is an all-encompassing (meta-physical) framework that develops dialogical relationships with the traditional and dynamic transformations of imaginary spaces and symbolic images with an elastic characterization for the limitless powers of the real––past and future. The socio-cultural and political expediency of the terminological elasticity of home––a place between meaning and representation––conjures the perpetual idea of DOMA as a meta-fantastical question. But how do we engage with moments of idealized sensations, notions of belonging and the emotional attachment that feeds the collective metaphor we all signify as home? How do we unfold the confluence of agglomerated meanings and objects that influence the cultural geography of our cities, and hence the production and creation of new terms of DOMA?
The first issue (0) induces a debate about (im-) material-meanings about DOMA and engages with dynamic self-defining processes that activate critical questions, and embark dialectical answers, we either like, or dislike. The discovery of new ends is not only a critical examination of defining paradigms one (as individual or society) has to undergo, more importantly, it is a (re-) search of comprehensive units in a volatile process of cultural explorations that identify with meanings of DOMA within a society. With this first step, DOMA aims to open a series of discussions to ultimately situate diverse perceptions that define and shape the cultural geography of home. This is not a proclamation or something new, nor is it the end of history or the beginning of another de-historicized manifestation; rather, we wanted to focus on the present and liberate critique from history to activate potentials for contemporary questions––without an aesthetizised (fetishized) history, or an idealized future––that can help us grasp the foundation of what makes home, or how we identify (with) cultural realities.
The contributions of the first (0) issue are setting the foundation for critical dialogues about accumulative processes of cultures, memories, dreams, absence, presence, and ambiguous instances between object, subject, history and future to help identify the “forces” that shape and inform cultural paradigms. In this issue, Ben Nicholson discusses the inevitable predictability of the dichotomy between public and private spheres, and the irony of this relationship that is lacking imagination. Based on his imagination and his grandmothers story about “travelling without moving,” Nebojsha Šerić Shoba questions the determining factors that define home, and what it means to live a public life in a private sphere were physical and social boundaries between my home, and someone else’s home evaporate? Valentina Capova tells a story about Lala, Ramiz, Mukade, Arijan, Shaco, Asip and Romi by capturing what it means to be hopeless and homeless in Skopje. In contrast to home in an existentialist sense, Zvonko Taneski describes the relationships within a space with shifting boundaries that negotiate meanings and language between the inside, outside and its determining enclosure. Xhabir Memedi Deralla wittingly critiques the crisis of this relationship in his “big living room.” Living only in one room, Vladimir Petrovski challenges the preconceptions of home as a place between “walls” one cannot escape. To end this state of living in solitude, without identity, Natalija Popovska suggests that the solution lies in an identity based on a culture shaping the myth of home by its people. Marina Abramovic chats with Koco Andonovski about the relationship of culture and body, and what responsibilities we have toward the past and the future. This dichotomy concerns Ivan Mirkovski, he situates his “City of Solidarity” between the past and the future and deconstructs its symbolic character into naturally prone amnesia, which attacks the perceptual sense of the city. Michael Meredith theorizes the smallest unit a house in his parametrically modeled Ordos 100 project.
Nikola Uzunovski represents a collective desire––architecturally crafted by Alexandar Petrov––that symbolizes the sources of life in his Venice Biennale pavilion “My Sunshine”. Between the symbolic, imaginary and the real, Nikola Madzirov imagines a home that is fenced by the horizon that cannot be left, nor can it be inhabited. Alison Curries home, 42 a, a residential dwelling, or Alexandar Popovski’s theatrical space, adapt to meanings of live and as spaces perform the play between subconscious thought and action. Fatos Ustek conceptualizes home as a sensuous space that belongs to emotional spheres of individuals. Given the absence of physical space, it arguably could be used to rethink notions of physical embodiments that accumulate objects of belonging for a habitat of a civilization in flux. Sofija Grandakovska argues that without a critical dissident attitude a cultural memory in the face of power turns into a mysterious Kafkaesque castle. In this sense, Katerina Kolozova intrinsically discusses the aesthetic values of monuments of Totalitarian Kitsch as part of an aesthetic history that serve as an Anschauungsobjekt of a misapprehended Europeanism.
Is this misapprehension fiction? Is DOMA fiction? Pedro Gadanho takes us on a genologic journey of spontaneity and infomality into the year 2089. Yane Calovski contextualizes an individual journey and hypothesizes the idea of the self and the other, and how this relationship replaces the familiar with the unfamiliar, the contextual place with the context-less. Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss and Armin Linke present images that neglect the future, while Antonio Petrov––in his critical observation of artificially constructed utopian images––argues about aimless travels between 1963 and 2014. In Mikesch Mueckes semiotic utopia this condition is described in two extremes: “one is traditional and fixed, a kind of stable base from which to reach out into the remainder of life; the other is in a continuous flux of transformation and becoming.”
Given the absence of new paradigms DOMA searches its potential for contemporary questions by engaging in critical discussions everybody can participate, with a use of language everyone can understand, and a space everyone has access to: A theory that contributes to reality, a philosophy that is about life, and a project that leaves no one out. In this sense, DOMA embraces the flows of history and future––disengaged from its weight and the “ought to be” contingencies of utopia–– by presenting critical positions without the presumptuousness of being a scientific, practical, or artistic guide. DOMA’s discursive dialogues attempt to scrutinize historicized and politicized spaces to challenge relationships between house and home, and act as an active agent to help determine a material present that gives DOMA room for change.
Antonio Petrov