Hospitality is a porous space, a space of metamorphosis between public and private. In being a host you welcome a new guest into your house. Yet the very moment you receive this stranger into your dominion, the threshold between private and public is thrown into doubt. There is no way of knowing beforehand what exactly will happen: how for instance the boundaries of your private sphere, thoughts and belongings could be tested and affected by the presence of your new guest. Your guest may tell you new stories, teach you other thoughts and show you her belongings. Your guest also lets you into her world, and in so doing she becomes your host.
The organisation selected for stage 4 is the Blue House, a cultural residence and meeting point, brings this confrontational, yet dynamic of hospitality within a residential zone of the newly-developed Ijburg island just out of Amsterdam. The Blue House is used everyday by local inhabitants as well as inviting people from other parts of the world to play a part in imagining moments of participation, of becoming guest and becoming host. It is a place where unexpected acts of hospitality between people of all kinds of differences can meet. Above all an ambiguous space between public and private enabling an interchangeable dynamic between residents and visitors.
