Kirsten Leenaars

(Re)Housing the American Dream is an ongoing community-based performative documentary project directed by Artist-Filmmaker Kirsten Leenaars (Dutch b). Leenaars creates work by engaging specific communities in a participatory framework that, often through humor and play, prompts participants to consider their own points of connection and sense of shared humanity. Influenced by philosopher Hannah Arendt’s concept of “the space of appearance,” which emerges when multiple actors with different positions and perspective relate to one another through speech and action, Leenaars’ explores the role of film in capturing the plurality and unpredictability that, according to Arendt, produces political action.

Initiated in 2015, (Re)Housing the American Dream has continuously and simultaneously existed inside and outside of the museum’s walls. Each year, the same group of refugee and American-born children—introduced by Leenaars during her artist residencies at the Milwaukee Academy of Chinese Language International Newcomer Center and Highland Community School—have collaboratively developed a theme to explore. An annual summer camp, devised by Leenaars and informed by characteristic elements of her hybrid social, performance, and video practice, has served as the forum for the group’s critical engagement with complex social and civic issues. The films produced during the summer camp—ranging from traditional interviews to more poetic three-channel art installations—have been exhibited at the Haggerty each fall. Project website: https://rehousingtheamericandream.wordpress.com/