I live in 19-floor building. Its vastness can only be compared with number of problems, which torment the tenants. I can start the list of failures from the foundation, so bad that the water pipes ever so often crack and flood the basement, continuing through lift malfunctions and lack of hygiene, finally, ending it with hobo problem as a direct consequence of the fact that we don't have real lock neither the intercom on the building entrance. Suspicious infrastructure causes the tenants to move away rater often, attracting new inexperienced ones. It is almost impossible to know all the people from the building.
There are four apartments on each floor. One is situated right beside the stares and close to the elevators and on the other end of the long hall remains three others.
In the last couple of years the political situation in the country brought to our city tension and fear of criminal, burglary and attacks, das resulting with brand new phenomenon that appeared in my building known as the "three door bars".
It grew from the idea of the people from three apartments grouped at the end of the hall. They would organize among them selves and place thick metal bars, like extensional security door with a door bell and everything. In that way, the bars would separate them from the rest of the building. The remaining, fourth suite, even taught it is closest to potential intruders, would stay unprotected.
Something that was born from the paranoid idea rapidly started to spread, flour by flour. When the metal construction started to protect my home it intrigued me to do some research.
On my flour, in this "unprotected" apartment lives a pensioner. He's been alone for years, since his wife died. He often rang on our door, before, finding some cute reasons to chitchat with us neighbors. Since these "metal bars" are here, he never rang again. From my angle he seemed even lonelier.
I started some kind of research. Since those apartments are the smallest on each flour, their tenants are student, bachelors, lonely men or women, or women with babies, old people, pensioners and mostly people who live alone, not great families. So, the situation seemed even more ironic.
I have spoke with my father about it and found out that he was the "chief" of designing and placing the bar on our flour. A young, female neighbor shared with me her satisfaction with this occurrence. She said that she was afraid to open the door before. Many different people are ringing during the day: mailman, various sellers, beggars, neighbors and "who -knows-who's". Now she's not obsessed with "who can it be" anymore.
A friend of mine, from the flour below made a joke, holding that taught saying: "I feel so safe now, that I can even threaten anyone who comes at my door!"
At the end I rang on the door of the neighbor from my flour that stayed "unprotected". The conversation went so bad, because of his hearing problem. At the beginning he taught that I just want to sell him something, but as I started mentioning the metal bars, he was sure that I'm proposing him to place the same security in front of his door. After a while we managed to communicate. He kept saying how convenient it is to place bars on that side, were the three apartments are together. Aldo he didn't even once mentioned the bar protection, or security, burglary, or anything similar, he proceeded with how he would like to be on "our side", or "there were everyone else are".
Before any concept has been made for this work, my neighbor had died, in his apartment and suddenly some woman appeared with two children, claming that she is his daughter and that she has the only right to inherit the apartment. I could only find that suspicious, because in very few firs hovers that she had spend in this apartment, the main almost reflex thing she did was ordering metal bar doors, so that no other, sudden inheritances (if any) could get in..
Documentation and research were part of:
2004. Workshop "How to send a message", with students from the Nordic countries, Helsinki
2003. Workshop "Massage" with artist Milica Tomic, Belgrade, Serbia