Modest Homes

“Infrastructures ensure a society’s functional processes, including the supply of goods and services as well as the provision of symbolic acts of communication and distribution. The growing attention to so-called “critical” infrastructures—ones that our lives depend on—has alerted us to the ‘visible and invisible ways’ in which they ‘characterise our present.’ [. . .] The aspects of functionality and utility that attend infrastructures come to the fore in Benjamin Hirte’s works primarily in the guise of the stuff of their making: as substance or material on the one hand, as instrument or method on the other.”—Katharina Hausladen Benjamin Hirte: Modest Homes is the artist’s first monograph, featuring his research and sculptural work from recent years. The book delves into topics such as housing and public space—with Vienna and New York City as prominent places of interest as the artist’s respective homes during that period.