Marta Dauliute (Stockholm) and Viktorija Siaulyte (Berlin) have been researching and producing the documentary feature film Good Life (to premiere late 2021) for several years, including as recipients of Transmediale’s Vilém Flusser Residency for Artistic Research. The film is a case study of a real estate start-up – a co-living house for entrepreneurs – in Stockholm and is driven by a dynamic between, on the one hand, its subjects’ entrepreneurial enthusiasm and constant self-promotion, and, on the other, the filmmakers’ ambition to dissect this narrative (particularly through an exploration of the mundane particularities of this form of living). The startup’s innovative promise to decrease the need for private living space in exchange for increased well-being unravels in sequences of community meetings, self-improvement and leadership programmes, as well as 3D models and intimate shots by the inhabitants themselves.

Viktorija Šiaulytė is independent curator and producer working in the fields of contemporary art, architecture and film. Marta Dauliūtė is co-founder and owner of MDEMC, film production company, together with film director and producer Elisabeth Marjanovic Cronvall. Together their project 'Good Life' was the recipient of Transmediale's Vilém Flusser Residency for Artistic Research in 2018.

Benjamin Gerdes (BG):

Could both of you speak a bit broadly about how you approach the topic of the entrepreneurial subject in relation to co-housing? You clearly have identified this intersection of self-improvement and co-housing as a very compelling cultural symptom. What were the inquiries that led you to this identification and focus for the project? And what can you share about your process? The topics and shifts you highlight interest me, but so does the challenge of visualizing these as models and structural tendencies for a feature film and multi-year research project.

Viktorija Siaulyte (VS):

When we talk about co-housing in the context of our film and research, we're discussing this very particular phenomenon of co-living which is not older than 15 years. We're not talking about cooperatives in the sixties and seventies, but rather a model that emerged in Silicon Valley and California in relation to tech culture. So that’s important to note, the particularity of this co-housing. We were initially interested in the startup scene, and the relation between the workplace and the entrepreneurial subject, workplace and lifestyle as part of a connected structure. We found co-living to be one of the typologies of the startup lifestyle, and that’s when we thought that it conveys this complicated relationship between the subject and work, as well as the evolution of workplace design and the structure of work itself. We then began to question how this relationship evolves in the context of co-living spaces.

Marta Dauliute (MD):

From the start, we were particularly interested in this entrepreneurial subjectivity and therefore we were also interested in the figure and trajectory of the ‘entrepreneur’ in particular. But just to note, it is still important for us not to confuse the two, as we all have entrepreneurial subjectivity because of the prevalent imperative imposed upon us. We were in particular interested to examine these startups that direct themselves towards the “empowerment by entrepreneurship”, to enhance this particular mode of self-management. So the background is also that we came to this question of co-living through this angle, that it reflects an intensification of this practice.

BG:

So to be clear, you were also following the co-working and co-living phenomenon not as something that came up from more counter-cultural forms of co-housing, but from a particular tech or startup model of extending and transforming work into life. This was the important maneuver that you wanted to follow?

VS:

The question in part answers the question about process. We visited a lot of co-working spaces, startup incubators and innovation hubs. Having started the research on 24/7 work in co-working spaces, we noticed that the situation and lifestyle that a lot of us also soak in accommodates the evolution of co-working into co-living.

MD:

In the final work, there is also an idea to try to mirror this evolution driven by the other startups. For instance, the ones pushing the work-life balance. There is one life you have and you can work and live the way you want. “Forget work - think life”.

VS:

Co-living was this really kind of an epiphany moment. We went there and filmed and then decided to come back even more. We thought it was the ultimate example of this erasure of limits, being personal and corporate, what does it mean that your life is kind of encompassed, and everything you do is trying to lead to general corporate efficiency. Co-living was always the most important case for us.

MD:

At the beginning it looked so exotic, but then there was this moment where we could suddenly identify ourselves, bodily, we could suddenly recognize our own life. There is this beautiful moment in our material where the “head of smart living” talks about decreasing the space, but still increasing the well-being. He is showing a tiniest pod “where you can actually stand up”, he means that you can still move your legs and “have a sense of freedom”. And then he says: “And here is even a little dest where you can have your laptop”.

BG:

I've brought a question about this scene, we see modeling software being used and a model figure being placed, and we see how it doesn't physically fit. There's an ecological claim to reducing space from the residents and start-up leaders, but the architecture reminds me of prisons and other institutional buildings for education or student housing in the 1970s United States designed to be “riot proof” in response to an ongoing protest movement. So you have lots of corridors and doorways and can only assemble in very specific public places. These spaces you show appear equally prescriptive. They're not embracing a model of universal housing for a broad public, it's very much this specific clientele of rising entrepreneurs. It's not for people who are child-rearing or aging—you wouldn’t grow old there or be able to use a wheelchair, for example—but offered toward the perhaps idealized lifestyle of the “digital nomad.” It’s perhaps transitory in the same way as the populations housed in some of the other structures I’m referencing, but here the term that comes up about the curation of the residents is quite powerful, that it's self-selecting. It comes across forcefully that these spaces are designed for an aspirational group, do you feel that the designs of these spaces spatially reflect an entrepreneurial impulse?

MD:

The main selling point of the co-living spaces is not the private sleeping areas, but that joining grants you access to a network, so what you actually get outside of the pod is a curated community, people that are good to meet, the value is in the network.

VS:

So I mean it’s a bubble, for certain kinds of digital nomads. But at the same time, it's probably self-reproducing. There was a resident that said in the future she might like a different arrangement, but she didn’t know what her future was like, or that she chose not to think of the future that far. I would speculate, coming back to this entrepreneurial subject, that when you're living in these conditions, with this temporality, perhaps the thought to have children will never come to you. Or any other life arrangements. In that sense I think this kind of architecture produces a specific subjectivity.

BG:

Your answer is interesting Viktorija, because you discuss how these sorts of spaces are not organized in relation to the tradition of communes or other historical forms of co-housing. But compared to the other models for housing, the nuclear family or couple relationship is also really not its clientele. So it's maybe not counter-cultural, but strongly experimental. Then we might also want to talk about what sets this experiment apart.

MD:

I think regarding the comparison to the tradition of communes or other types of co-housing, we mostly reflected about the motivation in striving for different types of autonomy. This kind of model doesn’t arrive from that. It is a company that curates the community. Even the private space that might be seen as a place to draw back, to gain some kind of reflection, autonomy of thought is also erased from this model.

BG:

And in your research and interviews, I would ask how this relationship is further articulated. You have a resident essentially saying, ‘it’s not us and them, it’s not the residents and the corporation, I don’t want to create this kind of culture… There's this identification with the overall project. Several people referenced being part of research. But do people discuss any response to the circulation of venture capital in these projects? Is there any discussion, for example, of the implications of a situation where their living conditions could deliver financial rewards for the parent organization? We could of course ask the same about contemporary real estate development in general, but as the situations you explore explicitly invoke the experimental, perhaps this question acquires more intensity?

VS:

It’s hard to say, but it's quite clear the residents don't have a stake in this question. Our argument is that you are providing the free labor of developing the model, but then it's not totally clear in these situations we looked at mostly closely if they have any shares in potential profits themselves.

MD:

During the process of filming I have been thinking that there are reasons why for example the collective house I live in [in Stockholm], which is based on a more traditional model of collective living, is appealing only to certain kinds of residents. The models with the entrepreneurial attributes and aesthetics attract another kind. It was a strong insight to me that the residents maybe don't have a problem with the same things that troubles us. When we entered the space, we got enthusiastic to dissect the power structures and the narratives, but then the residents living there might not have a problem with what we try to unveil. In the end maybe it’s just a question of ideology.

BG:

We’re having this conversation under the umbrella of an exploration of platform urbanism. There's actually something very interesting when some of the aesthetic expression of a platform mentality occur not in navigation and structuring of public space--which is perhaps more my own interest in overlapping forms of mobility right now--but have to meet more mundane and/or material structures like the built environment or housing regulations. The aesthetic can be slick or very app-y but at some point it also necessarily enters these very low tech zones you are adept at revealing. I would maybe identify as shared traits the ethos that optimization and efficiency can be enacted as play not work, but then also capitalized upon as productive, profitable. You were saying, Marta, there's a kind of interchangeability between these co-living spaces. That kind of ease of coming and going is obvious from coworking startups as well, but does it then seem like a distinctly urban possibility, these co-living experiments?

VS:

You mean would it be different if it was built in some rural areas?

BG:

I mean it seems like there's element of positioning that's very strategic. These houses should occupy desirable geographical positions so that people would want to be there, primarily cities that attract and retain others who have the same sorts of interests with regards to the network. The notions of connectivity and possibility appear to me tied to contemporary urbanism—perhaps through a kind of ease of access and centrality now characterizing cities—rather than, for example, a rural mindfulness retreat?

VS:

I think your point about mobility is interesting because perhaps that's what dictates the locations and networks of these spaces. I mean, that's what essentially makes these networks. I'm not necessarily thinking only of the startup we filmed, although I think they have aspirations for that, but there are many other co-living networks that have one house in San Francisco, one in London and one in Bali. For sure, some sort of a retreat in the jungle for refreshing after your time in the city. It draws on this urban nomad model, very fluid, traveling around and bringing that lifestyle with them. But I don't know... From our examples, it's not necessarily this megalopolis attracting residents, it's more like this mobile figure who travels from one place to another, and then if it's not always urban centers, I guess it's interesting to consider why these other places are so attractive for these communities as well.

MD:

Just to add to the so-called recreational locations that bring a certain imaginary to the lifestyle of a digital nomad. There is also another movement influenced by the aspect of tech labour being outsourced. We were for instance invited by the start-up we were filming to a planned co-living place in so-called Hill Stations in India where the start-ups could stay and meet people working for them with software development.

BG:

Perhaps if not exclusively urban we can then understand outsourcing as a kind of satellite to the other areas because so many of their business models depend on it, so all the networks you are following rely on some baseline infrastructure for people to be connected to or traveling between these locations easily.

VS:

I think in reality it's maybe much more complicated than this imagined lifestyle where you are this individual spending one month here, two months there. We didn't go that deep into those patterns over time and that could be very interesting to look at what you said, what are the material prerequisites to make that happen. I can imagine that it's more a narrative because how does that work in reality? I'm not sure. There may not be that many people that would not get fed up changing their place every month.

BG:

I have a question that concerns the temporality of making a film about topics like this, perhaps particularly in relationship to media coverage or hype of particular start ups. It can be quite hard to figure out the timing of a project that is more research-based, or is a film that isn't engaging in the immediate responses of internet or television journalism to narratives of boom and bust. Your project is perhaps much more about the individuals involved, that this is a subjective position that people in these situations are experimenting with. But to explore structures implementing and proliferating these experiments invokes a situation where the narrative fuels the speculative valuation, for example the fallout from WeWork, as in we thought it was a startup, but now it has to be revalued as a real estate venture. What are the possibilities for this kind of longer duration process amidst the highly accelerated coverage of tech?

MD:

We were never really making a kind of character-driven film nor one about the development of a specific or isolated start-up. We are rather trying to make a type of analysis of a certain marketing narrative which could possibly offer a lens to the audience to continue decoding the imaginary we are adressed with, which will not get outdated that fast, “hopefully”. Several start-ups we have filmed have already entered bankruptcy or changed their profit strategies. It doesn’t feel that process disrupts our take on the subject. If anything it helps us explore the fuller condition of that subject.

VS:

Maybe it's a crude way to go, but there's this imaginary that there will be another company, and then there are these facts about the companies and the life cycle of a company that changes, There are a few companies which even changed their names, during the course of our project, but somehow the imaginary and narrative remains the same. There is a bigger context we are after and these specific outcomes don't worry me. But will people in two years still be interested? Like after the pandemic, what questions will be more stark? How will today’s relevant concerns be viewed afterwards? My hope is that we are following here a long-term process. So in a sense taking more time on the project allows us to trace a few more contours of that process.

MD:

It made sense for us to focus on a case-study, to map out the narrative by one start-up, to unfold the power structure that in a way aims to become invisible. So there is the community of residents doing all types of affective immaterial labour, there are the CEOs, and there are also the investors. I think that the WeWork example is quite funny, I mean, in the end it is what it is - a real estate project. It speaks to how beneficial it is to look like something softer, something else. But behind the narrative of the new power such as “community” blabla, there is still the same “old power” and the profit.

BG:

As you describe, the self-realization and self-actualization aspect of these projects contributes to the presentation of the new “soft” model for these coliving experiments. One could instead describe the setup as a biopolitical colonization of physical and emotional capacities within a voluntary housing experiment, where behaviors are prescribed and people are tracked or constantly cued. I'm curious to hear how the people you interviewed articulated the relationship of their desire to this environment. I saw a scene with a seminar leader, but I didn’t get to see any responses. Residents submit to such a forceful set of conditions, or what I would perceive as such, but then this gets attached to an emancipatory language of self-realization. I think that tension to me is very interesting.

VS:

These leaders you reference are actually another company that's been invited by the management of the platform company for the inhabitants, to tell them how to be more mindful and communicate better in order to have less conflicts in the space and then potentially less antagonism. My reaction would be the same. But it's not as easy to place where exactly that is wrong, like trying to collectively learn how to not shout at each other –it’s something that the company offers that's voluntary, the residents are not forced to go to these courses. There is something very disturbing, but for me it's more difficult to place where or how it is disturbing. Beyond this, of course, there is this implicit notion that the capitalist structure accommodates your personal growth.

MD:

Another curious aspect is that the startup receives funding as a “research project” by the innovation foundation of the Swedish state. So there is this government-funded research trial to decrease the space by increased self-development. These workshops are there in a way to justify the research project. During one of the workshops there was a talk about self-transcendence as the top of Maslow’s pyramid, that the individual has to transcend by contributing, because this is the way you become truly happy. I agree with you, Viktorija, that here is something truly uneasy about the company providing self-development.

VS:

I said in the beginning that what we are talking about co-living does not have to do with historical collective housing. However there is a connection between the US sixties counterculture and neoliberal subjectivity. When I think of these mindfulness coaches in co-living and other startups, each time I think that I’ve heard this somewhere, almost this trickled down system theory. They talk a lot about complexity and how to deal with change and chaos and so on. There is obviously some genealogy there, with this self-realization and “society of control” and cybernetics, as it has been innocently or not envisioned in the mid-20th century countercultural movements.

BG:

I sense in what you're filming that it’s also non-judgmental, you're trying to look at these models and it's more about understanding the operations at play in this instantiation of the entrepreneurial self. It's also often quite hard to argue against the provision of a service that responds to a need, for example housing for young international professionals in Stockholm. How would you characterize your thoughts about access to alternatives as a frequently seductive proposition? And would you agree the position you've taken in the film is to observe and document the intricacies of the new models while also not affirming old models and structures as unflawed?

VS:

The only kind of alternative that we have if you are not for nuclear family structures or having some different kind of liberties. I think in the film, if you've uncovered these operations, there's not that much of an alternative maybe in terms of lifestyle, but in terms of ownership, structures, personalization. Like I think our main takeaway is that they still have these investors, venture capital funding and all the implications that brings with it. There's nothing new in that, in the way you do business and make money with new ideas.