Real Estate Circus

This project originated from an attempt to access newly developed housing around the WaltherPark area in Bolzano. Even arranging a viewing proved difficult: access was regulated through informal criteria, requiring a display of cultural and social capital. Only with external support (my father) was it possible to enter the process.

What followed was a confrontation with prices that appeared radically detached from everyday realities. This raised a fundamental question: how are these prices legitimized, and who are these spaces actually built for?

While new, high-end housing is actively marketed as revitalization, parallel research revealed a persistent contradiction: a high level of vacancy within the city, including centrally located buildings that have remained empty for decades. The photographic work responds to this tension. One key site is a house near the Talfer river, vacant for approximately twenty years despite its prime location. Rather than portraying emptiness as absence, the images stage temporary gestures of activation by placing bodies, objects, and signs into these dormant spaces. The Real Estate Circus thus operates both as a visual investigation and as a call to action—seeking to transform passive observation into collective awareness.