Is it reasonable to embark on a real estate project like the Josefa House?...
The answer depends on what would be "reasonable" for the tens of millions of displaced people or refugees, among us; it is reasonable for them for it is the only way to save their lives.
Saving our lives, for most of us, means, more reasonably, trying to give our lives meaning; but what a challenge, when we dare to ask the question!
The intuition that guides the Josefa House is, precisely and boldly, to provide a space that is of good quality, aesthetic, ethical, and economical, in the heart of our European city, which is Brussels. The Josefa House wants to be defiant and thought-provoking: is it reasonable on a long-term basis to turn a blind eye to what people who have experienced forced migration and exile bring by staying among us : opportunities for hospitality, for a renewal of our economic thinking, for questioning the various ways we inhabit a place and move around in it? What if a space, a house, in the heart of Brussels, offered trust and a possible voice for our freedoms as migrants?
This is not just the voice of a few would-be prophetic artists, but also the expressionist and realist voice of many forced migrants living near free migrants who meet and discover each other, and finally listen to each other under one roof and whose destiny is to let resonate, to give reason to our (temporal and spiritual) migrations as a whole. Not just in their dramatic fate, too often one of an assistance economy, but also in their poetic manifestation, if the quality of the space and of the availability permits.
Such is the migration challenge which the Josefa House advocates, carries and shares. Welcome to everyone, on his or her free or forced journey.
