D. Alan Dean

“To dwell is an art […] The human is the only animal who is an artist, and the art of dwelling is part of the art of living.” So says Ivan Illich in an essay called “Dwelling” that appears in In the Mirror of the Past. The modern world has rendered this art increasingly difficult. Many of us are liable to experience housing, he says, more than dwelling. Housing embeds us in a discourse of management, biology, or political economy. Housing provides a place to live in a biological sense, or in a bureaucratic one, but not a place to dwell.