The practice writes down what a house will not support.

ArtisDomus, the practice of Polina Surina, advises luxury houses and groups on cultural strategy, artist collaborations and how to structure partnerships. It works in Paris, Malta, the United Kingdom, Qatar and the Gulf, and only the owner pays its fee. A house that supports ten things for ten reasons has a philanthropy budget. A house that supports ten things for one reason has a cultural position.

Published by ArtisDomus, written by Polina Surina.

The work is to write that one reason down, then to say what it rules out. Without a list of exclusions, a marketing team can defend the spending for years while nobody can say what the house stands for in culture.

A senior person usually says this, someone who could stop the spending and does not want to. Each item on the list made sense on the day it was agreed: a prize, a fair, a commission, a residency, a museum wing. None of them is wrong. Together they do not add up to a position.

The problem lies in how the list was built. Each commitment was judged on its own merits, and the house had no position to weigh it against. So the eleventh decision has nothing to be measured by. A house in that state cannot say no without looking philistine, so the list keeps growing.

The work starts with a written statement: what the house stands for in culture, which institutions it belongs beside, and what it will not support.