Dear [hot-desking studio] D305,
Your were big and had large windows on three sides and one of them was more than 30m long. You had 3 screens and multiple doors and high ceilings and grey floors and blind spots. You had 3 sets of big blue curtains that separated you in 4 equal parts. You had a window ledge and some plants and nowhere to hide apart from plain site. You had radiators that were off in the winter and on in the summer. You were where I spent 3 days a week. Plugs hang from the ceiling imitating a workshop facility, but no such activity takes place in here. There is no time to settle as every group uses is here for 4 hours maximum.
You were drenched in light and full of potential. You were eerie when no one was around and packed to the brim with bodies when you were being used. The change of temperature was immense. Due to your dimensions you were hard to address. I screamed from the top of my lungs, and repeated myself and questions asked. When we split the room with the curtains, the other activities taking place simultaneously in the room were equally distracting and exciting (what are they doing over there?). You were everyone’s and no ones: about 500 people marched through. I couldn’t even decide if you were a space of transience or bizarre commoning.
I am reminded of Immaculate Heart Art College and its rules. Its a reference that comes up a lot on the course. The first rule being: find one space and trust it for a while. Could I trust you? I’ve seen a student have a panic attack in that space. What does trust or safety look like in you or for you? What do I need to trust you? I usually need somewhere to sit, somewhere to store, a wall to reflect with, somewhere warm, somewhere to return to (and somewhere to stretch) . It is helpful if others trust you too, and they also have somewhere to sit, and store and they return. I find myself always gravitating towards the edges of the room, as it the floor in the center will fall. Could you be that?
Or do you need to trust us? To treat you nice, and make sure you are clean and ready for the next session, and to trust me that I will leave my best not my worst behind?
Janelle Baker, a M.tis scholar, similarly talks about the sentience of places. Writing about ecological restoration projects on Indigenous lands, she talks about the need for respectful relations not just with the humans living in a place but also with non-humans and the land that are also a part of the local community and kinship relations. This necessity has implications for the practice of research; she asserts, “[A] researcher needs to be sensitive to, and participate in, systems of respect and reciprocity belonging to the people, ancestors, and sentient landscape of the place in which they are doing research” (p. 110).
I cannot say I have the answer on how to do this.
You make me think of Centre Pompidou and its flexible design, where the building embodies a radical vision in which spaces are no longer defined by their role (https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/collection/our-building#:~:text=A%20flexible%20design,longer%20defined%20by%20their%20role.) You make me think of the curatorial turn and the use of the museum as an ‘art lab’, lively art spaces rather somewhere where art sits. You make me think of TAZ (temporary autonomous zones). Maybe you are a liberated area “of land, time or imagination” where one can be for something, not just against, and where new ways of being human together can be explored and experimented with. Are you? Are you liberated? Could we liberate you?
I walk into my friends studio in Peckham. It is full of stuff: materials, and old works, and sculptures that went wrong but still have a life to live. And objects that came from somewhere that were trash and became treasure because the color was nice, or the form reminded them of something and books for inspiration and to do lists. You, you look empty but weirdly enough there is bits of things hanging about, debris and excess. My friend keeps treasures in his studio. You are left with 500 people’s trash: forgotten registers, and excess worksheets, drawings gone wrong, collective mind maps, left over food and water bottles, post its that fell off, signs that were not useful anymore. Are they your treasures? Would anyone mind if you were wiped clean? Or what would it do if everyone left stuff behind? Are these offerings or just forgotten miscellania?
A studio is defined by the dictionary as a room where an artist, photographer, sculptor, etc. works. But do students actually work here? What is work and where does it happen? After the studio has changed life, should we change the name of the studio into something else, like salon? Or Project space? Or just room? Or something that reflects its ever changing nature?
I have been reading Gislaine Leung book ‘Bosses’ and her article on Frieze titled ‘Gislaine Embracing her Own Limits’ [ https://www.frieze.com/article/ghislaine-leung-column-238] In which she tried to undo a dialectic of value, where she tried to understand what she has or doesnt’t have as a resource, trying to understand the situation I’m in as a resource. She writes:
[…] those limits, those dependencies could be turned around to become a resource for making artwork in another way, in a way that you don’t know what it’s going to do. And I constantly have to decide to maintain this turn.
Her use of the word maintenance makes me think of Mierle Laderman Ukeles, and maintenance art Manifesto titled Care (1969) chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://queensmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Ukeles-Manifesto-for-Maintenance-Art-1969.pdf It makes me feel like like teaching is a maintenance act. Could it be one that turns you (d305) into a Temporary Autonomous Zone?
Or are you already doing the labour for us?