I am sitting in a hotel in Holland with grass on the roof and trees trying to hide a motorway. I wonder if we could look at the idea of waiting spaces. Places we stay in between and pass through. Airport lounges. Hotel lobbies. Train stations. Theatre foyers. Where the inside is outside, the outside is inside and everyone is present but noone really belongs. At least not for very long. This would be an interesting metaphor for the fact that we are all meeting to take part in the Readymade Residency and it is an autonomous space in between us - like the messages in a bottle. Spaces and places are always a good starting place. Or the idea of non-places. Where we belong and where we don't belong. Where we are and where we want to be. We could look at George Perec's Species of Spaces and Other Pieces and Marc Augé's Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. 'Marc Augé coined the phrase "non-place" to refer to places of transience that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as "places." Examples of a non-place would be a motorway, a hotel room, an airport or a supermarket.' [Wikipedia]. I am spending time in hotel rooms overlooking motorways in between checking in and out of airports drinking beer I can't pronounce from a supermarket where I don't understand anything. We could investigate ideas of liminality and thresholds - a student at Clarendon wrote something beautiful - 'I am just sitting here where one thing starts and another thing begins' - in fact this could be some kind of title.
Wednesday, 23 April 2008
Grass on the roof
I am sitting in a hotel in Holland with grass on the roof and trees trying to hide a motorway. I wonder if we could look at the idea of waiting spaces. Places we stay in between and pass through. Airport lounges. Hotel lobbies. Train stations. Theatre foyers. Where the inside is outside, the outside is inside and everyone is present but noone really belongs. At least not for very long. This would be an interesting metaphor for the fact that we are all meeting to take part in the Readymade Residency and it is an autonomous space in between us - like the messages in a bottle. Spaces and places are always a good starting place. Or the idea of non-places. Where we belong and where we don't belong. Where we are and where we want to be. We could look at George Perec's Species of Spaces and Other Pieces and Marc Augé's Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. 'Marc Augé coined the phrase "non-place" to refer to places of transience that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as "places." Examples of a non-place would be a motorway, a hotel room, an airport or a supermarket.' [Wikipedia]. I am spending time in hotel rooms overlooking motorways in between checking in and out of airports drinking beer I can't pronounce from a supermarket where I don't understand anything. We could investigate ideas of liminality and thresholds - a student at Clarendon wrote something beautiful - 'I am just sitting here where one thing starts and another thing begins' - in fact this could be some kind of title.
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