Colouring - in book Markiewicz by Malgosia Markiewicz

Malgorzata Markiewicz

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Here we have my note book which was made after a Seminar in KTH during the Spring 2013 lead by Helene Frichot. It includes seven blog posts, two based on my own chose and five based on the readings form Philosophers. First post is about the idea of home driven from the book of Witlod Rybcznski „Home. Short story of an idea” and summarize with my own conclusion. Second my own chose reading is the book of Avatr Brah “Cartographies of diaspora”, which was recommended by Tobias Hübinette from Multicultural Centrum in Fittja. The book rise the questions about culture, identity and politics in the context of difference and diversity. It also examined the aspect of home among immigrants who lives in Diasporas. I went through the rest of the texts form the Philosophers Seminar especially focusing on the topics which refer to my PhD project. In my PhD research I am interested in three aspects connected with house: house as building, home as a state of mind and the related to it domesticity and the process of domestication of space. The house is a multi-layered structure, on one hand it is only architecture, which is affected by the environment, natural, social and economic factors. Subsequently house, its interior is not directly designed by the same architects but is created individually with clusters of objects, smells and memories, often identified with the warmth and security. There are different ways in which we as residents of our home country create home and otherwise we create it as immigrants. The earlier fact of connecting home and domesticity with the building has changed over the past few decades and this is where the question arises - whether we all are mobile elements of a whole?

There is no denying that today home and domesticity is more mobile, transparent, subjective. The balance of power within the home has been changed also. Masculinity and femininity before clearly subordinated to the social roles, have been repositioned now. Currently, none of these features may not be assigned the same gender: masculine for men and feminine for women. It is necessary to create a new map of action, infuence within the home. Also broadly, looking at the local town and the world we can observe the same. Therefore, because of change, migration and journey is necessary to look at the new senses which has begin to emerged. The point is not to reject the old conception of domesticity, but to create new ones which are based in culture and contemporary society, and which are the litmus test of the changes taking place in the world. Till now home as the building was a solid form, consistent, perfect, designed predominantly by masculinity as a closed form. Currently architecture tries to re-open building structure, co-create it, tries to make a design which keep it mobile and changeable. I am interested in the historical background of the course changes and manifestations of power within the house (architecture) and the city. I will lead my toughs until to day, when the architecture has become lighter, mobile, variable. The present sociological theories, social movements, engaged and critical attitude is very important and interesting for me.

The process of developing private and public sphere within home. I went through the historical development of european homes and made some observations. (based on the book of Witold Rybczyński "HOME. A SHORT HISTORY OF AN IDEA."). The intimacy and privacy is the trace of human presence. In The Middle Ages 90% of society were extremely poor and was living very bad conditions. Children has not got any childhood, were sending for work, separate from parents. Some historians said that they did not know what does it mean home. In the houses of richest part of society (townspeople) the public and private area were together in one living space which was called “hall”. During the day they were doing business there, cooking, eating and during the night sleeping. That gathering also might be connected with the fact that the heating was a problem. In those houses we can not talk about privacy, very often 25 people were living all together. (In Other non Western cultures we can observe the same – eg, Japanese culture, in their language there is no special word to call privacy so they took it from english). In The Midlle Ages rich people has the portable furnitures, called mobilires, which were easy to rearrange within the multifunctional space. The function of the rooms was not dedicated. (same like in Japan). Adults and children slept together, as well as their servants. It was connected with the fact that people did not fell the need to be separate, they did not develop their individual character did not care about children and they did not create yet the emotional relation with the family. Later on, home and family separate form work and servants. The kitchen was at the back, far from the main room, because of bad smell, servants were cooking and living there. The family was by their own but still there was no privacy within he them, no atmosphere of cosiness. That aura of warmth and family life started in the North of Europe, fist in Norway in Oslo and later in Netherlands. Those nations in their language has that special word hejm/home and also domesticity to describe that cosiness and safety. We can not point the exact date and place, but for sure it was somewhere there. The personal touch found in the house might be called Stimmung. Different attitude to childhood also gave a rise to create that felling. In XVII century Netherlands house we can find in those times small, clean, cosy houses with private small back yard. Their interior were divided into private and public space. The townspeople were quite rich. The working space was in different building or downstairs, so without any connection to home. Workers did not live there, they had their own houses or fats. There was no servants because of protestant character of the society. All kitchen work was made by woman, who took great care about the home space. Here we can also observe different attitude to children and childhood - kids were with their mother. The family life has started to develop. Less people were living in one house, only 4 or 5. Big open houses were replaced by smallest more intimate. It was the place an the time when the domesticity was born. “Our” understanding of domesticity is connected with mother, father and children and emerged in seventeen century Netherlands. Then spread throughout the western world in the following two centuries.

In XVII century France, the attitude to kids weren't the same as in Netherlands, but here also we can observe the separation of the public and private space during that time. King Louie XV on the infuence of Madame Pompadour change the Louvre to get some more privacy. The court was open for the visiting aristocracy, everyday hundreds of people were passing by, so he need to some place to hide. In Louvre king Louie XV had the official bed room where could be seen during waking up and going to sleep as ritual, but in real he slept in his private small bed room. Servants also became more invisible – lifts with whole set table, bells, they can light the stove from the room next wall. The Madame Pompadour favourite joy was to organize homes, smaller and more cosy for her and king, where they can met. The rooms weren't organized in enfilade, but has a separate entrances form the main hall what gave more privacy. We have three types of room: for parties, for reception, for the private use. The rococo style has been born in that times, was very feminine but was only interior design style, not for the whole architecture. The king and court has a big infuence on houses of bourgeoisie In England XVIII were the infuence of the King and court on people was not strong. Rich aristocrats had a big country houses with many separate rooms for all members of the family and huge "public" space for meetings, parties, ect. But it was not an open house like in the Middle Ages, in those times the invitations were need to make the visist. There was no culture and public life in the cities, it happened mostly on the countryside. I those times we can observe strict division form the public and private activities at home. In those houses we can find “down stairs” sphere for common activates and “up stairs” the private sphere where everyone has their own room. The individualisation of each member of the family has started. American houses of the XIX became smaller, without servants, easy to keep clean by housewives. It was not the only reason why the were smaller. America was the place where women took in their hands practical aspects of organizing home space. They called themselves - home engineers(female). First was Catherine E.Beecher who re design the home interior that it was more functional, good for the user. She did not want to keep her knowledge that is why in the 1869 with her sister published a book “The American Woman's House” .The case of heating, ventilation, bathrooms, toilets and the most important how to maximize the use the minimal space. Her ideas was close to the houses from XVII Netherlans. Later Christine Frederick also made a big effort to improve home life. Both of them made plenty of researches and measurements to find the best practical solution how to organize and plan homes. They called themselves home engineers not home architects on purpose, want to cut themselves from the men architects who were very resistant on any change and discussion. Architects still in those times treat architecture like pure art, ideal form without taking under consideration who is going to live in side and use that space. As we can read in book Spatial Agency:“The standard histories of architecture focus almost exclusively on the guiding hand of the individual architect, and in this exclude the multiple voices and actions of the others. Architects, as is argued in the book Informal City, “fail to see, let alone analyse or capitalize upon, the informal aspects of urban life because they lack a professional vocabulary for describing them. Their vision is shaped and also limited by their theories, which[...]fail to confront critically real-world issues.”

Catherine E.Beecher was more focused on the “in side” . And Christine Frederick plan the whole (small) houses. She published the book:Household Engineering. Was teaching women how to do professional architectural drawings. It was important that in those days people could use many new devices like vacuum cleaner and dishwasher because of electricity. Furniture where small, hidden in walls, and combine few functions in one object. Small hoses similar to hose form XVII Holland. The small houses had no space for public life, it was throw outside the building. In XX century Le Corbusier blocks of fats, create small spaces for living, but he does not offer the practical solutions. Only pure idea. Unification of the space. Standardization of costumers...The alienation of the family and its each member has started. Also Valdimir Talin and Alexander Rochenko who promote “novyi byt(new forms of domesticity) – they want to remove double, martial bed which was a symbol of symbol of stability and family, and offer single, mobile bed for the new Soviet person, single one... Later, separate rooms and people focused on the Personal Devices, mobile devices. PC (personal computers)I phone, I Mac. That is why I came to conclusion isn't the I Phone = I Home? The sphere of home for many now became very small, pocket size. Sometimes I have impression that people only need their IPhones or Mac Books to escape and hide. To have all they need, all home in small size object. As Jane Randell argues “Public and private, (…) mean different things for different people – protected isolation or unwelcome containment, intrusion or invitation, exclusion or segregation. And as a privatization of public space increasingly occurs in all directions – extending outwards to all regions of the globe and inwards to hidden reaches of the mind – we need to define carefully how we use the terms. I think that private sphere went deep deep into the mind. On the other hand Facebook Twitter let the private be very public... so that black device is very private but open the window for the public.

Witlod Rybcznski „Home. A Short History of an Idea”, (Wydawnictwo Marabut, Oficyna Wydawnicza Volumen 1996)

Minimal set for all kinds of travel, 2011 object, process by Malgorzata Markiewicz

Conceptual Cluster 1: Relations and Agency I have designed that set for the exhibition which aim was to offer a gifts for the visitors and exchange it with them. There were about 30 artists invited. One artist could bring one gift for one person. I thought that: Taking the gift is a challenge, especially nowadays when people get things without considering if they truly need it. Everyone would like to get something nice from the artist, that is why I thought it should not be that easy to posses it. Minimal set for all kinds of travel is intended for the volunteer who decides to make an effort of spending 5 days using only items from the kit. The volunteer is allowed to use only: a simple piece of felt for sleeping needs, which is also a carrying bag,a small blanket, a mug, a spoon, a pencil, a sketch book, a herb tea and 3×5 portions of different kinds of grains. The volunteer is allowed to ask for boiling water and a place to sleep. The volunteer can travel, hitch hike, visit friends, discuss or remain silent for all the time. It is forbidden to use credit cards, mobile phones, computer, etc. Unfortunately none of the visitors felt strong enough to take the challenge and responsibility of having my gift. They were interested in it but afraid to face the disavowal. The efforts they need to put into possessing nice art piece surpass their expectations. First volunteer was a renowned Polish artist – Marek Chlanda – who have taken this challenge for 14 days and created a series of partings under the infuence of this experiment. The act of using the set gives an alternative, examine the other ways of living in the society, it offers being instead of having. The meaning comes out in the process of using it, in action not in the object itself. It gives the impulse to extract from structures and start to create new sense, to act otherwise. It makes user to be aware of acting with ‘intent and purpose’ and gives chance to create critical difference and take social responsibility. Minimal set for all kinds of travel drift also to the contexts of the gift economy, gift culture where goods can be given without any immediate rewards. Gift culture is anthropological term used to describe the societies in which participants donate their goods for the common welfare. The research about gift cultures began with the polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski in 1922. Later on term spread on the other fields like economy, science and creative commons, open source software and many more.

Warm â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Cold, 2004 Malgorzata Makiewicz

Mobile signature of the place, 2000 Malgorzata Makiewicz

Conceptual Cluster 4: The Theory Tool Box My post refer to the text of Jane Rendell Art and Architecture: A Place Between.

Warm - cold form 2004 was an action in public(?) space. I use the quotation mark because of difficulties in definition of what is private and what is public nowadays. As Jane Randell argues “Public and private, (…) mean different things for different people – protected isolation or unwelcome containment, intrusion or invitation, exclusion or segregation”. So may be it is better to call that work as a critical spatial practice. The project was a 'soft' intervention in the Potocki Palace at Kraków's Market Square. The Renaissance Palace was 'contaminated'  with old clothes, forming a colour mosaic - nice aesthetic element. In Krakow the old buildings are under the special care so I needed to get many permissions to do that installation. I was not allowed to put any single nail or any other permanent intervention. But I want somehow disturb that white, clean, pure order of architecture and power. That is why I used second hand cloths to make it warmer for winter. I took “dirty” materials and was working as homeless people who create their temporary shelters, but the effect was nice enough for the principles. Another work which examines the aspect of private and public is Portable Place Marker form 2000. That object was made from 25 rectangles which can be arrange and used as a carpet. Its aim was to mark the place, the private space where no one can enter. It was portable and folding so easy to take and move to other context. Behind that idea was a need to mark the space, to separate it from the rest of the world – public space and the private space of the other as well. That act can be read as a feministic demands of having the own room, to be independent. Here privacy is understood to provide positive qualities, such as the right to be alone, to confidentiality and the safeguarding of individuality. “The art theorist Rosalyn Deutsch asks, 'What does it mean for space to be public? The space of a city, building, exhibition, institution of work of art?' The boundaries drawn around notions of private and public are not neutral or descriptive lines, but contours that are culturally constructed , change historically and denote specific value system. The terms appear as social ans spatial metaphors in geography, anthropology and sociology, as terms of ownership in economics, and as political spheres in political philosophy and law. Public and private, and variations between these two terms, mean different things for different people – protected isolation or unwelcome containment, intrusion or invitation, exclusion or segregation”

Pianfores, 2002 Malgorzata Makiewicz

Conceptual Cluster 6: Chora I was your house. And, when you leave , abandoning this dwelling place, I do not know what to do with these walls of mine. Have I ever had a body other than the one which you constructed according to your idea of it? Have I ever ever experience a skin other than the one which you wanted me to dwell within? (Luce Irigarey, 1992:49) In 2002 I created the „Pinafores”, work which examined women's home oppersion. There work consist of objects, action, performance and photos. Pinafores can be made of an oil cloth. They are inexpensive, easy to keep clean, water-proof, and everything washes off them. Their appearance is reminiscent of summer dresses. They are also sexy, hence attractive to men. Pinafore is the universal uotfit of the housewife. A woman wearing a pinafore can fulfill culturally imposed functions: mother, wife, lover. A pinafore is an apparel that - using a special pattern designed especially by the artist - can easily be manufactured by its prospective wearer. I found a great comment to this work of mine in the text if Elisabeth Grosz „Woman, Chora, Dwelling”: (...)men place woman in the position of being 'guardians' of their bodies and their spaces, the conditions of both bodies and space without body and space of their own: they become the living representatives of corporeality, of domesticity (…) it relegates woman to the position of support or precondition of the masculine – precisely the status of chora in the Platonic tradition. The containment of woman within a dwelling that they did not build, nor was even built for them, can only amount to a homelessness within the very home itself: it becomes the space of duty, of endless and infinitely repeatable chores that have no social value of recognition, the space of the affirmation and replenishment of others at the expense and erasure of the self, the space of domestic violence and abuse, the space that harms as much as isolates woman. Is as if the men is unable to to resist the temptation to colonize, to appropriate, to measure, to control, to instrumentalize all that they survey, reducing horizon (the horizon of becoming the measure and refection of positionality) into the dwelling.

We are not allowed to love anything. I only know my motherland by the smell, it smells like my mother's cooking. Here each country is foreign. Abroad does not change us, in all countries we eat with our mouths. The smell of burned feathers is home for me. My dolls have become very skinny, they do not understand foreign languages. Most important: to be vigilant, never tell the truth, so that no one can laugh at us. I would like to pack my mother into a suitcase. My father died of absence. My mother lives in unconsciousness. Abroad, my family fell apart like pieces of glass. I feel like I'm falling to pieces.

Aglaja, crocheting textile, size aprox 240x160cm, 2013, Malgorzata Makiewicz

.Conceptual Cluster 8: Feminist Writing Practices The sentences were taken from the book of the Romanian writer Aglaja Veteranyi - “Warum das Kind in der Polenta kocht". In all of them “home” aspect is present. Aglaja was a child of a circus family so they were in permanent travel, escape form Ceausescu dictatorship. They spend almost every night in a different place. This is a story about how it is to be a foreigner, homeless, woman, child. In the text of Jennifer Bloomer I found few interesting sentences which might refer to that work. The word writing (...)do not refer simply to that concept of writing as a mirror of documentation of speech, but writing as a constructing nonlinear enterprise that works across culture in networks of signification. This writing, although it makes the use of language, is not limited by conventional concepts of language; that is, it does not exists in identity with language. The etchings of Piranesi are readable. They are are constructed as „having been woven”(the word text emerge s from the past participle of the Latin textere, „to wave”. A text is a woven thing. In the space of the relation between text and weaving lies the generative structure that allows the logic of the construction to unfold before your eyes. This structure must be mapped across a constellation of concepts via a network of lines of ideas that(...) represent repetitious tracks of many movements across the same territory.(...) the mapping of this generative structures itself operates in the space between the text and weaving:it is what it is about. Samuel Beckett(...)said the same about the Finnegans Wake: „Here form is content and content is form. You complain that this stuff is not written in English. It is not written at all. It is not to be read – or rather it is not only to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to. His writing is not about something ; it is that something itself”

Jennifer Bloomer , Jennifer Bloomer‘A Priming’ in Architecture and the Text: The (S)crypts of Joyce and Piranesi, Yale University, 1993.

Lucy Irigarey

Net, crocheting textile, size aprox 250x250cm, 2004, Malgorzata Makiewicz

Notes from the book „Cartographies of diaspora Contesting Identities ”by Avtar Brah published first by Routlege in 1996. I found that publication very interesting in the context of home and domesticity. For the first it is good to focus what does “diaspora' mean. As we read in the chapter 8 of the book term diaspora derivers from Greek – dia,' through' and speirein, 'to scatter'. And later: “The word embodies a notion of the centre, a locus, a 'home' from where the dispersion occurs. It invokes the image of multiple journeys”. But not every journey can be treat as diaspora, casual travels of individuals are not diasporas. Those collective journeys draw the lines and crate the net, the body of diaspora. As I think about that texture, I can see the spider net, but not fat one, but spacial construction made from connection and relation to the condition in the country of migration. The tensions and distances between the elements of the particular one and the other diasporas. Avtar Brah argue that : “the concept of diaspora embodies a subtext of 'home'”. And later she writes: “Where is home? On the one hand, 'home' is the mythic place of desire in the diasporic imagination. In this sense it is a place of no return, even if it is possible to visit the geographical territory that is seen as a place of 'origin'. On the other hand 'home' is a also the lived experience of locality. Its sounds and smells, its heat and dust, balmy summer evenings, or the excitement of the first snowfall, shivering winter evenings, sombre grey skies in the middle of the day...all this, as mediated by the historically specific of everyday social relations.” It is very interesting to see that architectural construction of the elements with constitute each individual conception of home. The home which is not a solid building places on ground, but more vivid, transparent and mobile experience. As we can read in the Avtar Brah book: “The concept of diaspora places the discourse of 'home' and 'dispersion' in a creative tension, inscribing a homing desire while simultaneously critiquing discourses of fixes origins.” The aspect of ' home ' and belonging may by a main part of the diasporic condition, but not all diasporas treat homing desire the same as a wish to return to the place of 'origin'. That is why: “The concept of diaspora signals the the process of multi-locationality across geographical, cultural and psychic boundaries. (…) Diasporic identities are at once local and global. They are networks of transnational identifications encompassing 'imagined' and 'encountered' communities.”

In the title I also used word “dust”, the dry powder which is inseparable with home. Dust was the nightmare of modernists, they want to remove all of it form stuffy XIX century interiors. The domestic sphere is occupied with dust, every day struggle to remove it. But the dust will always appear very soon. It locates in the corners and dark, hidden places and is very mysterious. During the Seminar we had lecture of Teresa Stoppani, On Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School . The philosopher is his book „Arcades Project” refers to the role of dust in the nineteen-century interior. Dust as a cosy, strange, bourgeois, infiltrates everywhere, is an uncomfortable agent. It is impossible to control the dust, it spreads and reach the smallest holes and spaces. It appears in dispersion. Dust and Iron, the Benjamin's material of the time. Shows the confict between the present and the past. City is a growing structure which accumulates elements, also dust. I can see some similarity between dust and and elements of diasporas. Spatial agents who are spread among the global space. Spider nets and dust, the integral elements of all all homes, disturbs clean and pure spaces. For them there are no borders. Dust is one form all is created and one that all finishes as. Dust is free, mobile, light, settle for some time. Is able to create an island from the “new” emerge. In the corners, in dark, in hidden. All that is solid right now one day will turn into the dust. In dust is power.

Avatr Brah “Cartographies of diaspora”Routledge, New York 1996

Home, drawings 2013, Malgorzata Makiewicz

“Domesticity is not a notion to be discarded but one that need to thought about differently” . ( Gulsum Baydar) After the Seminar readings and discussion we had during the meetings I develop my knowledge a lot. All those experience helps me in my research. I comes to be clear that domesticity is not something that should be eliminated, destroy, eradicate as modernists wanted to do, but is a value that needs re – definition. In searching for new ways of domestication and appropriation it is good to focus on the non standard groups of people . In during last few ages house was identified with the body of a woman was her domain and kingdom. But designed and built by men was in the same time a form of oppression. Recently to focus on fact of reducing and imprisonment of women is an anachronism. It is need to open the form of the house, there is necessary a new definition of home and domesticity. But there won't be one, clear and closed definition, because under consideration should be taken each in the individual way. How He, She, It creates a house and domesticity depending on all the cultural, racial, sexual, political background and links. So we can not speak about unified notion of domesticity. To follow Gulsum Baydar in her text „Wo/man in contemporary architectural discourse” from the book „Negotiating Domesticity” no identity can be totalized. The sociological model of the unitary, singular, self refective subject is hardly sufficient in explaining the complexity of human agency.(...) The unified “I” emerges only within and as the matrix of whole set of social, cultural, racial and gender relations that call for critical examination. The very good examples of these are diasporas, which I discuss in the chapter 8. When it comes to the question about home, the immigrants which are inscribe within differing political practices, occupy different positions. In the time of coming form the country of origin they bring their cultural and sociological background and try to relate it to the new conditions . In the concept of diaspora the aspects of multi-locationality across geographical, cultural and psychic boundaries are easy to find. In my practical PhD work I will focus on expression of different people about their idea of home, what is home for them. I want to highlight those which do not fit to the standards. I would like to collect and show the diversity of home and domestication.

Hilde Heynen & Gulsum Baydar, eds., Negotiating Domesticity (Routledge, 2005)