The Contingent Space of Work

THE CONTINGENT SPACE OF WORK MIT Keller Gallery On View 04/07 — 05/06 Opening Reception, 04/15, 5:30pm

Cover image: Still from US: Urbonas Studio, Untitled: incident at the 4th Moscow Biennale, 2011

To call oneself a worker, or to label an activity as work and designate a space for it, is to move away from the stigma of amateurism and toward political action, economic viability, social relevance, and acceptance. Featuring artistic and design contributions from the current issue of thresholds, the MIT Department of Architecture's annual journal, The Contingent Space of Work presents creative responses to the mercurial designations of work, worker, and workspace within the contemporary rise of digital working platforms and immaterial products. From a new super-tool designed to both encourage sexual intimacy and promote household energy efficiency to a set of films which consider boredom as the most fundamental act of productivity, the exhibited projects stimulate connections between the spaces in which we work and the tools we use as it asks us to understand the social politics behind how and why certain activities come to be construed as work.

Curators: Nisa Ari and Christianna Bonin Contributors: Samira Daneshvar, Global Art Program at Tokyo University of the Arts (Tamao Hashimoto, Natsuko Kanzaki, Izumi Soeda), Greg Sholette & Matt Greco, Object Solutions (Ernesto D. Morales & Shelly Ronen), Partner & Partners, Merve Ăœnsal, US: Urbonas Studio

OBJECT SOLUTIONS (ERNESTO D. MORALES & SHELLY RONEN)

NEURALIGN, TOUCHTRAINER, RING FINGER SPOTLIGHT, AND INTIMATUM FROM THE SERIES LOVE, OPTIMIZED Inkjet prints of risograph prints with accompanying MP3 audio files, 24 x 24 in., approx. 2m (each)

The belief that new technology can provide solutions to the struggles and inconveniences of everyday life has long been ubiquitous in advertising and the design industry. The objects in Love, Optimized present seemingly unshakeable— but actually highly contingent—solutions to the wiles of intimacy today. Infusing each super-tool description with the language of convenience and the promise of progress,

Morales and Ronen test the boundary between technology and the more private realms of an individual’s body. The objects make potential “customers” aware of some of the most persistently enrapturing and painful issues in relationships, as well as our constant search for tools that can help us with the work of romance. objectsolutions.net/love

MERVE ÜNSAL

FEBRUARY 23, 2015, 13:33, BEIRUT; FEBRUARY 28, 2015, 12:56, BEIRUT; MARCH 2, 2015, 13:45, BEIRUT; FEBRUARY 27, 2015, 16:07, BEIRUT FROM THE SERIES FROM A WINDOW 2015, 4 single-channel videos on loop

In this series, artist Merve Ünsal explores the seemingly banal activity of looking out the window. Created during the artist’s year-long residency at the Ashkal Alwan art center in Beirut, these videos explore themes of boredom, free time, distraction, and procrastination—nourishing activities often undervalued in the valorization of work.

Accompanied by the poetic murmurings of Ünsal’s own voice, the videos were shot from within the artist’s studio, prompting a consideration of the nature of artistic work

and the demands that an artist be attentive to the world around her. The timestamps, which form each video’s title, point to both a sincerity and an irony in the piece. Like an employee stamping in for work, the artist precisely accounts for the minutes and seconds of her active working; yet, the unexpected stillness of each video, the stalled image, thwarts the viewer’s expectations and asks us to reconsider how both art and artist work.

GREG SHOLETTE & MATT GRECO

SAADIYAT ISLAND WORKER'S QUARTER COLLECTABLE FOR GULF LABOR'S 52 WEEKS PROJECT 2014, 3D print & packaging, unlimited edition, 2 x 3 x 2 in.

In June 2010, forty-three artists wrote to the Guggenheim Foundation expressing deep concern about the rights of workers employed in the construction and maintenance of its new branch museum in Abu Dhabi. Later launched as the Gulf Labor Artists Coalition, the group continues to be a vocal and critical movement in the art world today, staging protests, performances, and interventions in art spaces, and publishing articles and books in the fight for the rights of workers in spaces of art and education in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Saadiyat Island Worker's Quarter Collectable is a collaborative artwork and intervention by artists Greg Sholette and Matt Greco as part of the 52 Weeks project initiated by Gulf Labor Artists Coalition in 2013. Initially “shop-dropped” into the Guggenheim

Museum gift shop in New York, the 3D print is modeled on the compact, isolated blocks of worker’s housing on Saadiyat Island, the future home of the new Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Gehry and a new branch of the Louvre Museum designed

by Jean Nouvel, among other cultural destinations. As a reproducible commercial souvenir, Sholette & Greco’s artwork calls attention to the role of cultural capital in the rapidly developing Gulf region. As an interrogation of the space of worker’s housing, the artwork poses an architectural critique of buildings designed by “starchitects,” focusing on the built manifestation of the labor needed to realize such highprofile projects. gulflabor.org

SAMIRA DANESHVAR

ARMAMENTARIUM OF (COUNTER) CREATION 2015

The Armamentarium of (Counter) Creation is an investigative toolbox of five objects that evokes the histories of female reproduction, the work of gynecology, and legislative attempts to regulate the female body across a wide span of geographies and historical moments. Each object combines parts of tools utilized by doctors, bureaucrats, or pleasure seekers. By compelling viewers to imagine new uses for the hybrid tools, the Armamentarium exposes the drive to thrill, regulate, and control through the mundane, the painful, and the pleasurable.

Speculum + Opera Glasses (Dream), Stainless steel, mother of pearl, brass, 6 x 4 x 3 in.

Forceps + Typewriter (Breed), Stainless steel, aluminum, 15 x 13 x 5 in.

Abortion Curette + Egg Beater (Abort), Stainless steel, nickel, wood, 14 x 10 x 3 in.

Alligator Forceps + Fountain Pen (Avert), Stainless steel, rubber, 7 x 3 x 1/4 in.

Vasectomy Clamp + Fragments of Opera Glasses, Typewriter, Egg Beater, and Fountain Pen (Wo-Man-Made), Stainless steel, brass, aluminum, rubber, 11 x 4 x 3 in.

PARTNER & PARTNERS

WORKSPACE (CASLON 44) 2016, SFD, TTF, animation

Caslon 44 and the accompanying typeface, Sans 44 were modified and released as two open-source typefaces designed specifically for thresholds 44: Workspace.

Throughout the history of print, Caslon has been in near ubiquitous use, both in England as well as America since its initial usage on printer John Dunlap’s distributed broadside of the Declaration of Independence. In 2001, a version of Caslon was reinterpreted, redrawn, and released as an open-source project by Fontforge founder and developer George Williams and served as the basis for Caslon 44. The typeface represents an aspect of communication design that points to labor,

means of production, and the continuously changing role of the designer. The animation of Partner & Partners' subtle changes in the letterforms reveal formal transformations to the typeface, illuminating the effects of both labor and tools otherwise deeply embedded in the production of a book. github.com/partnerandpartners/caslon-44.git github.com/partnerandpartners/sans-44.git

NOMEDA & GEDIMINAS URBONAS (US: URBONAS STUDIO)

UNTITLED: INCIDENT AT THE 4TH MOSCOW BIENNALE 2011, Single-channel video, 5m 58s

This film reveals and questions the boundaries between workers, artworks, and workspaces within the contemporary art world. The artists capture a comical, yet disturbing moment at the opening of the 4th Moscow Biennale (2011), when the biennale’s large cleaning staff began to mop the floor of the exhibition space at TsUM—a high-end department store in Moscow—unexpectedly marooning the artists on top of the art installation, Splitnik, they were working on. Shot from the artists’ perch above the scene, the film juxtaposes the ensuing multiple and futile attempts to complete different kinds of work in a single

space. As if blind to the activities of those around them, the cleaning staff struggled to mop the space’s deliberately grungy concrete floor and identify the difference between “cleanable” exhibition space (non-art) and “art,” while VIP biennale visitors strolled around, photographing the artworks, taking selfies, and overlooking the cleaning staff in turn. The film makes viewers aware of the ambiguous relationship between spaces of work and leisure and those who use them, masking or overlooking the work of others in order to enable one’s own activities.

ECCENTRIC WORKSPACE: A WORKSHOP OF THE GLOBAL ART PROGRAM (GAP) LED BY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR TAMAO HASHIMOTO (TOKYO UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS)

DRAWINGS BY NATSUKO KANZAKI AND IZUMI SOEDA 2014/15, Ink and colored pen on graph paper, 297×420 mm

Drawing on Guy Debord’s theories of psychogeography, the dérive, and the détournement from the 1950s, students in Tamao Hashimoto’s studio on “eccentric workspace” explored the relationship between construction workers and their workplace of the King’s Cross Redevelopment area in London. By tracing a worker’s “peripheral” movements, such as the path one took to throw away a coffee cup or spit out gum, or by listening closely to the sonic topography formed by

the intersection of humming machines, construction vehicles, idle conversation, and music, the students documented the interaction of work and non-work related activities at the site through expressive hand-drawing and notation. Teaching these observational techniques, Professor Hashimoto aims to create a dynamic design process which privileges those actions perceived as tangential to the activity or outcome of work, yet central in the everyday acts of working.

CURATORS

Nisa Ari is a PhD candidate in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art program at MIT. She studies late nineteenth and twentieth-

century visual practices from the Middle East and

explores the relationships between cultural politics

and the development of art institutions, specifically in Palestine and in Turkey.

Christianna Bonin is a PhD candidate in the

History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art program at MIT. Her research considers the relationships among industry, economic trade, and culture, particularly the effect of migration

on artistic and architectural practices in Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia.

CONTRIBUTORS

Ernesto D. Morales founded Object Solutions and manages its inner workings. Through his

objects, illustrations, writing and photographs, he

embraces chance relationships and combinations of disparate ideas. He won’t find a shard of glass

in his soup without proposing an inventive solution.

He also runs Studio Malagón, an independent design and branding office.

ernestodmorales.com / studiomalagon.com Shelly Ronen is an expert in the history and pres-

ent of sexual behavior. She provides the analytic, academic and contrarian counterpoints to the

Object Solutions corporate voice. Shelly is a gender and sexuality scholar writing a doctoral thesis

about the production of sex technologies. Her work is directed towards the struggle for a world that is more beautiful and more just. shellyronen.com

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Merve Ünsal is a visual artist based in Istanbul.

Merve holds an MFA in Photography and Related Media from Parsons The New School of Design

and a BA in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University. Merve is the founding editor of the

artist-driven online publishing initiative m-est.org.

Matt Greco is a sculptor, photographer and

designer living and working in Queens NY. His work has been exhibited internationally and

domestically. He is an adjunct professor of art at Queens College CUNY and is the founder and director of the Digital Imaging Laboratory.

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Samira Daneshvar is a post-professional graduate from the MS in Architecture program with a

Design and Health concentration from University of Michigan. She joined the professional MArch

program at University of Toronto after five years

of medical studies. Her research and design work is directed towards an interdisciplinary field of architecture and medical sciences.

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Partner & Partners is a design practice in New

York focusing on print, exhibition, interactive and identity work with clients and collaborators in art, architecture, public spaces and activism. They

have built their practice around projects that create social value for the people and places with which they work. partnerandpartners.com

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Nomeda Urbonas and Gediminas Urbonas are artists, educators, and co-founders of Urbonas

Studio—an interdisciplinary research program that advocates for the reclamation of public culture in

the face of overwhelming privatization, stimulating cultural and political imagination as tools for

social change. Gediminas Urbonas is Associate

Professor and Director at the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology and Nomeda Urbonas is ACT research affiliate and PhD candidate at NTNU, Norway.

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Tamao Hashimoto, AA Diploma (2008), is

Assistant Professor of Architecture at Tokyo University of the Arts.

Natsuko Kanzaki completed her BFA (2014) at

Tokyo University of the Arts and currently works at Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects.

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Izumi Soeda completed her BFA (2014) at Tokyo

writer, activist and founding member of Political

master student at Makoto Yokomizo laboratory

Greg Sholette is a New York-based artist, Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D), REPOhistory, and Gulf Labor Coalition. tumblr.com/blog/gregsholette

University of the Arts (TUA) and is currently a at TUA.

Thresholds is the annual peer-reviewed journal produced by the MIT Department of Architecture, held in over 150 university art & architecture libraries around the world. Content features leading scholars and practitioners from the fields of architecture, art, and culture.

­— MIT Department of Architecture The Keller Gallery / Building 7, Room 408 77 Massachusetts Ave / Cambridge, MA 02139

Thresholds is available for purchase at the Department of Architecture, Room 7-337, the MIT Press Bookstore, and on the website, thresholdsjournal.com. Questions for the editors may be directed to thresholds@mit.edu. Submissions for Thresholds 45: Myth are due on May 1, 2016.