70’s horse circa 1970 horse country : source: http://OMODERN.COM/ from AWESOMELY AWKWARD 70’s home decor
The aftermath of my anxiety of space in 2013
*The aftermath of my Anxiety of space in 2013 I walked into a lift the other day and saw a man with the book Poetics of Space under his arm by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. This terrified me. Why I thought? Probably because as I was leaving the lift, I shouted back what a great book it was when actually I thought it was fucking shit. I couldnʼt stand the looping poetics of washy space about architecture from 1958. I remember the first time the words anxiety of space hit me. It came from my observations during art school. Over the period of time I was thinking about the anxiety of space, I saw artists and curators use display to communicate and discuss art. It was something Iʼd never seen before; constant technological programming of interaction in the form of symposiums and exhibitions in museums, university and smaller artist collectives. This is where the anxiety of space seems to become extremely uncomfortable. It became TO regular to see this happen. Then I thought how similar it looked to policing systems, the ideology of order: legalising and illegalising space for artists. Take for example the simplicity of displaying work in the contemporary art world, this looked to me, the most dangerous aspect of culture and society. I realised that the anxiety of space became not just about art but the purpose of being a functioning citizen and eurochild: this I thought, was a citizenship where we constantly function within borders. It seems today, much more easier to predict what the anxiety of space will create for us. I visited and participated with my friends in free, democratic, legalised, illegalised contemporary spaces round the world. I remembered seeing so many different eurochildren there to! As a eurochild we were set the most difficult task of participation: reproducing everything, or at least trying to talk about it. I started to look back at my dream as a eurochild. This was when I was seventeen. I knew I wanted to become a female security guard called the great hater. I spent so long working towards building my skills and experience for my CV by getting jobs in museums and concert halls around Europe. It was so handy I had a degree in art and learnt my customer service skills through female wrestling. Management at my job said ʻI had great experience, and that I had the cream O-tology of ʻconnecting with visitors, even if this meant having a rough hands on attitude towards health and safety.ʼ They offered me a zero hour contract. We all dreamt of zero hour contracts. It was a perfect dream come true! Itʼs 1:35am now. Today I decided to watch Slavoj Zizekʼs The Perverts Guide to Ideology. I found clips of it on Youtube because I couldnʼt be afford going to the cinema. I found a clip that I thought was a perfect way to describe the aftermath of anxiety because he talked about ideology in the way we live. He talked about They Live the 1988 film and said it was the “forgotten masterpiece of the Hollywood Left.” They Live is about a homeless man in Los Angeles, who finds a box full of sunglass. Zizek describes the homeless man putting these glasses on and they suddenly they become a “critique of ideology, that allows you to see the real message beneath all the propaganda, publicity posters and so on…” Iʼve never seen They Live, but just watching Zizekʼs short clip of this reminded me of the complexity of wrestling. He was telling us you have to pull yourself out painfully from the ideologies that already exist. I wondered if we are ready for that? Sometimes it seems that the ideological world we live in, is already too restless with anxieties of space. Iʼm not sure we have dealt with all of this before as eurochildren and the restlessness collapse into employment, unemployment, and capitalism and most importantly of all, our complete collapse of romanticism.
BORED & CURIOUS ANXITIES ALL THAT TIME AGO, FOR A (2013) digital tiff