occupied

this should probably wait until i've presented it to the peeps on site next week, but as i was uploading it to the pages which will eventurally make up my new site, i thought that it might be worthwhile putting up here.


Occupied
Performance


As part of a project on public space, and a continuation of the toilet project, Lauren staged a small performance on a day in September within a public toilet at Knox Shopping Centre - a large private mall in the outer suburbs of Melbourne (and part of the new public spaces of consumption).

The only documentation was a short section of video, writing and stickers left on the site:


An artist sat here for an hour and a half
She did not buy a thing
She did not worry about what to buy
She read, wrote, thought and daydreamed


210
The real values of culture can be maintained only by negating culture.
But this negation can no longer be a cultural negation. It may in a sense take place within a culture, but it points beyond it. (Debord)*

*Taken from the chapter: Negation and Consumption within Culture
Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord
Published by Rebel Press, UK.





The aim of the action was about privacy, public space, private space and acting politically through inaction. a kind of extension of gandhi's nonviolent resistance - a resistance to the sprawling mass of consumption that places like Knox [see also Chadston e and Southland] are - suburbs as shopping malls, with a hold over public facility and jurisdiction, without the accountability or regard for the politic.

This work also sought to challenge the idea of what a private space is in public. Interestingly, before the action/performance there was talk of the police being called, of centre management reacting badly, of the women who were using the other toilets taking offence at someone sitting in the toilet, not using the toilet, but just being there.

Interestingly, these were just the anxieties of artists who have been told, time after time that the public cannot cope. I had no problems. Not one person asked what i was doing, not even when i had to retrieve a pen that had dropped and rolled into the next cubicle. No one from centre management came and knocked on my door - and my toilet was in the block next to their offices. No policewoman asked me to leave the centre.

Sucked in.

I got to have my own space for a while. Just to sit and chill out, read, think, hum a little, dream and write. Public space without the pressure of buying something. It was lovely.

the art of the toilet

i've been starting to ramp up my research into public toilets lately (have a project in one at the moment). then this turned up on wooster yesterday (thanks to miss emma for the heads up)




and then tonight in readings bookstore i found this book i need: designing public toilets.




everything always comes together when it comes together.

toilets: private spaces

following on from my private in public presentation/investigation, i thought i should let you in on my most recent obsession: toilets. more specifically public toilets.

actually, if i'm confessing, then i've been slightly taken by public loos for quite a while. i love comparing them, seeing the differences and the similarities between them, finding the gems, resigning myself to the awful ones, listening to the conversations, checking out the graffiti on the walls and noticing the cultural signifiers that invariably turn up in the most private of public spaces. and so it seems that public toilets have become the focus of my research.

if you're particularly astute, you'll have noticed the beginning of toilet-based links on my del.icio.us page, plus the previous wishlist of having a studio in a toilet. there are a few areas about public toilets that specifically interest me, which i'll probably keep coming back to over the next little while so be prepared. i'm hoping to avoid the obvious toilet humour, but being that i have such a tacky sense of humour it may be unavoidable. i'll do my best.


social history and theory focused on the toilet



i'm just starting to get into this right now and have discovered henri lefebvre's discussion on the everyday, his relation to the situationists/debord and his criticism of the bourgeouisie denial of the everyday and pushing it to the extreme of architectural space. plus the ol' bachelard's poetics of such a space: hardly a room, but four corners and how we relate to corners as our retreat, our back-up. our protection in times of vulnerability, but also our entrapment.
then of course there's the place of the public toilet in modern dynamics: the place of the public toilet in women's social freedom and the role of the beats in homosexual freedom and teenage rites of passage. (i promise i won't mention teenagers giving blowjobs in the school toilets. that might be pornographic)


archaeology/architecture/design of public toilet.



i'm sure there'll be more in lefebvre's urban criticism about the architectural role of the toilet in there too and i'm also interested in the architectural history of toilets: what they look like, the ones that have disappeared, closed off, enshrined and the weird/wonderful places that they exist.

and of course there's the straight-up design comparisons between them.*

role of the public toilet in the urban rhythm.


this spans across a couple of areas.
of course i'm interested in the way people engage with public toilets [for an hilarious post about this, especially with children, check out this on dooce. it's fantastic] - their idiosyncrasies, neuroses, things they take for granted and obvious cultural differences (like those ladies in london loos selling lollipops).
plus, i'm interested in the role of the toilet in the whole realm of architecture/urban planning - does a dysfunctional toilet signify a dysfunctional society? and how much is a city influenced by its toilets? if we focuses as much attention on designing our loos as we do our bedrooms, would we be happier?


as you can see, this is all a pile of unanswered, loosely sketched, incoherent crap (d'oh! pun!), but i'm kind of excited about answering some of these questions and starting to flesh out what it all means in terms of my work. i've already begun working on the toilet project [mark 1], a public-ish work which simultaneously reconfigures architecture through craft/fashion methodology and also starts to facilitate some interesting reactions, which will hopefully challenge a few of those idiosyncrasies i was talking about before. i'll be posting more here soon, so stay tuned.



*i've always secretly wanted to do a toilet guide to sydney or melbourne. the companion publication to the melbourne/sydney design guides? ha!