#officesessions

HOUSERULES

Marc Auge defines non-lieu (non-place) as a site to which there is no historical, cultural, or sentimental significance attributed, such as a highway, shopping malls, waiting rooms, and parking garages; places where people encounter one another without any true interaction, thus, demolishing what defines an anthropological dimension. Upon entering the largely unoccupied Anchorage House located in a business park near the East India Docks, we felt as if we were walking into a sleeping non-lieu. The experience was disorienting, especially considering the procedures to enter the space: signing in with a front desk security guard as if visiting the headquarters of a corporation, despite the fact we were coming to see an art exhibition titled Houserules.

Houserules is part of an ongoing project called Office Sessions, initiated by creative director and curator Caitlin Mavroleon. A group of artists embark on the creation of installations, paintings, drawings, videos, sound works, performances, and other participatory engagements for this 42-day project. The aim is to push the boundaries of art, infiltrating unconventional spaces imposing their own rules and creating a peculiar and unfamiliar environment.

As we took the shuttle-like elevator to the fifth floor of the building, we entered a massive, seemingly abandoned office space. “Is the exhibition still on?” we wondered. Folded paper planes scattered across the floor, a net made from a ball of string hung lethargically from the ceiling, and other office supplies were dispersed across the walls, floors, and windows. The discomfort we felt was probably initiated by the feeling of being the last, yet somehow the first visitors to the exhibition. Standing alone on the floor and hesitantly scanning the space for some form of instruction, we found it on a piece of paper stating: “Please list your top 10 women artists.” We suddenly felt engaged with this task and a certain ease welcomed us to further explore the exhibition. More and more visitors slowly appeared and we were no longer alone in what at first seemed like a post-indexical dimension. Suddenly, a distant sound of a bell, coming closer and closer, practically awakening the viewers from a hazy slumber, summoned us to a specific office for a performance. Gathered in a semi-circle along the walls of the office, we sat intimately on the floor, patiently waiting for what was to come next (a performance by Daniella Valz-Gen). In that specific moment, the dimension drastically shifted and there was a striking contrast between the coldness of the space and the intimacy of this coming together. 

Daniella’s performance consisted of a personal interpretation of Abbey Road, The Beatles’ landmark album intertwined with adaptations of Doris Lessing’s Golden Notebook and excerpts from Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety. She challenged the notion of a traditional lecture as the texts were read with a certain degree of theatricality. As the performance continued, the drama was heightened as she incorporated both delicate and seemingly forceful gestures led by  the melancholic tones of I Want You (She’s So Heavy), abruptly halted by the succession of Here Comes the Sun. Daniella concluded her performance by the tangible gesture of intensely rubbing Vaseline on the transparent office window, marking the pane that acted as the backdrop of her piece. While the majority of the performance was quite straightforward as she connected Abbey Road with the fluxes of Anxiety Disorder, this final component left us to question its purpose and its relation to the whole of Houserules. 

As it combined entertainment and bewilderment, Houserules raised the question of the relationship between art and the space in which it is enacted and displayed.  The sense of displacement enhanced the overall viewing experience, yet this estranged feeling was never completely relieved. In the end, it was not the house imposing rules on the artist, but a simultaneous occurrence of art imposing rules on the house in which the ways of spectatorship were dramatically altered.