Room and context

My cleaning performance was moved to another room from the one I originally performed in. The room I moved too was a new edition to the 'M.A.P department', that had only been used for a year before. The room is located within the area of the 'Sculpture department'. The room has two entry points, one of which is a fire exist door which leads out to the Howard Gardens courtyard, a communal space where many of the students socialize. The other entrance point is a door way in the wall next the the fire exist which leads to the rest of the Sculpture department. It is because of the natural corridor that these doorways make and the position they have within the whole of the campus that it has become a corridor to many of the students moving in and out of the Sculpture department. The fire exit and always bee opened from the inside and is never shut fully within the day to allow students to gain access from outside. Moving into this space, I had no interest in stopping people from moving through the space. Even though my work involved a claiming of space, the trickles of people moving through the room presented an obstacle for me. Claiming a room would be more difficult when people have free access to the space. It is this tension of taking control of a space against the people who move through it, and the students who can book the space and have it taken away from me that was of particular interest to me. Engaging with that room, spending time in it and understanding the room meant understanding its relationship socially as well as physically. The room as I have mentioned is operated under a booking system, and has been adopted by students as a corridor, an adoption which is so programed within students that obstacles which prevent the corridor being used are sometimes met with anger and frustration. The corridor status attached to the room dominates the rooms status as a studio. An audience fits uncomfortably into the room in most cases. The performances which have taken place there are generally directed at the door and as a result the audience positions themselves opposite, filling up one end of the room and blocking the corridor from being used. I found that by creating longer work, my audience became the passing students who shoot glances at first, and investigated more when they came in contact with the same work more than once. The works maintained presence within the room opened a 'clearing' in which the audience could build a relationship and a dialogue with the work. I decided to attempt to occupy the room as much as possible whilst abiding by the rules and etiquette of the M.A.P department and the University by booking the room as much as I could and spending time in there, performing all my work in the same room. I developed the cleaning performance and extended it to leave a carpet of soil going through the middle of the room from the fire exist to the back room for a the rest of the week. The soil was neat and was kept within the lines of the large stone tiles which make up the floor of the room. The soil covered the floor by the exit so that anyone who wanted to pass was forced to make a decision to go a different way, walk through the soil or jump over it. To begin with some students left the room upon entering and traveled a different route. Many students where incredibly respectful of the forceful geometry and presence of the soil which dominated the room. Within time as the room was left and I'm sure in students minds was a discarded piece of work, the soil was disturbed more and more, first with footprints, careful and sometimes playful, to unconsidered scuffs and disturbances, rubbish and cigarette butts.

After 'moving in' to the 'Sculpture Instillation room' as it has become know to us in M.A.P the relationship my presence has developed in the room began to effect the students who engaged with the room. A student from another department came to me and asked if they could use my room. The room is not mine, it's not my studio, it's a room that I book for up to a week at a time. The room is booked on a monday when the whole of the M.A.P department meets in the morning. It's the first order of the day where we book out space and equipment to use through out the week and than we have the same meeting the next monday. It was interesting to have a student refer to the room as belong to me. It followed that people around the area referred to the room as "Matt's room". Even within the M.A.P department where the students are aware of the booking system my integration with the room was taking place within peoples minds. I noticed that in the monday meetings when the technician called out to the class for bookings for the 'Sculpture space' a pause would follow. People who might be thinking of using the room would, consciously or not, wait for a few seconds and look my way to give me a moment to book the room for the week as though I had some authority over it. On one occasion when I decided not to use the room and another student booked it the technician asked if anyone had a problem with the booking. This was a question I had not heard be asked before. His gesturing towards my direction suggested that the question was for my benefit. My performances where creating a new attitude towards the room. Whilst performing I could hear students outside in the courtyard enforcing a etiquette of respect with regards to being outside the room and making noise, even passing through the room at times seemed a taboo if I was engaged in a physical performance and filming.