work.in.space
You step into this space. You leave something behind you and within your senses, your future and your past become one. A kind of site-orientation cleansing takes place- to which you can only surrender.
The point of departure for this site-specific project was the moment I stepped onto Level 1, Connaught House, D4. It is a floor plan, with its unfinished aesthetic poised with possibility and drama inherent. The room was there baring all and waiting for a purpose.
What this space was built for is immediately recognisable: an office-scenario for people to labour in. But as this space lies empty it begs the question, what are we first, people who work or workers who people?
"Labor is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert…It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this is to an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labor created man itself." Frederick Engels asserted in 1939.
Labour is a significant part of our everyday life with our identity and self esteem wrapped up in what we do.
What is of interest to me is to investigate what motivates us to work and how we perceive the situation for that work to take place.
With ‘Work.in.space’, I wanted to offer a space in which 'work' can take place, in which a phenomenological and intellectual response could happen between the artist, the space, their work, and the audience.
I have approached artists whose work is diverse in its practices but which touch on certain conceptual threads such as exploring architectural, political, psychological, emotional, literal, empirical and ephemeral elements of a given space and the theoretical frameworks behind it.
As a space, which is left in a post-boom paralysis, the narratives and fictional interpretations are open. This site offers a place in which to expand knowledge and experience of self and others; a place for coming to consciousness; re?ection as a transformative space and as a revelatory space. Every aspect of the room provides a different viewpoint or “secluded space in which we like to hide, or withdraw into ourselves, is a symbol of solitude for the imagination”. The poetics of space, Gaston Bachelard.
Aoife Tunney