Forego Space

words by Chris Fite-Wassilak

The door is closed behind me and locked. The room is oblong, light leaking in from the circular windows punctuating both sides near the roof, and from the sides of the tall pieces of cardboard blocking off the wall of glass tiles that make up the outer wall that faces the street. I am alone, in a room that looks empty, apart from a small folding table, a black plastic bin, a bench, and a worn plastic chair that I was warned was not to sit in.

A flat screen television sits on its side in a corner, showing sped up footage of how light passes through the room, the passing spotlight of sun through the porthole windows as it cuts over the floor, splitting itself down the table, stretching later in the day to oblong ovals. On the wall are a few large pieces of paper, cut in loping arcs as if in imitation of the shapes made by the incursions of light through the window. A tangle of yellow table is stuck the wall, and on the floor are a series of boxes in blue and yellow tape, as if tracking the table’s placement over a series of shifts.

This is the first exhibition of art I have been to in over five months. It is of course highlighted by being alone, being shut into a secluded, quiet space. But it feels like shelter; the work here being slight remnants of actions, the paper and tape as uncertain sculptures that seem to want to document a moment, while also straying away from it, towards a more distant, abstracted, non-specific moment. Though at the bottom of the bin is a crumpled up wrapper for Ready Salted Kettle crisps; wedged at the top of the cardboard lining the windows, gridded with black squares like some sort of overblown QR code, are folded bits of rubber and cardboard from Who Gives a Crap toilet rolls. The branded stuff grounds it and reels it back in for me. This, I think, is where life gets in. There is no absolute separation; though maybe it was just me looking for an escape, pretending it even could be separate, desperately seeking out a moment of quiet shelter, grateful to an unfamiliar room – when the work there was simply asking for attention to that push and pull. To hover, for a moment, over the place where you were standing.

I’m not sure, as someone who looks at stuff and tries to write about it, I find space a useful term, or as a concept (for art particularly). It tends to denote blankness, emptiness, as some sort of uncolonized terrain waiting to be ‘activated’ or used. Rather than, say, some former textile workshop that then was an ad agency office for a while and then sat empty until someone decided to turn it into a gallery, until the building got razed to build mixed use commercial and luxury flats, that in turn are heavily marketed, bought by an absent investor who never even rents the place out. The minute weavings of what constitutes a ‘space’ being the thing that actually gives it heft – start talking about it as a more generic thing and it drains dry. I’m sure some theorist or thinker has a handy phrase for that, but you know what I mean: try thinking of your loo as a space, of the bit of hewn-off pavement just to left outside your door as a space. It’s like trying to step into a stream to stop it.

Though maybe the unveiling/wizard-behind-the-curtain of the ongoing pandemic over the past year+ (and I don’t mean unveiling in any sort of mastermind-conspiracy way; more of see-the-cogs, reflecting the actual states of infrastructure, social relationships and governmental care sort of way) has also made me acknowledge, internally at least, that space might be dissolved/dismissed and more productively thought about in terms of what we share. Sharing being dangerously close to generic-speak again, but the words civic and common (particularly the phrase ‘common sense’, and even how it would ideally denote the sensing-in-common) have been thoroughly abused and deflated to me, near meaningless flag posts. Thinking about what we share may be applicable in mutable ways, that might help map uneven relationships: sharing words like this, via encoded stuff accessed on networked servers, from my studio in an old Victorian library in east London that the council has divested, to this online platform based, nominally, in Taiwan; sharing aerosols that carry both nutrients and bacteria; sharing a lack of perspective; sharing a virus that has transcended national boundaries, but seems to largely respect the trappings of class boundaries; sharing grief at each onslaught of death; sharing a path through the park, a small bit of stone kicked back and forth; sharing, in absent turns, an awkward moment staring at the screen. Forego space for the incessant question of the exact knotting of what is being shared and why.

I knock, and am let back outside. The exhibition would run for another week or so, the schedule being compressed not only by the pandemic, but also the passing of the person who owned the building, the gallery’s future still uncertain. The images from the space, afterwards, look dim and unalive. But I can still recall and sense, and perhaps you might too, that uneasy lifting, of floating just for a moment over the shifting surface of the earth.

Shared viewings:

Lucy Gunning, In passing (May 2021)

Sharing Readings:

Cory Doctorow, Attack Surface (2020)

Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings (2020)

Michelle Tea, “The City to a Young Girl” in Against Memoir (2018)

在空間之前

文｜Chris Fite-Wassilak

在我身後上鎖的門緊閉。這長方形的房間，光線會從屋頂附近兩側的圓形窗戶流溢，又會從那些為了遮蓋面向街道的玻璃磚牆而設置的高聳厚紙板側邊灑落。我獨自一人，在空蕩蕩的房間裡，徒留一張小折疊桌、一個黑色塑料箱、一只長凳和一張我被告誡禁止坐在上頭的破舊塑膠椅。

平板電視自顧自地在一角，隨著正在加速播映的鏡頭闡述著光線何以穿梭於房間之中。太陽又如聚光燈般穿越舷窗、地板，接著在桌子上岔開，於時光中延展成橢圓形。牆上有幾張被裁剪成圓弧狀的大紙，彷彿是在臨摹光線穿過窗戶所形成的模樣。那固定在牆上亂糟糟的黃色桌子，以及地板上一堆用藍色、黃色膠帶包纏的盒子，都好似在輪番追蹤那張桌子的位置。

這是我五個多月以來首次參觀藝術展。展覽凸顯了一人獨自被關在一個僻靜、安謐的空間裡，更讓人感覺像是置身在一個庇護所中，裡頭的作品如同各種行為的微小殘餘：那些紙張和膠帶像是作為記錄某一時刻的曖昧的雕塑，卻也同時用以偏離彼刻，進而走向一個更渺遠、更抽象的偶然時光。

Ready Salted Kettle薯片的包裝袋皺巴巴地被放在桶子的底部。塞在與窗戶齊平的紙板上方形成黑色的網格，好似是某種浮誇的QR Code的橡膠與紙板，則是一些由Who Gives a Crap的衛生紙捲折疊而成。這些品牌使物件得以在我腦際擱淺而縈迴。我認為，這就是生命步入的地方。世上沒有絕對的分離；雖然這也許只是我在尋找一個逃避的出口，假裝一切可以被分離，又拼命地想要尋找一個能安靜片刻的庇護所。感謝這個陌生的房間，我只需全然地投入在作品之中，觀察其如何拉扯：在頃刻間，你只需徜徉在你所在之處。

我不是很確定——作為一個試圖書寫事物觀察的人，我發現「空間」是一個有用的術語，或者是一個概念（以藝術方面來說）。它傾向於表達空、空白，如同一等待被活化、被使用的未殖民地域。然而，事實上卻並非如此。比方說，原先作為紡織工作坊的場所，而後用來作為廣告公司的辦公室，並在閒置一段時間後，又有人決定把它變為畫廊。直到建築物被夷為平地並改建為混合用途的豪華商業公寓，才被一個從未現身也從未將其出租的投資者購買。

構成「空間」的細微元素才是真正賦予它重量的東西——若我們一開始就將它視為一廣泛的東西來談論，它便會枯竭。我相信有些理論家或思想家對此會有一個更合宜的措辭，但你知道我的意思：試著把你的廁所想像成一個空間，又或是想像那減縮的人行道，是為了將你的門排除在外而成為的空間，這就好像是踏入一股流水並試圖阻斷它。

儘管過去至少一年之間因疫情所持續揭露的/暗地搞鬼的事情（在此我並不是指揭露任何的陰謀，而是更多清晰可見的、能反映實際狀態的基礎結構、社會關係與政府照護等方式），讓我認知到，至少在內部，空間可能會被解散/關閉，或根據我們共享的內容進行更有效的思考。「分享」（sharing）又再次成為了廣義的論述。然而，對我來說，公民（civic）和共同（common）這兩個詞（特別是「常識」（common sense）這個詞，甚至它如何理想地表示共感）早已被徹底濫用和貶低，幾乎變得毫無意義可言。

思考我們互相分享的東西可以應用於多變的境況，這可能有助於繪製這不平衡的關係。如同以這樣的方式分享文字：透過網絡伺服器上的編碼內容，我從倫敦東部一個管委會已被廢除的古老的維多利亞圖書館工作室，分享文字至這個名義上位於臺灣的線上平台；又或是我們所共享的那些攜帶營養和細菌的氣懸膠體（aerosols）與貧乏的觀點；也共同分享一種既能超越國界卻同時在絕大程度上遵守階級制度的病毒；共同分擔每一次死亡襲擊的悲痛；共享一條穿過公園的小徑、來回踢著同一塊小石子；並一種不在場的方式，互相分享盯著螢幕的尷尬時刻。在空間之之前，共享的原因及內容便是不斷尋求精準且相互纏繞的問題。

我敲門，再次回到外頭。

這檔展覽將會持續一周左右，其時程不僅因疫情，也同時受此建築物主人逝世的緣故而壓縮，藝廊的未來仍是未知。往後，這空間的樣貌會看起來杳無生氣。但在那個不安感於恆常變動的地球表面上漂浮又攀升的時光切片裡頭，我仍能回憶和感受，又或許你也可以。

Shared viewings:

Lucy Gunning, In passing (May 2021)

Sharing Readings:

Cory Doctorow, Attack Surface (2020)

Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings (2020)

Michelle Tea, “The City to a Young Girl” in Against Memoir (2018)