POST

SPACE

Contents

Foreword 05Paulo Tavares

Discussion 06

appropriating space 10

memory 14

regeneration 18

borders 29

social space 30

consciousness 35

monument 38

networks 41

space of appearance 44

singularity 48

language 51

institutional critique 58

exchange 64

the archive 72

Fieldwork 82

Contents

Foreword 05Paulo Tavares

Discussion 06

appropriating space 10

memory 14

regeneration 18

borders 29

social space 30

consciousness 35

monument 38

networks 41

space of appearance 44

singularity 48

language 51

institutional critique 58

exchange 64

the archive 72

Fieldwork 82

5Post-Space

Foreword

To open up a space whereby non pre-established relations can come into being – by what means? And then the necessary (political) interrogation: what modes of relation? The former question demands a structure of support – the implicated materiality of forms of exchanging ideas and objects – the latter calls for the existence of a type of practice based on a critical engagement with the very medium which enables its becoming. This little book addresses both: Post-Space is a networked-streamed conversation among peers around notions and concepts of appropriation of space which, reflexively, documents a series of expanded ‘spatial-dialogues’ within material mediums and social networks.

Conversation acquires here the consistency of a creative field enacted through overlapping spatial layers. A series of encounters organised with different spatial-practices/practioners in London provides a cartographic device to read urban transformations in the city. Thoughts in loop, circulated and re-elaborated through shared digital environments, define a common – yet univocal – conceptual framework. A collectively managed PO Box mechanism amplifies material dialogues to a vaster geography. All the different manifestations presented in the book can be assembled as a mode of practice in its own right: one that is based on ‘establishing contacts’ as a means to articulate a critical narrative of the spatial, cultural and political implications of modes of social connectivity. Collective gatherings and material exchanges are employed as knowledge-tools to investigate interstitial conditions in different levels – institutionally, territorially and subjectively – and to speculate in modes of appropriation as a potential tactic to subvert established spatial networks of power of critically inhabiting its liminal contradictions.

Post-Space documents an effort of turning material relations into means of thought, and reversely, thoughts into forms of material relations. Products of the very claim which they embody, the documents presented herein point towards the construction of a critical pedagogy that inhabits spaces in between institutional forms and modes of communication as a medium for collective knowledge production.

DIS

CU

SS

ION

30 Post-Space 31Post-Space

with the new reality of constant displacement and transit. Travelling between different parts of the world or stuck in intermediate zones like refugee camps, displaced persons and populations now live in spaces – transterritories – to which the once-commonplace concept of home no longer unambiguously applies.

In thinking about such socially ordered space I can’t help but refer to Henri Lefebvre’s book, Production of Space, first published in 1974. He writes:

A social space cannot be adequately accounted for either by nature (climate, site) or by its previous history. Nor does the growth of the forces of production give rise in any direct causal fashion to a particular space or a particular time. Mediations, and mediators, have to be taken into consideration: the action of groups, factors within knowledge, within ideology, or within the domain of representations. Social space contains a great diversity of objects, both natural and social, including the networks and pathways which facilitate the exchange of material things and information. Such ‘objects’, are thus not only things but also relations. (From the chapter ‘Social Space’, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Blackwell, 1991, p. 77)

This description of social space and the complexity of its development is particularly relevant to our project. We have discussed the fact that the postal system has an indeterminate position bearing in mind notions of interstitiality and spaces in flux, I think the postal system holds much force in the mapping of changing territories and borderlands as it’s a globally understood social space and language used by all countries and cultures.

Alice and I are continuing to look at Lefebvre’s material in a separate but related discussion. There are many other elements which I/we have found interesting which we hope to develop.

Mar 7Paulina: The postal system indeed holds much force in its mapping of territories and cementing of official borders (and their restructuring in-line with official maps), the tracing of power relations and

the muting of some voices over others. The cost of sending a postcard to Eastern Russia is the same as sending one to France for it falls under ‘Europe’ in postage classes. Yet sending a postcard to a neighbouring Chinese city falls under a different category. This re-establishes the age old zones of European imperialism and yet at the same time ironically groups countries excluded from the European Union with those that are allowed.

During my time working for a scientific publishing house two years ago we received many papers from China and Taiwan. The (US) database used for processing these papers had a drop-down menu for countries, with a default value putting Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China. This official line was a drop-down to prevent it being changed on the system. Through this the publishers lost disgruntled Taiwanese peer-referees in its inadvertent silencing of Taiwan’s semi-recognised declaration of independence.

While Taiwan is recognised by Royal Mail other states are not.

And then of course you must think of what this postal system actually covers, with no registered post facilities in many places like the Gaza strip private courier services navigate the terrain.

(Copyright law makes it necessary for documents to be sent via post as opposed to electronically and so whilst at the publishers I collected envelopes as a distractive hobby knowing that I was unlikely to receive such prolific postal correspondence from distant strangers ever again.)

10:57 amDeborah: The poses of the guards in the Katie Davies film reminds me of the opening of ‘we have met the enemy and he is us’ curated by Shez Darwood at Redux a few years ago. The artist Reza Aramesh had men in suits and balaclavas standing on raised platforms facing imposingly into the gallery space. They were staring into the gallery space. Guarding like the men in the Davies film. The men were holding trays of drinks, it was ages before anyone got the courage to enter the space, let alone take one of the drinks. I feel these works expose how much meaning can be projected onto certain dress, and in the case of the Katie Davies’ film military uniform. When I see the uniform on the guard, I understand that approaching enters me

http://activeweb.sfai.edu/academics/exhibitions/waltermcbean/currentexhi-bition.aspx

Lefebvre, H., ‘Social Space’, trans. Donald Ni-cholson-Smith. Blackwell, 1991, p. 77)

soci

al s

pace

30 Post-Space 31Post-Space

with the new reality of constant displacement and transit. Travelling between different parts of the world or stuck in intermediate zones like refugee camps, displaced persons and populations now live in spaces – transterritories – to which the once-commonplace concept of home no longer unambiguously applies.

In thinking about such socially ordered space I can’t help but refer to Henri Lefebvre’s book, Production of Space, first published in 1974. He writes:

A social space cannot be adequately accounted for either by nature (climate, site) or by its previous history. Nor does the growth of the forces of production give rise in any direct causal fashion to a particular space or a particular time. Mediations, and mediators, have to be taken into consideration: the action of groups, factors within knowledge, within ideology, or within the domain of representations. Social space contains a great diversity of objects, both natural and social, including the networks and pathways which facilitate the exchange of material things and information. Such ‘objects’, are thus not only things but also relations. (From the chapter ‘Social Space’, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Blackwell, 1991, p. 77)

This description of social space and the complexity of its development is particularly relevant to our project. We have discussed the fact that the postal system has an indeterminate position bearing in mind notions of interstitiality and spaces in flux, I think the postal system holds much force in the mapping of changing territories and borderlands as it’s a globally understood social space and language used by all countries and cultures.

Alice and I are continuing to look at Lefebvre’s material in a separate but related discussion. There are many other elements which I/we have found interesting which we hope to develop.

Mar 7Paulina: The postal system indeed holds much force in its mapping of territories and cementing of official borders (and their restructuring in-line with official maps), the tracing of power relations and

the muting of some voices over others. The cost of sending a postcard to Eastern Russia is the same as sending one to France for it falls under ‘Europe’ in postage classes. Yet sending a postcard to a neighbouring Chinese city falls under a different category. This re-establishes the age old zones of European imperialism and yet at the same time ironically groups countries excluded from the European Union with those that are allowed.

During my time working for a scientific publishing house two years ago we received many papers from China and Taiwan. The (US) database used for processing these papers had a drop-down menu for countries, with a default value putting Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China. This official line was a drop-down to prevent it being changed on the system. Through this the publishers lost disgruntled Taiwanese peer-referees in its inadvertent silencing of Taiwan’s semi-recognised declaration of independence.

While Taiwan is recognised by Royal Mail other states are not.

And then of course you must think of what this postal system actually covers, with no registered post facilities in many places like the Gaza strip private courier services navigate the terrain.

(Copyright law makes it necessary for documents to be sent via post as opposed to electronically and so whilst at the publishers I collected envelopes as a distractive hobby knowing that I was unlikely to receive such prolific postal correspondence from distant strangers ever again.)

10:57 amDeborah: The poses of the guards in the Katie Davies film reminds me of the opening of ‘we have met the enemy and he is us’ curated by Shez Darwood at Redux a few years ago. The artist Reza Aramesh had men in suits and balaclavas standing on raised platforms facing imposingly into the gallery space. They were staring into the gallery space. Guarding like the men in the Davies film. The men were holding trays of drinks, it was ages before anyone got the courage to enter the space, let alone take one of the drinks. I feel these works expose how much meaning can be projected onto certain dress, and in the case of the Katie Davies’ film military uniform. When I see the uniform on the guard, I understand that approaching enters me

http://activeweb.sfai.edu/academics/exhibitions/waltermcbean/currentexhi-bition.aspx

Lefebvre, H., ‘Social Space’, trans. Donald Ni-cholson-Smith. Blackwell, 1991, p. 77)

soci

al s

pace

32 Post-Space 33Post-Space

into an official situation, a situation where I might be called upon to state my identity. It’s like my role is already well rehearsed; I know the exchange well, the: ‘who goes there?’ border control of feudal history.

This also makes me consider the purpose of having an official stood ‘on guard’. These guards in some cases are nothing more than a tourist attraction, there function of guarding has increasingly become that of electronic devices such as surveillance systems etc; yet there still seems to be a need to have officially dressed ‘guards’ as a symbol, to remind us of our place in a system. The Aramesh piece is an interesting take on this; the terrorists/artist/outsider is the one who inhabits this official stance; they are the ones performing the act of guarding. Guarding what? In a show of artists whose work surrounds questions of their cultural identity, and ultimately the ‘use value’ of this identity in the art market, Aramesh’s guarding performance becomes very subversive.

Mar 1Katie: To take the politically bordered space and non-space further I think it’s interesting to also consider both the air and water as realms of non-space and how they are also define political activity particularly in times of war. I’m not sure how these seemingly unmarked or unbordered spaces of air and water are politically delineated between countries but I think they also carry interest as interstitial space and in the fact that a lot of airspace and sea space is hostile to humans. I think this is what interests me about Megan’s photographs as the notion of ‘space’ in a conventional manner for humans would end at the border of land and sea. However it’s important to think of the sea as space as well and how this is occupied.

I also am interested in returning to conversations we had some time ago regarding alternative means of infiltrating space – Megan brought up ideas such as the use of smell to occupy and bring meaning and presence to a space. I suppose this could stretch to other forms of human activity and presence i.e. zones of radiation etc.

Mar 6Megan: These photos were taken on the ferry in the middle of the channel between England and France. I’m not sure whether there is an actual border in the middle of the sea but the concept is certainly interesting. I imagine the water must be divided in the same way that airspace is divided.

I find watery borders particularly interesting because they are so inconsistent. These photos are of the beach at Reville in Normandy with the Island of Tatihou in the distance. When the tide is out you can walk across the sand to Tatihou but when the water is in the Island is only reachable by boat. The whole area is covered with oyster beds and the oysters are harvested when the tide recedes.

The length of the Normandy coast is inevitably populated by disused bunkers and this is a not very interesting example on the beach at Reville. I was again thinking about reusing space and particularly Paul Virilio’s book on bunker architecture.

Mar 6Gillian: Deleuze and Guattari talk about the sea as ‘smooth space’, the space of the war machine, I guess because it cannot be regulated in the way that land can.

It is now easy for us to characterise the nomad thought that rejects this image [of universal thought] and does things differently. It does not ally itself with a universal thinking subject but, on the contrary, with a singular race; and it does not ground itself in an all-encompassing totality but is on the contrary deployed in a horizonless milieu that is a smooth space, steppe, desert, or sea.... The sea is perhaps principle among smooth spaces, the hydraulic model par excellence.

Mar 7Alice L: Our ongoing contemplation with these images of the sea and shorelines for me reflect a desire for a space of potentiality. Keller Easterling’s ‘Contemplation: Seas’ considers writings from different periods of history, including these of Deleuze and Guattari, to create a contemporary mapping that expresses the potentiality of the shoreline as an interstitial space:

Deleuze and Guittari, A Thousand Plateaus, London: Continuum, 2007.

32 Post-Space 33Post-Space

into an official situation, a situation where I might be called upon to state my identity. It’s like my role is already well rehearsed; I know the exchange well, the: ‘who goes there?’ border control of feudal history.

This also makes me consider the purpose of having an official stood ‘on guard’. These guards in some cases are nothing more than a tourist attraction, there function of guarding has increasingly become that of electronic devices such as surveillance systems etc; yet there still seems to be a need to have officially dressed ‘guards’ as a symbol, to remind us of our place in a system. The Aramesh piece is an interesting take on this; the terrorists/artist/outsider is the one who inhabits this official stance; they are the ones performing the act of guarding. Guarding what? In a show of artists whose work surrounds questions of their cultural identity, and ultimately the ‘use value’ of this identity in the art market, Aramesh’s guarding performance becomes very subversive.

Mar 1Katie: To take the politically bordered space and non-space further I think it’s interesting to also consider both the air and water as realms of non-space and how they are also define political activity particularly in times of war. I’m not sure how these seemingly unmarked or unbordered spaces of air and water are politically delineated between countries but I think they also carry interest as interstitial space and in the fact that a lot of airspace and sea space is hostile to humans. I think this is what interests me about Megan’s photographs as the notion of ‘space’ in a conventional manner for humans would end at the border of land and sea. However it’s important to think of the sea as space as well and how this is occupied.

I also am interested in returning to conversations we had some time ago regarding alternative means of infiltrating space – Megan brought up ideas such as the use of smell to occupy and bring meaning and presence to a space. I suppose this could stretch to other forms of human activity and presence i.e. zones of radiation etc.

Mar 6Megan: These photos were taken on the ferry in the middle of the channel between England and France. I’m not sure whether there is an actual border in the middle of the sea but the concept is certainly interesting. I imagine the water must be divided in the same way that airspace is divided.

I find watery borders particularly interesting because they are so inconsistent. These photos are of the beach at Reville in Normandy with the Island of Tatihou in the distance. When the tide is out you can walk across the sand to Tatihou but when the water is in the Island is only reachable by boat. The whole area is covered with oyster beds and the oysters are harvested when the tide recedes.

The length of the Normandy coast is inevitably populated by disused bunkers and this is a not very interesting example on the beach at Reville. I was again thinking about reusing space and particularly Paul Virilio’s book on bunker architecture.

Mar 6Gillian: Deleuze and Guattari talk about the sea as ‘smooth space’, the space of the war machine, I guess because it cannot be regulated in the way that land can.

It is now easy for us to characterise the nomad thought that rejects this image [of universal thought] and does things differently. It does not ally itself with a universal thinking subject but, on the contrary, with a singular race; and it does not ground itself in an all-encompassing totality but is on the contrary deployed in a horizonless milieu that is a smooth space, steppe, desert, or sea.... The sea is perhaps principle among smooth spaces, the hydraulic model par excellence.

Mar 7Alice L: Our ongoing contemplation with these images of the sea and shorelines for me reflect a desire for a space of potentiality. Keller Easterling’s ‘Contemplation: Seas’ considers writings from different periods of history, including these of Deleuze and Guattari, to create a contemporary mapping that expresses the potentiality of the shoreline as an interstitial space:

Deleuze and Guittari, A Thousand Plateaus, London: Continuum, 2007.

34 Post-Space 35Post-Space

The sea is capable of disrupting the landed politics of consensus. Once on shore, political organs dilute the sea’s raw democracy, as if secretly wishing for the end of politics or a delivery from the sea’s unknowns. Land and sea again appear to be a pair, or two halves of a single world. Yet the site of this contemplation is the shore, the interface between raw democracy and political organisation. Wherever that interface exists, there is a platform from which to counter what Carl Schmitt called the ‘shoreless sea’ of legal exception.

In considering inbetween spaces we seem to be operating on a ‘shoreline’, negotiating models of organisations that already exist, a mapped landmass, and the ‘raw’ potentiality of new modes of operation.

Feb 5Alice R: Great article by Bourriaud on interstice and political and artistic possibility.

Mar 6Gillian: I think it would be potentially interesting to consider other things which constitute space as well as physical walls et cetera – things which can affect us but are less obvious than borders and boundaries. I was also thinking about our ‘Saturday photos’ and how they create a space for reflection. It seems like it opens up a temporal space, a space between ‘as I am now’ and ‘as I was then’. I’m reminded of psychoanalytic theory which posits a gap between the conscious and unconscious, or Lacan’s writings about the space between the subject and language.

Mar 1Megan: I think that the gap between the idea of the self and the reality of the self could certainly be classified as interstitial and I would anyway be really interested to read the Lacan. It could also lead on to the idea of the disjunction between the self and the other but I’m not sure whether we want to explore that territory.

Mar 7Charu: Taking a point out of Gillian’s entry-the difference between a physical tangible space and space such as water and air, the space itself has

Keller Easterling,Enduring Innocence, MIT Press, 2005 p. 72

consciousness

34 Post-Space 35Post-Space

The sea is capable of disrupting the landed politics of consensus. Once on shore, political organs dilute the sea’s raw democracy, as if secretly wishing for the end of politics or a delivery from the sea’s unknowns. Land and sea again appear to be a pair, or two halves of a single world. Yet the site of this contemplation is the shore, the interface between raw democracy and political organisation. Wherever that interface exists, there is a platform from which to counter what Carl Schmitt called the ‘shoreless sea’ of legal exception.

In considering inbetween spaces we seem to be operating on a ‘shoreline’, negotiating models of organisations that already exist, a mapped landmass, and the ‘raw’ potentiality of new modes of operation.

Feb 5Alice R: Great article by Bourriaud on interstice and political and artistic possibility.

Mar 6Gillian: I think it would be potentially interesting to consider other things which constitute space as well as physical walls et cetera – things which can affect us but are less obvious than borders and boundaries. I was also thinking about our ‘Saturday photos’ and how they create a space for reflection. It seems like it opens up a temporal space, a space between ‘as I am now’ and ‘as I was then’. I’m reminded of psychoanalytic theory which posits a gap between the conscious and unconscious, or Lacan’s writings about the space between the subject and language.

Mar 1Megan: I think that the gap between the idea of the self and the reality of the self could certainly be classified as interstitial and I would anyway be really interested to read the Lacan. It could also lead on to the idea of the disjunction between the self and the other but I’m not sure whether we want to explore that territory.

Mar 7Charu: Taking a point out of Gillian’s entry-the difference between a physical tangible space and space such as water and air, the space itself has

Keller Easterling,Enduring Innocence, MIT Press, 2005 p. 72

consciousness

36 Post-Space 37Post-Space

a tangible materiality where people leave traces/marks (be it physical or sensory). This happens in a tangible space but not in air space or waterways. But the questions in both cases can be territorially linked or conceptually.

Here are a couple of photographs taken from a ferry on the way to Dublin from Holyhead.

Also, Rilke’s poetry invokes the relevance of space through strategies of spatial evocation that are interstitial.

In the short prose works emerge inter-phenomenonal Zwischernräumethat are neither available to ordinary perception, nor compatible to the premises of modern scientific consciousness. ‘Interstitial’ space is meant broadly indicating not merely the intervening space between fixed empirical or geometric points, but space constituted by striking renegotiations of the relation between different positions within experience or between different forms of experience. These interstitial spaces are not measurable by empirical means and must be achieved through poetic effort. In many short prose works, space is given a hermeneutic role, so that the reader is invited to imagine interstitial forms of spatial meaning.

Mar 6Paulina: Megan’s photographs and the discussion above bring to mind all the work that has been done about geo-political borders. Janet Roitman’s text on the Chad Basement, ‘Productivity in the Margins’ in V. Das et al, Anthropology in the Margins of the State, 2001, is an interesting look at that which is produced as surplus through/after conflict, in the space of the margin. Roitman examines the paradox of being simultaneously weak and strong through the inability of being mapped. While it’s not a strictly visual in-between like sea and air these quasi-legal marginal spaces do raise similar questions about the production of space.

Lacan’s work on object petit a is perhaps of interest too as it deals with the space of the real, projected desire that is separate from the body. Post Lacan there is of course Zizek et al.

A quote from Mladen Dolar, ‘At First Sight’, in Gaze and Voice as Love Objects:

Jennifer Anna Gosetti- Ferencei, ‘The German Quarterly’, Volume 80, Issue 3.

It is the loss of the object a that opens the reality hence-forward seen as ‘objective’ reality, the possibility of subject-object relations, but since its loss is the condition of any knowledge of ‘objective’ reality, it cannot itself become an object of knowledge.

What I find in the broad range of interstitial gaps and spaces that we have been discussing, in their varying degrees of abstraction and theorisation is the notion of the surplus, unknowable and in-between. Again going back to the interstice.

Alternative ways of infiltrating spaces and less conventional notions of space that have been mentioned by the group so far in various ways allude to the surplus and in-between. At least for me....

The discussion again brings to mind the Wrong Gallery and their use of the door as space in its own right.

Mar 1Megan: When I took the photographs I wasn’t at all thinking about geo-political borders. I suppose that one of the interesting things about this project is interpretation and where other people might take your ideas and images. I was more interested in shifting nature and the interstitial spaces revealed by tides and submerged through flooding.

Mar 4Megan: The Wrong Gallery was set up by artist Maurizio Cattelan and two editors turned curators, Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick. It was, for a time, the smallest exhibition space in New York. Furthermore, it never actually opened. In reality it was nothing more than a glass door, identical to those of the Chelsea spaces it satirised. It existed as a sort of parasite on the art world, occupying the basement doorway of the established Andrew Kreps Gallery and simply adding a 1/2 to Krep’s 516A address.

The Wrong Gallery’s curators referred to it as ‘the back door to contemporary art’ – one that’s ‘always locked’. It was entirely non-commercial and literally only accessible to window shoppers, who would peer through the door into a meagre two and a half square feet of gallery space.

Gaze and Voice as Love Objects, Renata Salecl and Slavoj Zizek (eds.), 1996, p. 138.

36 Post-Space 37Post-Space

a tangible materiality where people leave traces/marks (be it physical or sensory). This happens in a tangible space but not in air space or waterways. But the questions in both cases can be territorially linked or conceptually.

Here are a couple of photographs taken from a ferry on the way to Dublin from Holyhead.

Also, Rilke’s poetry invokes the relevance of space through strategies of spatial evocation that are interstitial.

In the short prose works emerge inter-phenomenonal Zwischernräumethat are neither available to ordinary perception, nor compatible to the premises of modern scientific consciousness. ‘Interstitial’ space is meant broadly indicating not merely the intervening space between fixed empirical or geometric points, but space constituted by striking renegotiations of the relation between different positions within experience or between different forms of experience. These interstitial spaces are not measurable by empirical means and must be achieved through poetic effort. In many short prose works, space is given a hermeneutic role, so that the reader is invited to imagine interstitial forms of spatial meaning.

Mar 6Paulina: Megan’s photographs and the discussion above bring to mind all the work that has been done about geo-political borders. Janet Roitman’s text on the Chad Basement, ‘Productivity in the Margins’ in V. Das et al, Anthropology in the Margins of the State, 2001, is an interesting look at that which is produced as surplus through/after conflict, in the space of the margin. Roitman examines the paradox of being simultaneously weak and strong through the inability of being mapped. While it’s not a strictly visual in-between like sea and air these quasi-legal marginal spaces do raise similar questions about the production of space.

Lacan’s work on object petit a is perhaps of interest too as it deals with the space of the real, projected desire that is separate from the body. Post Lacan there is of course Zizek et al.

A quote from Mladen Dolar, ‘At First Sight’, in Gaze and Voice as Love Objects:

Jennifer Anna Gosetti- Ferencei, ‘The German Quarterly’, Volume 80, Issue 3.

It is the loss of the object a that opens the reality hence-forward seen as ‘objective’ reality, the possibility of subject-object relations, but since its loss is the condition of any knowledge of ‘objective’ reality, it cannot itself become an object of knowledge.

What I find in the broad range of interstitial gaps and spaces that we have been discussing, in their varying degrees of abstraction and theorisation is the notion of the surplus, unknowable and in-between. Again going back to the interstice.

Alternative ways of infiltrating spaces and less conventional notions of space that have been mentioned by the group so far in various ways allude to the surplus and in-between. At least for me....

The discussion again brings to mind the Wrong Gallery and their use of the door as space in its own right.

Mar 1Megan: When I took the photographs I wasn’t at all thinking about geo-political borders. I suppose that one of the interesting things about this project is interpretation and where other people might take your ideas and images. I was more interested in shifting nature and the interstitial spaces revealed by tides and submerged through flooding.

Mar 4Megan: The Wrong Gallery was set up by artist Maurizio Cattelan and two editors turned curators, Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick. It was, for a time, the smallest exhibition space in New York. Furthermore, it never actually opened. In reality it was nothing more than a glass door, identical to those of the Chelsea spaces it satirised. It existed as a sort of parasite on the art world, occupying the basement doorway of the established Andrew Kreps Gallery and simply adding a 1/2 to Krep’s 516A address.

The Wrong Gallery’s curators referred to it as ‘the back door to contemporary art’ – one that’s ‘always locked’. It was entirely non-commercial and literally only accessible to window shoppers, who would peer through the door into a meagre two and a half square feet of gallery space.

Gaze and Voice as Love Objects, Renata Salecl and Slavoj Zizek (eds.), 1996, p. 138.

38 Post-Space 39Post-Space

During the course of its three-year existence, the Wrong Gallery exhibited 40 internationally acclaimed artists, most of whom created site-specific new work. It became both a kind of institution and a work of art in itself. Following its eviction from its doorway in New York, a full-scale mock-up appeared on the third floor of Tate Modern. The Wrong Gallery was also given its own space at the Whitney Biennial in New York in 2006.

11:09 amDeborah: The film is about monuments, some of which are walls, and how visitors often reach out and touch the stone ‘establishing a link between their own lives and that past’.

Whilst the Davies film exposes some of the rituals at geographical borders, Transmission exposes the seemingly strange ritual at the ‘border’ of the monument. A monument becomes a border to the ‘non-space’ of history, eternity and the divine. The film shows sights around the globe where monuments are touched; the stone somehow connects those in contact with it to infinity. I’m really interested in the idea of how stone is used like a storage device for the past or even a portal to the future.

Mar 6Paulina: While it has become cannonised I think its still worth thinking about Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the States. It was highly contested when first made, although the memorial now sets the precedent for projects such as Ground Zero, for (as well as the sculptor’s Asian heritage) it was manifested as a scar in the land, a sort of voided non-space that was radically different from any war memorials built in the past. It talks of loss, space of memory, death and the production of space during war. It’s also mentioned in the Farocki film....

Mar 6Megan: This is really interesting and reminds me of the fuss surrounding (and objection to) David Chipperfield’s restoration of the Neues Museum in Berlin where he has left the scars of the past visible in the stone so that they form a tangible cultural memory.

Mar 6Gillian: I like the ideas about spaces and time.... I think this links quite well to ‘subjective’ spaces (and Lacan) because it’s about reflection.

Feb 28Blanche: I am interested in elusive borders, whether they are geo-political or relate to self-identification. I thought our discussion yesterday about the ‘space’ of the PO Box itself was really interesting (and how we all had certain perceptions of what this space might be), and really like the idea that it could activate all kinds of networks that are less bounded than the literal space of the Box itself. I was wondering if we could forge links between the networking taking place through our discussions on googlewave, and – soon – the website, to the network of the PO Box (e.g. like posting answers/responses to comments on the discussion wave to the PO Box, or writing letters about a particular line of theory to the Box, and later publishing this on googlewave/the website). I also think Paulo’s point about ‘reacting’ to the site of the PO Box, and the infrastructure of the postal system in general, is something we should look at – particularly as it ties in with ideas relating to taxonomy and archiving that we’ve previously discussed.

Apparently (before the penny post system was set up by Rowland Hill in the 1800s), people had to use maps to calculate the cost of sending mail in London. The city was delineated into areas classified by how long it took to walk from one area to another (this process was so laborious that only approximately 200 letters were delivered per day). I think it is interesting to compare a system as archaic as this with the systems of communication that we commonly use today.

I also think the sense of ritual that it implies (‘senders’ having to make considered calculations about what to post, using maps to facilitate this, and the ‘posters’ using such maps to deliver items across the city) is interesting. It would be interesting to think about (or perhaps enforce) rituals we could adopt when using the PO Box – to post and collect things – and ways in which messages have been sent from one location to another historically (e.g. telegrams, Morse code etc.) and how so many of these are obsolete today because of the Internet and other factors.

http://www.farocki-film.de/uebertre.htm

http://www.bdon-line.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3117729

http://www.bdon-line.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3135293

mon

umen

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38 Post-Space 39Post-Space

During the course of its three-year existence, the Wrong Gallery exhibited 40 internationally acclaimed artists, most of whom created site-specific new work. It became both a kind of institution and a work of art in itself. Following its eviction from its doorway in New York, a full-scale mock-up appeared on the third floor of Tate Modern. The Wrong Gallery was also given its own space at the Whitney Biennial in New York in 2006.

11:09 amDeborah: The film is about monuments, some of which are walls, and how visitors often reach out and touch the stone ‘establishing a link between their own lives and that past’.

Whilst the Davies film exposes some of the rituals at geographical borders, Transmission exposes the seemingly strange ritual at the ‘border’ of the monument. A monument becomes a border to the ‘non-space’ of history, eternity and the divine. The film shows sights around the globe where monuments are touched; the stone somehow connects those in contact with it to infinity. I’m really interested in the idea of how stone is used like a storage device for the past or even a portal to the future.

Mar 6Paulina: While it has become cannonised I think its still worth thinking about Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the States. It was highly contested when first made, although the memorial now sets the precedent for projects such as Ground Zero, for (as well as the sculptor’s Asian heritage) it was manifested as a scar in the land, a sort of voided non-space that was radically different from any war memorials built in the past. It talks of loss, space of memory, death and the production of space during war. It’s also mentioned in the Farocki film....

Mar 6Megan: This is really interesting and reminds me of the fuss surrounding (and objection to) David Chipperfield’s restoration of the Neues Museum in Berlin where he has left the scars of the past visible in the stone so that they form a tangible cultural memory.

Mar 6Gillian: I like the ideas about spaces and time.... I think this links quite well to ‘subjective’ spaces (and Lacan) because it’s about reflection.

Feb 28Blanche: I am interested in elusive borders, whether they are geo-political or relate to self-identification. I thought our discussion yesterday about the ‘space’ of the PO Box itself was really interesting (and how we all had certain perceptions of what this space might be), and really like the idea that it could activate all kinds of networks that are less bounded than the literal space of the Box itself. I was wondering if we could forge links between the networking taking place through our discussions on googlewave, and – soon – the website, to the network of the PO Box (e.g. like posting answers/responses to comments on the discussion wave to the PO Box, or writing letters about a particular line of theory to the Box, and later publishing this on googlewave/the website). I also think Paulo’s point about ‘reacting’ to the site of the PO Box, and the infrastructure of the postal system in general, is something we should look at – particularly as it ties in with ideas relating to taxonomy and archiving that we’ve previously discussed.

Apparently (before the penny post system was set up by Rowland Hill in the 1800s), people had to use maps to calculate the cost of sending mail in London. The city was delineated into areas classified by how long it took to walk from one area to another (this process was so laborious that only approximately 200 letters were delivered per day). I think it is interesting to compare a system as archaic as this with the systems of communication that we commonly use today.

I also think the sense of ritual that it implies (‘senders’ having to make considered calculations about what to post, using maps to facilitate this, and the ‘posters’ using such maps to deliver items across the city) is interesting. It would be interesting to think about (or perhaps enforce) rituals we could adopt when using the PO Box – to post and collect things – and ways in which messages have been sent from one location to another historically (e.g. telegrams, Morse code etc.) and how so many of these are obsolete today because of the Internet and other factors.

http://www.farocki-film.de/uebertre.htm

http://www.bdon-line.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3117729

http://www.bdon-line.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3135293

mon

umen

t

40 Post-Space 41Post-Space

Perhaps we could also ‘react’ to the PO Box as an object in its own right (like the door of the Wrong Gallery). Could we arrange a group visit to the Box? Perhaps we could stick something onto the box itself? It would certainly be interesting to see what its relationship with the surrounding PO Boxes is and what this might reveal about the infrastructure of the postal system.

Could be interesting to see the Chipperfield show at John Soanes (which is a really interesting site in its own right) at some point?

Mar 6Megan: I think the link between mapping and the postal system is really interesting. It relates back to our conceptual field trips and the decision to use a PO Box to gather images and information on the interstitial spaces we were individually exploring.

On another note I have been meaning to post a link to Ray Johnson for ages. He was one of the first artists to use the postal system as a conceptual

art practice and he sent an enormous quantity of material through the post, including elements of his chopped-up collages; drawings; found objects; and annotated newspaper clippings. He regarded his mailings as gifts and thus contrary to the market, although he implicated recipients in his project of exchange by asking them to send things on to specified others (‘please add to and return...’). He incorporated instructions for active participation in the artwork into the artwork itself and this, simultaneously and seemingly perversely, introduced an element of chance to the final piece.

In this way he created a network and, in 1962, one of his correspondents, Ed Plunkett, suggested that mail art might be informally incorporated as the New York Correspondence School. Johnson changed the penultimate ‘e’ of ‘Correspondence’ to ‘a’, thus ‘Correspondence’, to suggest movement and play. Occasionally he would organise meetings of the New York Correspondence School at which ‘nothing’ would often happen. This later became a form of performance art in which Johnson would stage an (in)activity before an audience.

This is obviously just an historical aside. I am not suggesting that we are anachronistically reactivating the mail art movement through our PO Box. I know that nobody wants the project to be nostalgic but I do think that the rematerialising of communication is valid. Hopefully we will establish tangible systems of contact through the appropriation of our small space, which is like a nodal point in an intimate yet potentially global network. I do not mind if the network we create occasionally reaches back to the past.

Alice L: Rather than trying to operate outside of an existing art world, free from commercial exchange we are consciously operating within its existing mechanisms. We have paid a fee to hire our space and are using common tools to seek submissions, in order to test the limits of these and explore the possibilities for new approaches.

Mar 4Katie: It’s really interesting that the use of maps and area delineation dictated the postal system – there are so many fields of space to consider with something such as ‘mail’ in both physical and non-physical senses. Following Paulo’s suggestions

http://www.rayjohnsonestate. com/

http://www.ravenrow.org/ exhibition/rayjohnson/

networks

40 Post-Space 41Post-Space

Perhaps we could also ‘react’ to the PO Box as an object in its own right (like the door of the Wrong Gallery). Could we arrange a group visit to the Box? Perhaps we could stick something onto the box itself? It would certainly be interesting to see what its relationship with the surrounding PO Boxes is and what this might reveal about the infrastructure of the postal system.

Could be interesting to see the Chipperfield show at John Soanes (which is a really interesting site in its own right) at some point?

Mar 6Megan: I think the link between mapping and the postal system is really interesting. It relates back to our conceptual field trips and the decision to use a PO Box to gather images and information on the interstitial spaces we were individually exploring.

On another note I have been meaning to post a link to Ray Johnson for ages. He was one of the first artists to use the postal system as a conceptual

art practice and he sent an enormous quantity of material through the post, including elements of his chopped-up collages; drawings; found objects; and annotated newspaper clippings. He regarded his mailings as gifts and thus contrary to the market, although he implicated recipients in his project of exchange by asking them to send things on to specified others (‘please add to and return...’). He incorporated instructions for active participation in the artwork into the artwork itself and this, simultaneously and seemingly perversely, introduced an element of chance to the final piece.

In this way he created a network and, in 1962, one of his correspondents, Ed Plunkett, suggested that mail art might be informally incorporated as the New York Correspondence School. Johnson changed the penultimate ‘e’ of ‘Correspondence’ to ‘a’, thus ‘Correspondence’, to suggest movement and play. Occasionally he would organise meetings of the New York Correspondence School at which ‘nothing’ would often happen. This later became a form of performance art in which Johnson would stage an (in)activity before an audience.

This is obviously just an historical aside. I am not suggesting that we are anachronistically reactivating the mail art movement through our PO Box. I know that nobody wants the project to be nostalgic but I do think that the rematerialising of communication is valid. Hopefully we will establish tangible systems of contact through the appropriation of our small space, which is like a nodal point in an intimate yet potentially global network. I do not mind if the network we create occasionally reaches back to the past.

Alice L: Rather than trying to operate outside of an existing art world, free from commercial exchange we are consciously operating within its existing mechanisms. We have paid a fee to hire our space and are using common tools to seek submissions, in order to test the limits of these and explore the possibilities for new approaches.

Mar 4Katie: It’s really interesting that the use of maps and area delineation dictated the postal system – there are so many fields of space to consider with something such as ‘mail’ in both physical and non-physical senses. Following Paulo’s suggestions

http://www.rayjohnsonestate. com/

http://www.ravenrow.org/ exhibition/rayjohnson/

networks

42 Post-Space 43Post-Space

of looking into postal history and Blanche’s initial research I have discovered that there is a museum in London dedicated to British postal history, covering everything from dates and facts to people and also design.

The address is Freeling House, Phoenix Place, London WC1X 0DL. This is where the museum is based and they also have Royal Mail archives which are open to all members of the public. We could consider this as a potential meeting point in the future. Meanwhile here’s a little example of a 1937 poster which I quite like – maybe elements of which we could work into our extended website.

Posters and advertising are another example of space appropriation a means of effecting presence without the need of an actual space, particularly in their aim to infiltrate all areas of public life.

Feb 4Blanche: I’ve emailed the museum to see if they can arrange a tour for us soon. Will keep you posted on the outcome!

Mar 2Alice L: I’ve been meaning to go there for ages! They are doing a tour this week, unfortunately it’s exactly the same time as our lab session but let’s go another time.

The appeal of hand written letters can be the sense of an intimate space created between two people by utilising a global network that relies on so many connections. Your hand written letters are potentially passed through many hands and different places before they reach their destination, yet it opens up a very specific space for communication. The post is often used to send ‘secret’ items or letters to people, allowing you to express things you might not dare to say in ‘real life’. As such the post has been used to express extreme emotions; those of love in the form of letters and gifts and of hate as threats or explosive devices. It is space of potential that creates anticipation.

Perhaps just a point by which we could bring in other people’s interests in exploring fiction.

Mar 6Gillian: I’ve been thinking about the different networks which make up the postal system. There

are the machines and the buildings, but ultimately the system is made of people, taking the mail and physically taking it to our homes. To me it seems like it’s a temporal network more than a physical one. It leaves no trace or imprint on it’s work, except for the post mark.

Mar 4Katie and Alice L: In trying to implement more of a physical practice in our work we have discussed the notion of free-writing at the end of every session. This was in fact a Surrealist practice which, as written by Lefebvre, ‘sought to decode inner space and illuminate the nature of the transition from this subjective space to the material realm of the body and the outside world and thence to social life’. (Ibid, p. 18). The results of the free-writing exercise can be collated and sent to our PO Box.

On a separate note, many theorists and philosophers have engaged with ‘space’ in all its guises, I recently read an essay by Irit Rogoff called ‘Looking Away: Participations in Visual Culture’ which is in Gavin Butt’s book of collected essays called After Criticism: New Responses to Art and Performance. Irit looks at notions initially theorized by Hannah Arendt, which I think could be interesting to consider in relation to our project.

Rather than simply putting a reading reference, I thought I’d put an extensive quotation from Irit’s essay which might pose a question for us to consider. It refers to what Arendt calls ‘space of appearance’ which she writes about in her book The Human Condition. Irit writes:

In its fleeting and ephemeral constitution, the ‘space of appearance’ shares much common ground with Henri Lefebvre’s concept of ‘spatialisation’ as the constant social production of space. Not a space named by its concrete constituents – such as buildings or environments or tasks – but one which comes into being through a related reading of actions and of the fantasmatic subjectivities projected through these actions. The peculiarity of this space of appearance, says Arendt, ‘is that unlike the spaces which are the work of our hands, it does not survive the actuality of the movement which brought it into being, but disappears not only with the dispersal of men... but with the

http://postalheritage.org.uk/aboutus

‘Looking Away: Participations in Visual Culture’ by Irit Rogoff from After Criticism: New Responses to Art and Performance, Gavin Butt (ed.), Blackwell, 2005, P. 125

42 Post-Space 43Post-Space

of looking into postal history and Blanche’s initial research I have discovered that there is a museum in London dedicated to British postal history, covering everything from dates and facts to people and also design.

The address is Freeling House, Phoenix Place, London WC1X 0DL. This is where the museum is based and they also have Royal Mail archives which are open to all members of the public. We could consider this as a potential meeting point in the future. Meanwhile here’s a little example of a 1937 poster which I quite like – maybe elements of which we could work into our extended website.

Posters and advertising are another example of space appropriation a means of effecting presence without the need of an actual space, particularly in their aim to infiltrate all areas of public life.

Feb 4Blanche: I’ve emailed the museum to see if they can arrange a tour for us soon. Will keep you posted on the outcome!

Mar 2Alice L: I’ve been meaning to go there for ages! They are doing a tour this week, unfortunately it’s exactly the same time as our lab session but let’s go another time.

The appeal of hand written letters can be the sense of an intimate space created between two people by utilising a global network that relies on so many connections. Your hand written letters are potentially passed through many hands and different places before they reach their destination, yet it opens up a very specific space for communication. The post is often used to send ‘secret’ items or letters to people, allowing you to express things you might not dare to say in ‘real life’. As such the post has been used to express extreme emotions; those of love in the form of letters and gifts and of hate as threats or explosive devices. It is space of potential that creates anticipation.

Perhaps just a point by which we could bring in other people’s interests in exploring fiction.

Mar 6Gillian: I’ve been thinking about the different networks which make up the postal system. There

are the machines and the buildings, but ultimately the system is made of people, taking the mail and physically taking it to our homes. To me it seems like it’s a temporal network more than a physical one. It leaves no trace or imprint on it’s work, except for the post mark.

Mar 4Katie and Alice L: In trying to implement more of a physical practice in our work we have discussed the notion of free-writing at the end of every session. This was in fact a Surrealist practice which, as written by Lefebvre, ‘sought to decode inner space and illuminate the nature of the transition from this subjective space to the material realm of the body and the outside world and thence to social life’. (Ibid, p. 18). The results of the free-writing exercise can be collated and sent to our PO Box.

On a separate note, many theorists and philosophers have engaged with ‘space’ in all its guises, I recently read an essay by Irit Rogoff called ‘Looking Away: Participations in Visual Culture’ which is in Gavin Butt’s book of collected essays called After Criticism: New Responses to Art and Performance. Irit looks at notions initially theorized by Hannah Arendt, which I think could be interesting to consider in relation to our project.

Rather than simply putting a reading reference, I thought I’d put an extensive quotation from Irit’s essay which might pose a question for us to consider. It refers to what Arendt calls ‘space of appearance’ which she writes about in her book The Human Condition. Irit writes:

In its fleeting and ephemeral constitution, the ‘space of appearance’ shares much common ground with Henri Lefebvre’s concept of ‘spatialisation’ as the constant social production of space. Not a space named by its concrete constituents – such as buildings or environments or tasks – but one which comes into being through a related reading of actions and of the fantasmatic subjectivities projected through these actions. The peculiarity of this space of appearance, says Arendt, ‘is that unlike the spaces which are the work of our hands, it does not survive the actuality of the movement which brought it into being, but disappears not only with the dispersal of men... but with the

http://postalheritage.org.uk/aboutus

‘Looking Away: Participations in Visual Culture’ by Irit Rogoff from After Criticism: New Responses to Art and Performance, Gavin Butt (ed.), Blackwell, 2005, P. 125

44 Post-Space 45Post-Space

disappearance or the arrest of the activities themselves. Wherever people gather together, it is potentially there but only potentially, not necessarily and not forever.’

The ‘space of appearance’ clearly relates to the physical interaction between people which is undetermined. However I was wondering how this relates to virtual interaction such as that in postal exchanges or on googlewave – in fact particularly the latter as we can all be ‘present’ on the wave and hold live conversations deleting and typing at will. Can this count as a ‘space of appearance’? Although speech and presence are somewhat deferred.

If anyone is interested in pursuing this as a line of theory relating to our project (or not) then maybe we can return to the source of Hannah Arendt’s writings. There are also some other relevant points in Irit’s essay. It might help us tease out some more ideas on how to pursue different practices and actions.

Of course having not been there this afternoon decisions might have already been made to further our investigations in other ways which I would also be happy with.

Answers on a postcard please......

spac

e of

app

eara

nce

44 Post-Space 45Post-Space

disappearance or the arrest of the activities themselves. Wherever people gather together, it is potentially there but only potentially, not necessarily and not forever.’

The ‘space of appearance’ clearly relates to the physical interaction between people which is undetermined. However I was wondering how this relates to virtual interaction such as that in postal exchanges or on googlewave – in fact particularly the latter as we can all be ‘present’ on the wave and hold live conversations deleting and typing at will. Can this count as a ‘space of appearance’? Although speech and presence are somewhat deferred.

If anyone is interested in pursuing this as a line of theory relating to our project (or not) then maybe we can return to the source of Hannah Arendt’s writings. There are also some other relevant points in Irit’s essay. It might help us tease out some more ideas on how to pursue different practices and actions.

Of course having not been there this afternoon decisions might have already been made to further our investigations in other ways which I would also be happy with.

Answers on a postcard please......

spac

e of

app

eara

nce

Contents

Foreword 05Paulo Tavares

Discussion 06

appropriating space 10

memory 14

regeneration 18

borders 29

social space 30

consciousness 35

monument 38

networks 41

space of appearance 44

singularity 48

language 51

institutional critique 58

exchange 64

the archive 72

Fieldwork 82

DIS

CU

SS

ION

64 Post-Space 65Post-Space

Feb 28Blanche: I sent out ten letters (each with varying amounts of money in) on Thursday, requesting the receivers send something to the PO Box in return. Hopefully the money will be an added incentive to post them! I might follow this up by inviting the whole street to send material to the box, to see if anything interesting emerges from this demographic. Also, re Paulo’s point that we should be opening the call for submissions to a broader audience, I was thinking that perhaps we could put an ad out on artsjobs? We could include the ‘manifesto’ we work up from our sentences to provide a bit more info about the project. And perhaps ask for their postal addresses so we can continue mapping the demographic of those people sending material to the PO Box. What do you think?

Mar 3Blanche: I also found the experience of delivering the letters an interesting one. I wasn’t too discriminating and just chose the ten houses next to my flat. But I think this made me more anxious as, if I was caught, people might know where I live (even though I don’t know any of my neighbours). The amount of money I included in each envelope decreased the further away I got from the flat so it will be interesting to see if what is sent back reflects this.

Mar 6Paulina: I have also been looking at how relationships are formed through exchange. I am making sets of envelopes to distribute in different streets. Each set is like a series of little artworks, that I am documenting before sending. I wanted to instigate a creative response, on the one hand to encourage a reply from the recipient and on the other to somehow affect their reply.

Even if none come back some sort of creative exchange has already been made in the giving of these envelopes in the first place. I wanted to give time to each envelope, the drawn series was particularly laborious, so a gesture has been made from the start. As the mapping project develops we might find that a great number of streets need to be covered before we receive a response but this

will only help to build an interesting cartography (particularly as we are covering space on foot).

I plan to respond with further creative exchanges to build a dialogue with those that respond, letting the exchanges shape my responses. I have recorded individual addresses for various envelopes.

I hope this will follow in line with the great ideas raised above about long term projects; having art on view in people’s homes, archiving and exchange.

exch

ange

64 Post-Space 65Post-Space

Feb 28Blanche: I sent out ten letters (each with varying amounts of money in) on Thursday, requesting the receivers send something to the PO Box in return. Hopefully the money will be an added incentive to post them! I might follow this up by inviting the whole street to send material to the box, to see if anything interesting emerges from this demographic. Also, re Paulo’s point that we should be opening the call for submissions to a broader audience, I was thinking that perhaps we could put an ad out on artsjobs? We could include the ‘manifesto’ we work up from our sentences to provide a bit more info about the project. And perhaps ask for their postal addresses so we can continue mapping the demographic of those people sending material to the PO Box. What do you think?

Mar 3Blanche: I also found the experience of delivering the letters an interesting one. I wasn’t too discriminating and just chose the ten houses next to my flat. But I think this made me more anxious as, if I was caught, people might know where I live (even though I don’t know any of my neighbours). The amount of money I included in each envelope decreased the further away I got from the flat so it will be interesting to see if what is sent back reflects this.

Mar 6Paulina: I have also been looking at how relationships are formed through exchange. I am making sets of envelopes to distribute in different streets. Each set is like a series of little artworks, that I am documenting before sending. I wanted to instigate a creative response, on the one hand to encourage a reply from the recipient and on the other to somehow affect their reply.

Even if none come back some sort of creative exchange has already been made in the giving of these envelopes in the first place. I wanted to give time to each envelope, the drawn series was particularly laborious, so a gesture has been made from the start. As the mapping project develops we might find that a great number of streets need to be covered before we receive a response but this

will only help to build an interesting cartography (particularly as we are covering space on foot).

I plan to respond with further creative exchanges to build a dialogue with those that respond, letting the exchanges shape my responses. I have recorded individual addresses for various envelopes.

I hope this will follow in line with the great ideas raised above about long term projects; having art on view in people’s homes, archiving and exchange.

exch

ange

66 Post-Space 67Post-Space

Feb 27Paulina: Distributing the envelopes proved to be an interesting experience.

The first set went through the letter-boxes of a relatively well-off residential area in Blackheath. These flats and houses are all large Victorian builds and have mostly kept their glass panel front doors. I found the fear of getting caught exhilarating! The attributed reputation of security and safety that comes with higher levels of affluence made intruding into people’s private space feel more risky.

The glass panels inadvertently allowed a sense of connection with the people whom I had randomly chosen to receive one my envelopes. Seeing children’s shoes, a cat, briefcase and many other telling objects allowed for a certain level of projected fantasy to connect me with the objects owners.

The second street felt very different. Distributed amongst two blocks of flats in London Bridge, one sealed off from the streets with heavy gates, the lack of personal signposts made me feel bleak about the likelihood of seeing any of the envelopes again.

Mar 6Katie: Delivery of the envelopes was for me a nerve-racking experience driven by the fear of a) getting caught, b) getting told-off for circulating unwanted mail and c) having to uncomfortably explain a project which relies on written exchange and initial anonymity!

I found myself setting up discriminating codes of delivery practice: no closed gates, no stairs, run away at sounds of movement from within, don’t post to too many doors next to each other incase they talk!

Here are some images, they denote my sentiments at the time, shove them in and RUN!

Having thought a little bit more about what we might or might not receive back and considering our discussions that we’ve been having on archive and taxonomy, I have decided to muster up some more courage and start collecting fragments of sample/specimens from one of my chosen streets. Undoubtedly this move is driven by paranoid feelings that I will suffer absolute rejection from all those I have posted to (except E. Dubois!) Therefore

I will TAKE a tiny piece of their address, be it a blade of grass, a corner of a crisp packet lying on their path or any other particle of detritus which hints at their house and eventually send it to PO Box Gallery.... PO Box Gallery does not take no for an answer!

Mar 6Katie: I realise that all the envelopes I have sent out are personified by mythical figures. Who are the receivers of my envelopes and what are their lives and their cultural interests? Maybe they have none.

In thinking a lot about our interests I consider my own hopes and imaginings of the PO Box, my ambitions and aspirations of what the PO Box is, what it will become and the creative relationships that might evolve from this little shell in East London, the first package received by PO Box Gallery, has become caught up in all these imagined ideologies.

66 Post-Space 67Post-Space

Feb 27Paulina: Distributing the envelopes proved to be an interesting experience.

The first set went through the letter-boxes of a relatively well-off residential area in Blackheath. These flats and houses are all large Victorian builds and have mostly kept their glass panel front doors. I found the fear of getting caught exhilarating! The attributed reputation of security and safety that comes with higher levels of affluence made intruding into people’s private space feel more risky.

The glass panels inadvertently allowed a sense of connection with the people whom I had randomly chosen to receive one my envelopes. Seeing children’s shoes, a cat, briefcase and many other telling objects allowed for a certain level of projected fantasy to connect me with the objects owners.

The second street felt very different. Distributed amongst two blocks of flats in London Bridge, one sealed off from the streets with heavy gates, the lack of personal signposts made me feel bleak about the likelihood of seeing any of the envelopes again.

Mar 6Katie: Delivery of the envelopes was for me a nerve-racking experience driven by the fear of a) getting caught, b) getting told-off for circulating unwanted mail and c) having to uncomfortably explain a project which relies on written exchange and initial anonymity!

I found myself setting up discriminating codes of delivery practice: no closed gates, no stairs, run away at sounds of movement from within, don’t post to too many doors next to each other incase they talk!

Here are some images, they denote my sentiments at the time, shove them in and RUN!

Having thought a little bit more about what we might or might not receive back and considering our discussions that we’ve been having on archive and taxonomy, I have decided to muster up some more courage and start collecting fragments of sample/specimens from one of my chosen streets. Undoubtedly this move is driven by paranoid feelings that I will suffer absolute rejection from all those I have posted to (except E. Dubois!) Therefore

I will TAKE a tiny piece of their address, be it a blade of grass, a corner of a crisp packet lying on their path or any other particle of detritus which hints at their house and eventually send it to PO Box Gallery.... PO Box Gallery does not take no for an answer!

Mar 6Katie: I realise that all the envelopes I have sent out are personified by mythical figures. Who are the receivers of my envelopes and what are their lives and their cultural interests? Maybe they have none.

In thinking a lot about our interests I consider my own hopes and imaginings of the PO Box, my ambitions and aspirations of what the PO Box is, what it will become and the creative relationships that might evolve from this little shell in East London, the first package received by PO Box Gallery, has become caught up in all these imagined ideologies.

68 Post-Space 69Post-Space

Envelopes Black Door 2, Envelopes Black Door 3, Envelopes Wedged Under Door

Having distributed a number of envelopes and postcards one day we finally received back a small yellow envelope filled with small glittery confetti and a tiny note stating a name and address and one word, ‘play’. Obeying this instruction, I have posted a game of Cat’s Cradle a game dating back a hundred years or more. It requires nothing but a piece of string and can be played anywhere at anytime with two or more people. What will our receiver think of this game, how will it fit in her (she sits in my imagined picture as female) thoughts of play. Is this a game that was part of her childhood?

The PO Box Gallery’s relationship with this person is caught in interstitial space. She resides somewhere between imagination and reality – we know she’s not mythical yet our relationship with her is not based in reality. Our correspondence moves through the physical space of London via the postal system, through the imagined space of play and games and through the creative space of art and making. Where will it go next?

Mar 6Paulina: Being the first person to respond (and by coincidence having a pretty name) I feel tenderness towards E DuBois. The investment of time is a connection in itself.

Mar 6Paulina: I too received some post to the PO Box. In response to one of the printed envelopes posted in Blackheath I have received 10 rupees. I am planning to send a (not entirely obvious) photograph of the Taj Mahal that I took in 2003 along with an illustrated letter discussing the memories and of space.

1:34 pmDeborah: I have been leaving blank post cards around. The cards are addressed, stamped and ready to send to the box, I have also attached a writing implement to the cards. The cards have been left them wherever I have been, on public transport, in shops at work etc. The cards carry no explanation except for the words ‘Post Card’ which is already printed on them and can be read as an instruction.

68 Post-Space 69Post-Space

Envelopes Black Door 2, Envelopes Black Door 3, Envelopes Wedged Under Door

Having distributed a number of envelopes and postcards one day we finally received back a small yellow envelope filled with small glittery confetti and a tiny note stating a name and address and one word, ‘play’. Obeying this instruction, I have posted a game of Cat’s Cradle a game dating back a hundred years or more. It requires nothing but a piece of string and can be played anywhere at anytime with two or more people. What will our receiver think of this game, how will it fit in her (she sits in my imagined picture as female) thoughts of play. Is this a game that was part of her childhood?

The PO Box Gallery’s relationship with this person is caught in interstitial space. She resides somewhere between imagination and reality – we know she’s not mythical yet our relationship with her is not based in reality. Our correspondence moves through the physical space of London via the postal system, through the imagined space of play and games and through the creative space of art and making. Where will it go next?

Mar 6Paulina: Being the first person to respond (and by coincidence having a pretty name) I feel tenderness towards E DuBois. The investment of time is a connection in itself.

Mar 6Paulina: I too received some post to the PO Box. In response to one of the printed envelopes posted in Blackheath I have received 10 rupees. I am planning to send a (not entirely obvious) photograph of the Taj Mahal that I took in 2003 along with an illustrated letter discussing the memories and of space.

1:34 pmDeborah: I have been leaving blank post cards around. The cards are addressed, stamped and ready to send to the box, I have also attached a writing implement to the cards. The cards have been left them wherever I have been, on public transport, in shops at work etc. The cards carry no explanation except for the words ‘Post Card’ which is already printed on them and can be read as an instruction.

70 Post-Space 71Post-Space

I was interested in communicating with the unknown. So far no cards have arrived at the box.

Mar 6Megan: I think the ideas of exchange being raised through the PO Box are really interesting. Several years ago at the gallery where I work we had an exhibition with Allen Ruppersberg, an American conceptual artist who might be considered as the last of the avant-garde. The exhibition was based on a premise of free trade. I have attached an image of the poster that we used as an invite for the show. The poster lists books Allen wanted and for which he was prepared to trade a copy of a DVD he had made entitled ‘Four Rarities’. The DVD contained the only documentation of Allen’s lecture on Houdini as well as documentaries on Jim Dine and the poets Michael McClure and Brother Antonius, which had previously been shown on public television in the sixties. The mailed posters elicited various responses and enquiries and, in the end, around twenty items on Allen’s list were traded for copies of his DVD. Also a link to our website: http://www.greengrassi.com/ruppersberg.php

Mar 3Blanche: I was thinking of Michael Landy’s recent project at South London Gallery in relation to our collecting material via the PO Box. He’s transformed the gallery space into a massive ‘art bin’, a ‘monument to creative failure’. While we are not planning to destroy the works we collect (I hope) I thought it might be interesting to look at this project in terms of exchange also, as Landy is offering nothing in return for the works that are submitted. This somewhat contradicts our activities of collecting and archiving, as we seem to be placing some sort of ‘value’ on the works we have produced/received, by virtue of archiving/recording them. Could we submit some of the project to art bin? Perhaps a copy of the book once it’s published:

Mar 7Alice L: Experiments to encourage interaction with the PO Box and widen our network of exchange:

70 Post-Space 71Post-Space

I was interested in communicating with the unknown. So far no cards have arrived at the box.

Mar 6Megan: I think the ideas of exchange being raised through the PO Box are really interesting. Several years ago at the gallery where I work we had an exhibition with Allen Ruppersberg, an American conceptual artist who might be considered as the last of the avant-garde. The exhibition was based on a premise of free trade. I have attached an image of the poster that we used as an invite for the show. The poster lists books Allen wanted and for which he was prepared to trade a copy of a DVD he had made entitled ‘Four Rarities’. The DVD contained the only documentation of Allen’s lecture on Houdini as well as documentaries on Jim Dine and the poets Michael McClure and Brother Antonius, which had previously been shown on public television in the sixties. The mailed posters elicited various responses and enquiries and, in the end, around twenty items on Allen’s list were traded for copies of his DVD. Also a link to our website: http://www.greengrassi.com/ruppersberg.php

Mar 3Blanche: I was thinking of Michael Landy’s recent project at South London Gallery in relation to our collecting material via the PO Box. He’s transformed the gallery space into a massive ‘art bin’, a ‘monument to creative failure’. While we are not planning to destroy the works we collect (I hope) I thought it might be interesting to look at this project in terms of exchange also, as Landy is offering nothing in return for the works that are submitted. This somewhat contradicts our activities of collecting and archiving, as we seem to be placing some sort of ‘value’ on the works we have produced/received, by virtue of archiving/recording them. Could we submit some of the project to art bin? Perhaps a copy of the book once it’s published:

Mar 7Alice L: Experiments to encourage interaction with the PO Box and widen our network of exchange:

72 Post-Space 73Post-Space

10 large yellow envelopes delivered to 10 addresses on Lambert Way, N12

10 small brown envelopes delivered to 10 addresses on Darnley Road, E8

This envelope was used to record the house numbers delivered to. Eager to send the envelopes as quickly as possible the index was created using stickers from my diary, each envelope delivered identified by a different sticker.

12:28 pmDeborah: I was a bit slow on the uptake, and only sent my envelopes last week. I decided to go for streets with a post box on them, Mavern Road E8, and Middleton Road also E8.

I thought houses located directly next to a post box might be encouraged participate. I was brave enough to go through closed gates; it must be my upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness!

Mar 2Alice L: Just wanted to add a link to some artists’ projects that explore the archival to add to thinking about how we might ‘work’ with the material collected.

In his article ‘An Archival Impulse’ Hal Foster outlines some interesting approaches to archives by artists that could inform our thoughts on selection processes:

In the first instance archival artists seek to make historical information often lost or displaced, physically present. To this end they elaborate on the found image, object, and text, and favour the installation format as they do so. (Frequently they use its non-hierarchical spatiality to advantage...)... These sources are familiar, drawn from the archives of mass culture, to ensure a legibility that can be disturbed or detourne; but they can also be obscure, retrieved in a gesture of alternative knowledge or counter-memory.

There is also a strong resonance with our use of the post box to engage the thoughts and creativity of a random selection of people. Is it our hope that what we do with our ‘found’ or ‘retrieved’ objects will

http://www.greengrassi.com/ruppersberg.php

create new knowledge, in some way disrupt a normal procedure?

Mar 3Blanche: I often find the idea of archiving a difficult one as it suggests that everything can be easily categorised and fit neatly into ‘boxes’, without any room for the murky interstitial spaces we’ve been discussing, whose very nature is not so tangible. The archive as a thing itself also seems to have a completeness, to be all encompassing, and I find this very interesting in relation to the work we are doing with the PO Box and relating to interstitial space, as the circulatory nature of the former and the indeterminateness of the latter seem to contradict this. That’s not to say I don’t think we should archive things (and we’ve already been doing this on googlewave and the website), just that perhaps this contradiction is something we could consider when archiving. Could we think of the archive itself as being located in an interstitial point in time, as a ‘trace’ of events past but not present:

The temporality of the document appears to carry some residue of the past into the future: a passageway in and across time. If so, the document would serve not only as a space of arrival but equally as a point of departure. Is it not therefore always haunted by the passing of time, or by its own passage from time to another? That which has produced the trace passes. It becomes the past. Leaving a mark which represents, although it is not the same as a trace. Marks are the evidence of this passage, and a trace of the past. The document therefore carries forward not evidence of the past so much as that something has passed, and it shows us something that even the past may not have recognised till now, too late. There is a sense of a deferred temporality, a strange suspension of time that within the present is an uncovering not so much of revelation of an originating event or cause as that of recognition.

Mar 6Paulina: I would like to think of our archiving practices as fragmentary traces. By documenting only certain aspects of intent, only certain items and exchanges and exploring the ways in which we

Charles Merewether, ‘A Language to Come: Japanese Photography after the Event’, 2002.

the

arch

ive

72 Post-Space 73Post-Space

10 large yellow envelopes delivered to 10 addresses on Lambert Way, N12

10 small brown envelopes delivered to 10 addresses on Darnley Road, E8

This envelope was used to record the house numbers delivered to. Eager to send the envelopes as quickly as possible the index was created using stickers from my diary, each envelope delivered identified by a different sticker.

12:28 pmDeborah: I was a bit slow on the uptake, and only sent my envelopes last week. I decided to go for streets with a post box on them, Mavern Road E8, and Middleton Road also E8.

I thought houses located directly next to a post box might be encouraged participate. I was brave enough to go through closed gates; it must be my upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness!

Mar 2Alice L: Just wanted to add a link to some artists’ projects that explore the archival to add to thinking about how we might ‘work’ with the material collected.

In his article ‘An Archival Impulse’ Hal Foster outlines some interesting approaches to archives by artists that could inform our thoughts on selection processes:

In the first instance archival artists seek to make historical information often lost or displaced, physically present. To this end they elaborate on the found image, object, and text, and favour the installation format as they do so. (Frequently they use its non-hierarchical spatiality to advantage...)... These sources are familiar, drawn from the archives of mass culture, to ensure a legibility that can be disturbed or detourne; but they can also be obscure, retrieved in a gesture of alternative knowledge or counter-memory.

There is also a strong resonance with our use of the post box to engage the thoughts and creativity of a random selection of people. Is it our hope that what we do with our ‘found’ or ‘retrieved’ objects will

http://www.greengrassi.com/ruppersberg.php

create new knowledge, in some way disrupt a normal procedure?

Mar 3Blanche: I often find the idea of archiving a difficult one as it suggests that everything can be easily categorised and fit neatly into ‘boxes’, without any room for the murky interstitial spaces we’ve been discussing, whose very nature is not so tangible. The archive as a thing itself also seems to have a completeness, to be all encompassing, and I find this very interesting in relation to the work we are doing with the PO Box and relating to interstitial space, as the circulatory nature of the former and the indeterminateness of the latter seem to contradict this. That’s not to say I don’t think we should archive things (and we’ve already been doing this on googlewave and the website), just that perhaps this contradiction is something we could consider when archiving. Could we think of the archive itself as being located in an interstitial point in time, as a ‘trace’ of events past but not present:

The temporality of the document appears to carry some residue of the past into the future: a passageway in and across time. If so, the document would serve not only as a space of arrival but equally as a point of departure. Is it not therefore always haunted by the passing of time, or by its own passage from time to another? That which has produced the trace passes. It becomes the past. Leaving a mark which represents, although it is not the same as a trace. Marks are the evidence of this passage, and a trace of the past. The document therefore carries forward not evidence of the past so much as that something has passed, and it shows us something that even the past may not have recognised till now, too late. There is a sense of a deferred temporality, a strange suspension of time that within the present is an uncovering not so much of revelation of an originating event or cause as that of recognition.

Mar 6Paulina: I would like to think of our archiving practices as fragmentary traces. By documenting only certain aspects of intent, only certain items and exchanges and exploring the ways in which we

Charles Merewether, ‘A Language to Come: Japanese Photography after the Event’, 2002.

the

arch

ive

74 Post-Space 75Post-Space

archive such material we could engage with our relations to the work being produced, circulated and lost via the PO Box.

Gillian: I felt a bit redundant last week, so I decided to take the idea of ‘transformative practices’ into my own hands.... I’ve been interested in the way that reflection and ‘spaces in time’ are transformative for a while, and have been following my own practice of writing every day. I decided to start writing to the PO Box, at least every few days if not every day. I don’t know if anyone will read my letters, but writing to the ‘box’ seemed to produce ideas and develop my thoughts, thoughts to do with the project and thoughts generally, it introduced a potential reader into my writing.

Charu: For ‘about my project/us’

..........D..................O.................T...................T...................I.....................N......................G................

........................................................................the..........................................................................

sPAce.....................................................................

....................................................................................................................

.........................................A dot represents a space. It can signify

the beginning or the end. It is complete in itself. It is like a black hole − who knows what it contains. When used in language, it restricts the meaning and knowledge in the space of a sentence. In the technological age, it has become a language. As a game, joining dots unveils the hidden picture.

But, how do we recognise a dot? We perceive a dot only because of the space that the dot is in. A black dot on white paper or a white dot on black paper. It is a space in itself and outside itself.

In India, a dot is called a ‘bindu’ in Hindi. Bindu features in many of the paintings by Raza. In his paintings, it is a manifestation of the ‘panch tatwa’ − the five natural elements of air, water, fire, earth and sky − on his canvas. These elements were later translated onto the canvas as Raza’s five primary colours − black, blue, red, yellow and white. The bindu also represents the female body

‘An Archival Impulse’ (October 110, Fall 2004 pp. 3-22) Hal Foster

74 Post-Space 75Post-Space

archive such material we could engage with our relations to the work being produced, circulated and lost via the PO Box.

Gillian: I felt a bit redundant last week, so I decided to take the idea of ‘transformative practices’ into my own hands.... I’ve been interested in the way that reflection and ‘spaces in time’ are transformative for a while, and have been following my own practice of writing every day. I decided to start writing to the PO Box, at least every few days if not every day. I don’t know if anyone will read my letters, but writing to the ‘box’ seemed to produce ideas and develop my thoughts, thoughts to do with the project and thoughts generally, it introduced a potential reader into my writing.

Charu: For ‘about my project/us’

..........D..................O.................T...................T...................I.....................N......................G................

........................................................................the..........................................................................

sPAce.....................................................................

....................................................................................................................

.........................................A dot represents a space. It can signify

the beginning or the end. It is complete in itself. It is like a black hole − who knows what it contains. When used in language, it restricts the meaning and knowledge in the space of a sentence. In the technological age, it has become a language. As a game, joining dots unveils the hidden picture.

But, how do we recognise a dot? We perceive a dot only because of the space that the dot is in. A black dot on white paper or a white dot on black paper. It is a space in itself and outside itself.

In India, a dot is called a ‘bindu’ in Hindi. Bindu features in many of the paintings by Raza. In his paintings, it is a manifestation of the ‘panch tatwa’ − the five natural elements of air, water, fire, earth and sky − on his canvas. These elements were later translated onto the canvas as Raza’s five primary colours − black, blue, red, yellow and white. The bindu also represents the female body

‘An Archival Impulse’ (October 110, Fall 2004 pp. 3-22) Hal Foster

76 Post-Space 77Post-Space

that bears the child for nine months and expands to encompass a bigger colour palette of brown, blue, red, brown, orange, yellow and white.

Aboriginal art is made entirely out of dots. Similar dots take shape of a pattern. From a distance, the dots disappear, only the patterns or shapes are seen. The paintings appear straight out of someone’s dream sequence.

In the aural world, a dot represents temporality. It increases the duration of a note, also indicating if it has to be sung or played.

The meaning of the signified-visual or linguistic, can be transformed by the signifier by the use of dots. Dimensional less, representing The Moment, the dot does not move but transforms the space, the meaning, the significance, sometimes the presence of a dot-vast abysses of space and time-makes one uncomfortable with the question of inclusion and exclusion.

........................................................................................

.C....H.....A....R.....U...........................................................................................................has made....................................................................................................................................

................................................................................ .........two films.

......As a part of this project.............................exploring...........s...P.....a.c.e........

10.27 amGillian: I’ve been writing to the PO Box every few days. I wanted to explore whether the action of writing, as a regular practice, could be transforming, transformative. Sometimes I write about the project, sometimes I just write, and I don’t know who, if anyone, will read my letters. Introducing the recipient, the PO Box, gave something to my letters, it gave them a confessional action and a kind of nervousness has followed as I have no idea where the essentially very private documents now are. I can say though, that the space of a blank piece of paper, the time for creating something virgin and new definitely allows something to happen, it allows a time for reflection in, slows time down.

76 Post-Space 77Post-Space

that bears the child for nine months and expands to encompass a bigger colour palette of brown, blue, red, brown, orange, yellow and white.

Aboriginal art is made entirely out of dots. Similar dots take shape of a pattern. From a distance, the dots disappear, only the patterns or shapes are seen. The paintings appear straight out of someone’s dream sequence.

In the aural world, a dot represents temporality. It increases the duration of a note, also indicating if it has to be sung or played.

The meaning of the signified-visual or linguistic, can be transformed by the signifier by the use of dots. Dimensional less, representing The Moment, the dot does not move but transforms the space, the meaning, the significance, sometimes the presence of a dot-vast abysses of space and time-makes one uncomfortable with the question of inclusion and exclusion.

........................................................................................

.C....H.....A....R.....U...........................................................................................................has made....................................................................................................................................

................................................................................ .........two films.

......As a part of this project.............................exploring...........s...P.....a.c.e........

10.27 amGillian: I’ve been writing to the PO Box every few days. I wanted to explore whether the action of writing, as a regular practice, could be transforming, transformative. Sometimes I write about the project, sometimes I just write, and I don’t know who, if anyone, will read my letters. Introducing the recipient, the PO Box, gave something to my letters, it gave them a confessional action and a kind of nervousness has followed as I have no idea where the essentially very private documents now are. I can say though, that the space of a blank piece of paper, the time for creating something virgin and new definitely allows something to happen, it allows a time for reflection in, slows time down.

94 Post-Space

© The Authors. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrival system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the authors. Acknowlegements:We would like to thank Matthew Pull for his kind assistance with the design of Post-Space.

www.poboxgallery.com

GalleryPO Box 66216LondonE8 9DF

94 Post-Space

© The Authors. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrival system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the authors. Acknowlegements:We would like to thank Matthew Pull for his kind assistance with the design of Post-Space.

www.poboxgallery.com

GalleryPO Box 66216LondonE8 9DF