How does your space use you?
We don’t really like each other very much. We don’t like living near other people and we don’t like traveling with them either. We must have our own houses and our own cars; except for those of us who already live with and thrive with them, we almost universally loathe the idea of apartment buildings and all forms of public transportation. … We basically want to be alone, and in both our hankering and the reality we’ve achieved, we really are alone.
James Wagner
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I decided to revisit this blog because I’ve gotten back into researching urban space and social contexts. I copied the above quote months ago. Today I was sitting on my friend’s porch as part of the Hammock Residency and thinking about exactly these same topics once again.
Space, in a city, is a precious resource.
People widely recognize that cars are bad for the environment yet continue driving their cars even when other options are available, because they like the experience of being in control. And I think people prefer living alone/living in detached single-family houses/having large lots because of the same thing. They want to have control over their space, over what happens in it and who is allowed in and where things get put; they want to know exactly what is going on around them all the time. Even if they are not using the space, even if they are living in a place which is far larger than they need or just completely underutilized, they don’t want other people coming in and using it. This need for control manifests itself in dozens of ways, including disturbing Craigslist ads that want a subletter who doesn’t move after 9pm, never invites a friend over, never uses the kitchen.
Unlike most members of North American society, I love having people around, even when they get on my nerves. I love living with people, and being very together-ey. I don’t want my own house or my own car. I love apartments, and I prefer to have as many people living in them as can be made practical. I think taking public transportation makes people more thoughtful and considerate. I have no desire to be alone in a space. Clearly, I was born into the wrong society. I think I was made for the future. I think in the future North Americans are all going to have to get cozy and learn to be considerate and community-minded because everyone is going to be up in each other’s space all the time. I hope so.
I grew up in a large family, in a small house, with constant visitors. I’m not often in situations where my particularly unique views on space are brought up, though, so I forget that other people have different views. Recently these issues have been brought to my attention because I have found myself inhabiting several provisional or interstitial spaces:
1. I am staying on my friend’s couch while I look for an apartment. The couch is a fold-out so it’s not uncomfortable, but I’m definitely sleeping in a common space. Everyone has to walk through to get out the door. I feel that this arrangement would make most people uncomfortable and anxious, but I’m feeling much more relaxed than I would if I was living in an apartment by myself. Living alone in a space feels unnatural.
2. I’m participating in the aforementioned Hammock Residency for June. It’s run by my friend Heidi Nagtegaal, and it is at once very formal and very informal. Participants get a key to her house, where they can come over whenever they want and sit in the hammock on the back porch. Other participants have used the time to get done all of those things they’ve been putting off, to read those books and write those thoughts, reconsider their art practice. I plan to restart my research and writing about urban concerns. By framing her hammock as an ‘artist residency,’ Heidi has created a novel use of a space that would otherwise be rarely used. She can still use her back porch as always, and I’m not there all the time. But just having that space available to me, set off from my daily life, is so useful and it has been useful to many other artists/writers. It would never happen if Heidi hadn’t been willing to conceptualize her space differently: both more generously and more efficiently.
3. My friend Sam Rudolph and I have lucked into a little piece of studio space to call our own, but it has been a difficult process. We are renovating an unused shed behind a house which some acquaintances rent. Though they don’t own the property themselves, and they weren’t using the shed for anything besides storing some rotten wood, it was extremely difficult to convince them to let us use the space. They kept talking about all these plans they had for the space. They had been living there for more than a year, and hadn’t done anything in that time, but they still wanted to have that control over the space. Now that we’ve done a lot of work to clean it up I constantly worry that they are going to change their minds and demand the space back.
Vancouver’s 0.1% rental vacancy rate means that it is very difficult to find a place to live and it is extremely difficult to find a place to make work. Many artists make do with little studios shared with many people, or no studio at all. The problem of real estate has fundamentally shaped contemporary Vancouver art practices: in obvious ways (I think it has driven Vancouver art’s continuing conceptual focus) and less obvious ways (lots and lots of work involving walking the city).
As I settle in to the idea of being in Vancouver for a while, and into my new spaces, I’m going to be continually reflecting on the way that Vancouver’s space functions in my life and in my creative practice.
