Spaces Manipulate Who We Are
In the course of the pandemic, the dimensions of everyday life became minimised and restructured. Constrictions appeared through the spaces we occupied, the number of people we saw, and the diversity of how our time was spent. For many this period became a benchmark for change, not just for the present but for the future too.
In the birth of this era in the spring of 2020, I began the creative process of idea development for a new artistic project with Marcos Lutyens, The New Herulians (2020). We wanted to create a sensory encounter that was rooted in the changing meaning of place at the time, its environment dictated by the artwork participant, reflecting their private and personal spatial territories shaped by the conditions of lockdown.
The artwork first emerged as a critique and speculative fiction exploring the emotion tracking technological landscape of our future. Participants are invited to listen to a sci-fi narrative unfold, selecting a special location of their choice that becomes intertwined into the experience through a pathway of self reflection and memory. Although the artwork is hosted online in the corners of this Cognitive Sensations website, it is the melding of its virtual setting with the user’s environment that creates the context for this work.
You might wonder why this article is placed within the blog series ‘Curating on the Web’, for surely this is an artwork about connecting with one’s physical environment? But The New Herulians reflects upon our intertwined lives with the network in a manner which is closer to our digital culture than you think. It rejects the somewhat dated ideas of the digital dualists that there is a clear definition between on and offline lives, defining the internet as an independent space from the physical world. Instead, the artwork opens a pathway for discussion around the multi-layered nature of our virtual and tangible environments, which continuously interplay through our daily routines of work, communication and leisure.
As we all experienced, lockdown didn’t just change the spatial quality of our life through the restriction of domestic and public spaces, it also opened up new possibilities through a surge in virtual activity. Suddenly I could attend online events hosted in London and New York, and meet researchers and artists in locations I would not normally have the chance to visit. I enjoyed regular video calls with family members and old friends on the other side of the country, bringing us closer together through a new ritualistic network bonding.
Of course, many of these activities have not become a replacement for life before Covid-19, and with restrictions now lifting the spatiality of our world have begun to expand once again. Just a couple of weeks ago I found myself back in the dark techno-spheres of the galleries at FACT (Liverpool). Currently hosting The Only Good System is a Soundsystem (2020) by the recently Turner Prize nominated collective B.O.S.S, the installation offers a stark contrast to the two dimensional spaces of the web. A dark passageway leads you to the centre of this piece, surrounded by curved panels, PVC curtains, and layers upon layers of film, light and sound. The room functions as a living sculpture of a speaker, pulsating and vibrating as it unfolds its narrative of community and music.
The atmosphere of this piece directly struck a chord with my age-old fascination in psychological architecture, and unexpectedly brought my attention back to The New Herulians. For this artwork embodies the physical manipulation of a space to transform the emotions, feelings and experience of those inside. Even further, the artwork brings to attention the importance of music and place for communities of queer, trans and non-binary black and people of colour to mobilise against discrimination. The installation became a representation for the powerful effect of these environments in igniting, uplifting and uniting a community, setting the conditions for an exchange of conversations and shared experiences stemmed from collective struggle.
In reflection, I was immediately brought back to a recent discussion about the emotional impact of space in the Cognitive Sensations event ‘Decoding Humans’. Dialling in from Santa Barbara, the words of Professor Sharon Tettegah have stayed with me ever since:
“Spaces manipulate who we are”
Tettegah shared her experiences of human inhabited spaces and the emotions they create through their scale, materiality and sensory qualities. Referencing the built environment, the open spaces of nature and the many territories and components of our virtual environments, she reminds us that “technology is omnipresent, it is all around us”. Even Zoom, the platform selected for hosting the event, will have a direct impact on the audience and how they feel when experiencing the live conversation. Tettegah’s virtual background of a grand open library sets a particular scene which for her is an ‘online happy space’, the online environment she associates with positive feelings and emotions, but for the audience it could provoke a whole host of additional personal and private connections.
I was delighted that the conversation found its place here. Its origins around the human relationship with space resonated with me deeply, and reminded me of my initial steps towards becoming a curator as an architecture student fascinated by the psychological impact of the built environment. It felt cathartic that this influence was still omnipresent in my work, extended through this additional layer and emotional property of the virtual.
I’m curious to know the personal discoveries identified during the psychological experiences of The New Herulians, the places people uncover, and the stories they unfold. Perhaps the location they choose will offer different memories, moods and associations, depending on the time of the day it is encountered, or even the time of year. I personally look forward to returning to the first location I experienced this artwork, to a time in the far future where I can look back and reflect upon how my relationship with that space has changed. We live in a continuously changing dynamic environment, and it is the spaces we inhabit that shape our experiences, who we become and the pathways we choose. Where are the places that define your year during lockdown? Why not plug into the immersive world of The New Herulians and connect with these spaces even further through a deep cognitive encounter?
CLICK PORTAL ABOVE TO ENTER THE NEW HERULIANS
