Before work at QMU, I was a freelance artist, embedding myself in communities for extended periods of time and undertaking fun/bizarre projects where I ; or ; or . It was a time in my life where every day was different, often in different places, and working with different people in different situations.
When I started to work at QMU, however, I was suddenly found myself in a very corporate environment. Things we formalised and formatted. Chairs were all the same colour. People dressed similar. I was suddenly in a very cerebral, intellectual space, and everyone seemed to be sitting at desks and wearing shirts and ties and nice shoes and all I wanted to do was climb on top of the desks. I remember thinking: What am I doing here? How do I belong? Where do I fit in?
Being a creative practitioner, with a methodology that is grounded in practice-research - and perhaps also being just a little bit literal - I took this question about 鈥where do I fit?鈥 to heart, and every morning, I would arrive early and literally try to 鈥榝it鈥 myself into the office spaces, literally jamming myself into cupboards, stretching across desks, balancing on tables. This process - while ridiculous - was helpful in providing space to think, and through this practice-research realised I was finding creative ways to explore my new context.
What emerged out of these activities was a recognition of just how different this office space was from traditional 鈥榓rty鈥 activities, and how 鈥榣imiting鈥 these spaces were to natural, human movement. Indeed, there is research about that such offices are often designed by facilities managers and largely influenced by cost and efficiency of space, rather than any insights about design, wellbeing, or productivity. These are and so my little exercise about 鈥榟ow I fit in鈥 led to a bigger question about how such spaces and furniture might limit thinking, moving and wellbeing. I was curious as to how explore these 鈥渓imitations of space鈥 in a more nuanced way and in conversations with my friend and colleagues Christine Raffaelli, we developed a research project that would bring our expertise together to explore how open-plan offices spaces might impact our working lives - and our inner lives.
Christine, as a trained movement specialist and choreographer, was able to take the raw materials of my 鈥榝itting in鈥 experiments and expand these into broader work to reflect on these issues, a segment of which is presented below. This collaborative practice-research was new to us, as we had neither worked together before, and is an example of trans-disciplinary works-in-progress. This short 30 second clip below comes from a larger body of work we titled 鈥淧ratting About鈥.
The title 鈥淧ratting About鈥 came from a humorous query from a colleague who had asked what we were doing jumping around the office in stockinged feet. Whilst what we were doing ostensibly did look like an odd way to use the office space, it was our way of drawing attention to what is often assumed to be the 鈥渢he right and proper way鈥 to be in a given work environment. In operating in such a limited way, however, it limits creativity, tangential thinking and clamps down on 鈥渟eeing the world differently.鈥 Instead we were drawing attention to a long lineage to critiquing structures of power - such as the - by subverting established processes and procedures in a playful way. As we know, play is a serious piece of nonsense and can be very useful in problem solving.
Whilst we are not suggesting everyone should do handstands on tables, we are suggesting that this exercise provides a useful way to reflect on these spaces and how we might find more productive spaces to be creative and address broader concerns about how we might enhance our working lives. Indeed, our 鈥榩ratting about鈥 responds to broader philosophical theories such as that suggests ideas, processes, or even objects such tables and chairs are agents that act in creating social situations, and can act upon inhibiting creativity.
