HOUSEWARMING

In medieval times a HOUSEWARMING was when the hot embers from the previous home were brought to the new premises. A fire was started from the embers in the grate of the new home.

HOUSEWARMING


"Openness in being occurs in the form of a world, that is a field, a topography, where nothing visible shows itself without hiding most of itself." Merleau Ponty

HOUSEWARMING takes place in an East End council flat waiting for demolition.

HOUSEWARMING is an experiential piece that takes audience members on a journey through the hidden life of a building, questioning the criteria upon which the end of its existence has been decided.

When can a building be destroyed and what kind of impact do these policies have on its residents' lives? As a consequence of these decisions, what can the traces left by forced migrating bodies tell us?

Within the spacial realm of performance and installation, four artists respond to how the tenants' lives have been affected by policy making. Stifled past voices are given a moment to speak, rippling underneath, unarticulated, invisible yet most potent...

The artists, the temporary new tenants, bring with them their own customs that for the final time, overwrite the last layer of cultural reference before the building is destroyed.


Date: September 11th 2009
Time: 7pm-10pm,
Venue: 58 Shelmerdine Close, Ackroyd Drive, E3.

Nearest Station: Mile End

ADMISSION FREE

With thanks to: BOW ARTS TRUST

helen elizabeth cocker's postings

Tuesday 1st September.

Somehow it seemed appropriate to begin on the first.

Although unplanned..... as things often are, in resonance.

Strangely I start my entrance into this space from another empty space. 

A family home, occupied all year round except for these few days when its inhabiters are away on holiday.

These inhabiters have left the home which once was mine, and so it is to some extent a "return" I am part of. Here, in this lived-life house, I find the remnants of my past. Oddly disembodied from my present. 

Here I return to a time, preserved by my trace.

For now this is all, a substantial entry will appear here soon. 

This post will act as my way in - a door if you like.

Everyone needs a door into a space, especially when blinded by the walls. 

These sentences are my door, to remind me that as the day of 58 Shelmerdine Close draws nearer to me, so must I draw nearer to it.

Let me not forget then, that the personal is a space saturated within the empty. 

tanya and christian's posting

in the midst of slow motion
essence, sense and signification
are the experiences of the limit itself

the experience of being within an outside.


An act

the stillness of the past tense of a room. emptied. the sounds are echoes. enlarged echoes even. the silence is an echo enlarged.

two figures dance in their joint solitude. swaying movement that could even be stillness. the intention.

they wear patina on their feet. the smell of wax. the smell of old. oldness. they dance slowly. circling. waxing. polishing.

the floors tiles are scuffed and broken. the floors have no value. or rather are deemed valueless. so to preserve them is a pointless act.

the sound is from somewhere within. cupboard. interior. mind. interior. the wrecking ball. the first dull deep thud cannot be undone. inevitable next. pendulum. the couple dance on...
with no power to present what in the present has no name

images and bodies of images are dissolved
control as we know, on the other hand
always finds itself

in the last instance
on the separation
between naked existences

the exception, is what the control itself
each and every time decides

naked life is put into question
...revoked

the subject that needs to be turned into the exception is always naked
there are no distinctions between strategies and situation

artificial light and nocturnal inclination
unqualified witnesses

a temporary tenant - tanya's thread...

enter the space. silence.

it moves me around like subtle hands.
i close shut the door and pray.


First

I saw you first on a potent day. Echoing space of mouldy bread rolls. That night i dreamt of the white flush of light from your windows. rows. shouldering. i performed on those plush velour sofas. an act of my white skin on your red wound. Whilst seated there, i found my way again.

the second time

photos to pin down that laughter dancing around our renewal

third

the always smell of piss
this days sun spilling
brushes my floor and my walls
and my ceilings
can i ever own you?

4

i have been given a new lease of life
because of your dereliction
your loss is my gain...

each action becomes a question (i scrape away glue from the lino that held firm the carpet) each action asks me its intention. an act of practicality. a function. an act of desire or an act performed by a puppet. dangling helplessly from her strings.


POWER LESS

as the building sits tight in the grip of the hang-mans noose, the wrecking ball anticipates. ticks out time. the mocking tick of a clock defacing calendar pages. there is less time already. and less now.

does the fabric of the building feel its impending end? i feel its loss. i hear the ticking prelude to the pendulums first swing.

the space stands silent. dumb witness? once container? if i listen very hard i CAN hear the heartbeat. in the afternoon heat the metal security grids warp and vibrate a single dull dead pan note from deep in its soul.

what can this place tell us anyway? listen. the building does speak. its empty rooms whisper. my echoing footfalls span the past and future.

here sits an hour glass with sand grains. the glass cannot be turned. smoothly the grains pour through. finite, without choice.


HOW CAN A BUILDING BE CONSIDERED?

a shield, a skin, a perimeter fence between the outside and the in.

a canvas, our bodies rewriting the space. histories brought from distant lands and woven into the sheer fabric of the walls. ghee covers the tiles in the kitchen. new skin, which i peel away.


A BUILDING ON DEATH ROW

these rooms are mothers, that nurtured lives, (now stripped bare, humiliated, left kneeling meekly before the gallows).

this private space of intimacy

the carcass as raw wounds

a tragedy

the building is victim.. gagged. let us give it a moment to speak. THE LAST REQUEST IT HAS IS UTTERANCE.


THE ACT OF CLEANING, THE BODIES MARK MAKING

cleaning. spring cleaning. the act of renewal. re-invigorating.

dereliction. the act of decay. stagnation. degeneration.

demolish. destroy.

re-decorate. re-CLASS-ify.


i work avidly in my condemned rooms, cleaning, refreshing, invigorating. acts essentially futile.


the end always begins at the start

we might have been here

might not

have 

been.

you.

inspired me to live again

then killed

me.