Hannah Thompsett

Thesis Statement:

A body that regularly inhabits a space forges a deeply personal and intimate relationship to the space and its fixtures. This relationship is specific to the systematic practices of the individual.  A person dwells inside an area, brushing up against protrusions, leaning on surfaces, and putting weight on ledges while performing habitual behaviors.  After time, the body remembers these interactions and points of contact, and a trust is formed that allows for the fixtures to blend seamlessly with the space, and the space to become a critical part of the learned, automatic, or mechanical motions of the individual’s routines. Fixtures can only become part of a space if they allow for the development of this relationship and provide an ease of use and explicit functionality that is integrated into our individualized systematic practices. 

Exercises in the Mundane: body, object, placement has developed as an exploration of this relationship, in which the body and its motions, and space and its fixtures, are all combined to form the structure of a routine.  It is evident that the space a person inhabits influences the patterns of action that are performed to complete daily procedures.  The same is true for the inverse relationship: habitual actions affect the choice as to what fixtures are included in, or selected for, a space in which the actions must be performed.  This process of selection and modification of a space, based on its functionality in relation to an individual’s routines, places an importance on the fixtures that are included in the ritual of the routine.  They represent the individual’s choices and thus inherit a level of value as defined by the individual. 

The objects produced during this exploration represent the relationships between an individual and a space.  They are a direct recording of the connections that are formed during habitual motions between a body and fixtures.  The fixtures used have undergone the process of selection and elimination over time based on their functionality and smooth incorporation into the patterns of the individual.  The resulting objects raise many questions confronting the subjects of value, role, and placement.  I investigate these questions through the process of making the objects, and in the act of installing them.