A Space Without A Use

(2017/ 2019/ 2023) Durational performance/ installation

A Space Without a Use (Brighton, UK 2019)

A Space Without a Use (Hastings, UK 2017)

A Space Without A Use, part of Communal, University of Brighton Galleries, Grand Parade, Brighton. 9-11 May 2019.

Performed by: Claudia Kappenberg, Andrew Downs

Can you imagine a space which serves for nothing and relates to nothing? A Space Without A Use proposes such a space, a room without use or necessity. Two performers guard the space and welcome the visitors. Small beakers filled to the brim with water are given to those who want to enter the space, the precarious load slowing down their rhythms and suspending habits.

The work reimagines a movement exercise developed by Alastair McLennan by placing it into the public sphere and framing it as an instant that serves for nothing. The intervention draws on Georges Perec’s writing in Species of Spaces and other Pieces (2008), in which he considers the possibility of a space without a use. Uselessness, traditionally associated with failure and waste, here constitutes an alternative to the ubiquitous modern credo of productivity and purpose. Uselessness is claimed as that which renders us more human.

Also performed at:

Kunsttreffpunkt, Stadtkirchplatz, Darmstadt, D. 12-5pm, 28-31 August 2023. Video by Hans-Peter Wollmann.

Liquidscape, Dartington Hall, Totnes 20 June 2018.

Hastings Fringe, The Printworks Alley, Hastings, UK. 12-5pm, 2 - 3 September 2017.

The Performance Arcade, Wellington, New Zealand. 16-19th March 2017 where the installation was housed in one of twenty temporary shipping containers that were setup in the harbour of Wellington, New Zealand.

A Space Without a Use (Auckland, NZ 2017)