In 1971 Daniel Buren wrote about the function of the artist’s studio. He describes the studio as the space of production of Art- a space of phenomena and ontology mixed together. Describing both specific physicality and architectures of archetypical studio spaces (in the Western mind), Buren also illuminates how a studio functions psychically. Calling it a “private place, the studio is presided over by the artist-resident, since only that work which he desires and allows to leave his studio will do so.” Some other folk are invited in- colleagues, critics, lovers. To be invited in is to be invited into the refuge of the work- where the work both occurs as a verb of production, and where the work rests in storage. This then shows how form and function intertwine even into questions of where the heart of a work of art sits. Where is the work’s reality? A private studio necessitates portable work that functions as a filter and a window into the artist’s process, hierarchies, positionally and vocabulary.
A two month residency at Elsewhere brought the paradox of the private studio into sharp focus. Residing in the upstairs Suite of the house, I slept, worked, and publicly exhibited in the same physical space. The performance of space and function was impossible to ignore and catalyzed new possibilities for the work. If Buren critiques the studio-gallery system as a system of paradoxes, the function of a residency such as Elsewhere stands as a contrast to his three stated functions: 1. the place where the work originates. 2. a private place/ an ivory tower 3. a stationary place where portable objects are produced.
A residency is instead:
A place where the work is disrupted and continued
a public place/ non-personal space
an ephemeral experience of travel and time
The importance of a residency lies in its disruption of systems. Because of the collapse of public/private, the artist is invited to inhabit the work. The archetype of the residency is a type of Queer Rest because it emphasizes a romantic idea of artistic process. Time away from the critic, the gallery, and personal life where voices beyond the work can take undue precedence. In a residency, you can sleep next to paintings, and they can enter your dreams freely. Buren’s studio is a filter, and a residency is the doorway to slip into the aesthetic realm fully. To host an open studio when your bed and bathtub are in your studio exposes the human beyond the artist, an act that brings the creative process out of the ivory tower and into the streets. At a residency, the binary between archetype and reality collapses when the first thing you see in the morning is a work-in-progress hanging on the wall across the room. You can become the artist you dream of being at a residency.