Confusing the Quotidian: An Exploration of Domestic Furniture
Date
2017-06-30
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Abstract
Furniture accommodates us and organizes how our bodies move through space. We interact
with furniture everyday and have sets of expectations for how it should look and act. If furniture
defies these expectations, it disrupts our understanding of these familiar objects thus causing
confusion. For my thesis I am interested in drawing attention to furniture by skewing its
appearance, taking into account the associations we subconsciously carry about domestic
furniture.
What we expect from furniture is that it exists to serve its function; if it’s a table, shelf,
bookcase, then you set things on it. If it’s a chair, sofa, stool, you sit. If it’s a bed, you lie. We are
accustomed to seeing chairs and recognizing them as being accommodating for us. There’s an
established trust between our furniture and our bodies; when we use furniture it becomes an
extension of the body. Taking furniture out of its original context and re-presenting it as an art
piece can be unsettling. The familiarity is visually there but we cannot physically use it in the
way we are accustomed to. If furniture doesn’t serve its expected purpose it adds confusion.
What does the new purpose become? If you cannot sit in a chair, has it failed? What does failure
look like? For my thesis research I have been reading The Queer Art of Failure by J. Jack
Halberstam, which presents queerness as failure in a heteronormative world. I am taking this
sentiment and applying it to domestic furniture from my house. In accepting and navigating
through failure we are exploring a new set of possibilities that are not contingent on succeeding.
Recognizing failure illuminates what we consider success to be. For example, the mattress; it is
not doing what a mattress is supposed to do. Then, what does it become? It highlights what we
expect a mattress to do by defying it; illustrating the dichotomy of sculpture and object. At face
value it is unsettling because it is unexpected.
The path to conventional success is limiting, there are so many different ways to bungle the
course. When you take something as regulated as furniture and you fail it, you open up many
avenues of exploration and understanding. The failure of the furniture is a direct confrontation of
your garnered expectations. By altering furniture, making it recognizable but unfamiliar I hope to
put into question your associations and relationships with these pieces that organize our lives.
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Keywords
Sculpture, Furniture, Queer Theory