homemaking as therapy
Old. That was the first thought that came to mind when my gaze fell upon on the façade of this shophouse, nestled amongst the chaotic neighbourhood of Little India. Peeling paint, stained walls, folding metal gate, corrugated roofing sheets, rusting in places. Rows of houses, lined up on the streets. In the front, a five-foot way cluttered by various collections of bric-a-brac – spindly vegetation in containers, steel posts that once were part of a shelf, chipped boards leaning against each other like a house of cards, making scratchy noises in the breeze that tickles the back of one’s neck, bringing with it an assortment of smells – cumin, cooking grease, kalonji, chilli, sweat, jasmine, drains, dust, exhaust fumes, coconut, coffee, toast.
In the early 20th century, a family of merchants, who owned the neighboring unit acquired this one when the original owners decided to relocate. An extended family sharing two units, they operated a small provision store on the ground floor, providing daily necessities to the neighbourhood, mainly Chinese immigrants who lived just down the street. While the district has undergone many changes owing to development, the interiors of some homes appear to have been given the liberty to age.
|
A raised threshold draws a boundary between the interior and exterior, separating the quotidian rhythms on the outside from the stillness of time on the inside. Beyond squeaky lattice grilles and patterned fabric lies a world where the pace of moments acquires a different meaning and tempo. Entering, through the doorway, one is greeted by a sitting room whose white walls are colored by the advancing years, with the requisite bits and pieces, and the usual arrangement of furniture – wooden benches and chairs, paired with cushions; small tables, topped with pink ticking; wickerwork, silently sitting in the corner. Against a wall, deities assume a quiet repose on an altar, amidst joss sticks, flickering flames, incense, sending a smoky plume lingering delicately in the hall.
The consciousness of the dated interior comes after some moments, as if one had stepped into a vault, a time capsule if you will. Here is an exercise in remembering, evidence of which one gathers from the numerous objects on display. Closer inspection reveals fraying linoleum, tearing in places to reveal the bare concrete underneath worn smooth by the inexhaustible pattering of feet; indelible marks and stains, a patchwork mosaic silently recording years of use and change like growth rings; creaky floorboards counting the beat of one’s steps the way a metronome does; and darkness pooling in hidden corners concealing things stashed away like baubles waiting to shine once more; a telephone, no longer working due to a recent rewiring, left by the stairway evoking scenes of past communion with kith and kin.
|
Throughout its years as a home, the house was amended in various ways. An inky stairwell with precipitous wooden steps ascending to the upper floors, first located near the back, was reconfigured into two sections with a small landing added to facilitate a right-angled turn, and reattached in its current location between the hall and the kitchen. On the upper floors, partitions were erected, carving out niches of seclusion from the clamoring of siblings, cousins, sons and daughters. Corridors became gangways, narrow, threading through a labyrinth of rooms, twisting and turning. Climbing a serpentine ascent reveals a studio perched on the roof of the neighbours at its summit.
What does one make of such a space and its disparate collections of objects, and its relation to the social and urban fabric? Many would dismiss this assortment as junk and the house as an example of dereliction. They will cast a distasteful eye towards it that extends even to its inhabitants. Yet, such a superficial glance will only obscure the possibility of reading this dwelling. If one proceeds carefully, like an archaeologist approaching an ancient mausoleum, one discovers that objects become artefacts – having acquired a materiality of a fecund symbolism, a life of their own (Appadurai, 1986.). The house is revealed to be a cultural object, both architectural and not-architectural, belonging to the realms of place and space, built forms and found objects. Rosalind Krauss termed these cultural expressions as axiomatic structures (Krauss, 1979.), and among them they counted Richard Serra’s leaning structures in corten steel, Robert Irwin’s barely there installations that contend with spatial perceptions and Christo’s ephemeral but immense interventions of landscapes and buildings. Kurt Schwitter’s Merzbau, might be said to be an early prototype.
|
In looking at the house as a product of a particular history and culture, a particular similarity is found in this abode, and those in another project, Our Home, Shek Kip Mei 1954-2006 (Yu, 2007). In the latter, apartments in the Shek Kip Mei estate in Hong Kong were documented before the estate was demolished for redevelopment. In the book, one finds a pictorial archive of people photographed in their homes, amid their abundance of possessions. The commonality shared between this home and those in the archive, are the collections of possessions, some of which go so far to the extent that the relationship between living and storage space is inversed. The home and its repository of objects serve as a font of memories for its inhabitants, imbuing nostalgia that pervades the scenes of these domestic spaces.
It has been argued elsewhere, (Columina, 1994.) that by the very praxis of architecture, the building is essentialised as an object established against mass culture and everyday life when represented through its lens. In order to reify its status, signs of any kind of habitation are often effaced, and even if they are present, abstracted into discreet forms. Homes, the most domestic and perhaps even most private of spaces are not spared, and the mediation that occurs within a dwelling and its inhabitants becomes evident in the practices that occur as a result of habitation (De Certeau, 1984. De Certeau, et al, 1998). The bodily is the site through which architecture attempts to enact power is something we have now come to realize on more concrete grounds, and in turn, the body negotiates this power through the utilization of space. However, imbricated within all these is the intent on attaining a certain utopia, which, in turn, is all about making the most habitable place.
|
That there is a need to make such a place suggests the function of the dwelling is more than shelter from external threats, but also internal projections. If one believes that utopia begins at home, then one can begin to read the strictures of the good place against structures of the elsewhere and the outside.
Will we discover the importance of the phenomenal effort of holding onto things that would have succumbed to the vestiges of time? The collections of feathered fans stuttering in a series of movements; floral motifs embellished on enamelware; biscuit tins stashed with knickknacks; odds and ends strung up on walls in place of trophies; what sort of narrative do they engender beyond their obvious utilitarian functions with their owners? What is the relationship between these objects, the sites that house them and the world beyond their boundaries? A plausible point to consider: dwelling has become the seeking of a sanctuary from time, of impending senescence and mortality whose salient reminders abound just beyond the door and the street.
|
references:
Appadurai, A., ed., 1986. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in cultural perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Columina, B., 1994. Privacy and Publicity: Modern architecture as mass media. Massachusetts: MIT Press
De Certeau, M., Rendall, S. trans., 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life: Volume 1. Los Angeles: University of California Press
De Certeau, M., et al, Tomasik, T.J., trans., 1998. The Practice of Everyday Life: Volume 2
Krauss, R. “Sculpture in the Expanded Field”, in Foster, H., ed., The Anti-aesthetic: Essays on postmodern culture. New York: The New Press
Yu, V., 2007. Our Home, Shek Kip Mei 1954-2006. Hong Kong: MCCM Creations.
|
