Two fluorescent lights are mounted almost symmetrically; only the architecture holding them tilts one closer to the other. Each is cupped by a grill, softened barbs pointing upwards, guarding a once-ubiquitous lighting fixture. The cool white bulbs do not quite simulate the bleak white light of a winter’s day and are far from the warmth of summer. These fluorescents cast a harsh starkness. In public architecture, they measure safety and blunt visibility. In their phasing out with longer-lasting and intoxicatingly brighter LED technology, fluorescents become a hallmark of bygone architectural modes: the sleepless brightness of office furniture or stirred uneasiness in the architectural misuse of the cruising ground, once a necessity, now a counterfeit form.
Pre-existing fluorescents fixed in the architecture are burnt out.
A line of rotary objects in incompatible configurations are grasped by clamps in a line across the wall. They are poised as intensions, their geographies implying tests for future or past yet fruitful technologies, engines or moving computer parts. A laser level strikes through them scanning their components as if to ignite some movement or pursue them as perfected esoteric engineering. They are suspended, illusive in function or modal purpose.
The printed word ‘comrade’ is stretched in exaggerated typography across a neatly folded canvas bag. ‘Comrade’, inspired by the French Revolution grew into a form of address between socialists and workers and has been associated with communism in popular western culture after the Russian revolution. In his definition of hauntology, Derrida describes the spectres of unfinished cultural and social projects, the return and persistence of their elements in the manner of the ghost. The bag is slick and saturated with sunflower oil, another example of stalled ubiquity. Lubricous in its form, the printed ‘comrade’ is poised with a question mark, a pensive call for collectivity or perhaps mere companionship.