Bed Piece, 2024,

Performance for Cultivate’s Artist’s Way Project

A few years ago I took a course in undergrad titled “Objects and Space.” Part of the goal for the course was to identify how the objects of our surroundings transform our behaviors and how we as humans approach space. As a student of architecture, each move in design choice produces a calculated response. Architecture projects meaning to public space, defining who is socially welcome by providing the stage for who should interact and how. Forms of hostile architecture, such as park benches, create barriers and seek to prevent certain classes of individuals from resting for more than short periods of time.

I focus a lot of my research on the construction of space, who space is designed for, and the long term implications that are produced by design. For the Artist’s Way project, I was assigned “Recovering a Sense of Possibility.” I used this topic and my general body of research to think broadly about the rising costs of living, those who are unhoused, those who are on the verge of becoming unhoused, as incomes have not been on the same trajectory as rising housing costs, and how these identities are viewed and interpreted by privileged classes. When we no longer view a human as worthy of sharing public space, the dehumanizing conceptualization that hostile architecture projects, renders the human a material object themselves.

In short, I chose the park bench as a site for intervention, as many have done before, and as many will do in the future. The creation of a “bed” utilizing a hostile park bench, recycled t-shirts, and foam, creating a space to rest. The bed could be viewed by some as an object that we take for granted. A place to rest.