I am not actually that much interested in chairs than any other object, in fact if asked what i thought about chairs my immediate response would be that i dislike them, and if asked to explain why i would claim that they were unnatural, which is true in the sense that we are the only animal that uses, makes and consumes them, but that would be true for a lot of things.. in fact chairs really should be natural to me, I have been brought up in an environment of chairs, we live in a world of chairs, especially as a developed country, we have even gone beyond the chair as mere practicality to chair as an object of design and pleasure.. my friend has recently got a gig as a chair photographer.. he has photographed chairs excessively for the past few months, over 80 of the buggers.
but the real reason i don't like chairs is that they are rarely comfy, i prefer the floor as it means i can change position, shift, slouch, roll and stretch with greater ease. also chairs make me think of institutions.. where do we find the most chairs? in schools, hospital waiting rooms, canteens ? perhaps this is just my main experience of chairs, we never had a dining table at home, so sitting on straight backed dining chairs to eat is something i still find rather strange, and i have always found the chair circle formation regularly adapted in seminars and critiques at university massively intimidating and reminiscent of group therapy -
we are very used to chairs, they blend into our lives, we sit on them, we don't observe them or look at them, they are underneath us most of the time - when i asked my friend what he thought about chairs he said that he did not really 'see' them, they were in some way invisible to him - despite using them every day - yet does he use the chair or does the chair use him ?
It use and strains certain parts of our body to sit on a chair for a long time, in particular our spine and hips, how are we used day to day by chairs ? we are passive on chairs. Is the way we sit on chairs a reflection of a passive society ?
What if active sitting on chairs is encouraged ?
A practice of active and engaged sitting.
Spent the morning practicing object manipulation and play in the performance studio, unlearning what an object is, what it does, what you are told is it's exclusive use.. would like to unlearn the chair, or reclaim the chair for fun, reclaim the chair for uselessness ? definitely reclaim the office chair.. a chair specifically designed to render your body slightly more comfortable whilst your mind is confined to corporate work (in it's traditional setting)
