HotDesk

View from Victorian Ornamental Shelter, Roundhay Park and Building 2.0 Illuminated, digital video, 2009.

http://www.ntileeds.co.uk/events/hotdesk-art-exhibition-from-outofoffice/

Two digital videos projected onto whiteboard surrounded by office notes, at forthcoming HotDesk,an exhuibition intervening in the office environment at The Old Broadcasting House, Leeds. In association with nti Leeds.

These video and photographic works are markers within an ongoing enquiry into the montage of histories that comprise urban space, the distinctions between workspaces and those designed for leisure, and the shifting functions, potentials and periods of vacancy created through temporary occupancy and re-framing of architectural structures. They act as subtly altered views, suggestions or proposals for activity.

View from Victorian Ornamental Shelter, Roundhay Park and Building 2.0 Illuminated shown at Hot Desk depict the The Victorian pavilion in the titled location looking towards Leeds centre, and the new Digital Media Campus in Sheffield. Traditionally, Victorian follies and pavilions allowed a whimsical encounter with the environment from the comfort of shelter, a contrast to practical cabin or shack-like structures or the pragmatic and dynamic intentions of much contemporary small architecture, and significant to the framing of landscape as product or object within leisure and tourism. Glass fronted environments for work in the city frame the urban landscape which their occupants are both immersed in and comfortably detached from, and many attempt a playful and stylized presence, associating enterprise and innovation with entertainment. As yet unopened, the illuminated Digital Media Campus appears active, yet strangely void and slightly kitsch.

Part of a series of intentionally uncomplicated videos that consider framing of open space through lens and architectural form, these still shot projections also draw links to the history of the Old Broadcasting House and its own combination of period architectural features and office fittings, referencing it’s current ‘collaborative, open, communal and sustainable’ co-working environment and the single shot moving image of Roundhay Park Gardens by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, made at the Old Broadcasting House in 1888.


Visit
http://www.roundhaypark.org.uk/roundhay-park-virtual-tour/source/roundhay9865.html

Hotdesk/Hotdesking is a term that relates specifically to the physical yet ephemeral occupation of a work station/surface. As a new arts organization based in Leeds OutofOffice are developing a project that confronts such themes with relation to contemporary art concerns.


outofoffice3@googlemail.com.

http://www.ntileeds.co.uk/tag/hotdesk/