Yesterday, Daniel and I went to the autoshop to clean the exhibition space after Speed’s nephew repainted it. The
space looked great. We brought cleaning supplies, rags, and a bucket. In the process of washing the windows and mopping the floors, I caught myself remembering how we went through the same procedure in every one of our previous projects. In our Almaty project, we inhabited and transformed the exhibition space at the new building of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art by cleaning and adopting it for our purpose.
Similarly, in our “Borrowed Kazan” project in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, we spent the whole day cleaning our street café space. We washed the windows, tables, and shelves; dusted walls and cleared cobwebs, painted shelves, and cleaned the floors. I remember how all the surrounding vendors were watching us clean with curiosity. To observe how the seemingly distant foreigners and potentially frivolous artists were engaged in the most mundane and possibly gendered labor of cleaning could have been an unusual sight. Moreover, for some, this was a moment of endearment. The neighbor who was selling peppers and making pepper mixes nodded his head several times with approval. Others periodically came by the space and watched us engage in cleaning yet another segment. One woman pointed to one area that we missed. In hindsight, I consider this act of cleaning as important as the rest of our artistic interaction with the vendors and passerby in the project. This practice enabled our neighbors to see our project as something familiar and recognizable; something that they can relate to and intervene in. The act of cleaning brought us into the same space as collaborators. We were no longer foreign and outsider.
Speed checked in when we were halfway through. He apologized for not having a mop; his nephew had borrowed it and did not return it yet. Daniel and I laughed saying that washing floors without a mop is a good exercise.
