Closing 

My breath mists in the cold morning air as I approach the art centre. A white A4 piece of paper with the words “closed for renovation” printed on it is taped to the locked glass door.  

In the lead-up to the renovation of an art institution, be it a museum, gallery, art centre, or pavilion, visitors are typically informed of an upcoming period of closure. The building will be sealed and exhibitions paused, or relocated, as work is undertaken. Renovation may be prompted by a degradation of the building, some failure or problem that needs to be addressed, or by a desire to reimagine and change the spaces that already exist. This may take the form of a restoration, refurbishment, and/or transformation.  

The closure of an art institution interrupts business as usual—presenting a rare opportunity in an institution’s history to radically remake itself. This means not only critically reflecting on its role, identity, or structure, but acting on these reflections. In my opinion such a reflection must ask what role the institution plays in contributing to social, spatial, and material inequality. A renovation, therefore, offers an opportunity to reshape not only the material structure of a building, such as wall positions, surface materials, or lighting, but also the immaterial—its identity, infrastructure, and programming.  

For me, exhibitions function as spaces of research and critical reflection that are open to and co-formed by public engagement and the space in which they are situated.¹ What happens then, when a renovation that requires closure is combined with an exhibition that, as its name suggests, is inherently open? Perhaps the tension that arises between these spatial conditions—closed and open—is necessary for instituting meaningful change. I would argue, therefore, that we can consider an exhibition that is entangled with renovation as a method for (un)worlding.  

Worlding, Reworlding and (Un)worlding 

The concept of (un)worlding emerges from notions of worlding and reworlding that have been prominent in post-colonial studies and feminist and queer theory. In 1985 the post-colonial theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak introduced the concept of worlding to describe how colonial powers produce colonized space through acts of representation—such as cartography and travel writing.² Through these practices, Spivak argues, colonized land is brought into a colonial “world”, in which those who are native are forced to occupy the space of the Other on their home ground.³ This worlding is driven by imperial power and creates categorizations such as First and Third World.  

In 2016 the feminist thinker Donna Haraway outlined another kind of worlding, a “becoming-with” that is multispecies and relational. This “becoming-with” is both an activity and an embodied way of being in and attending to worlds.⁴ Through this concept she troubles dichotomies such as human/nonhuman by emphasizing entanglement and shared responsibility. Haraway points to science fiction as one possible way of worlding: “SF is storytelling and fact telling; it is the patterning of possible worlds and possible times, material-semiotic worlds, gone, here, and yet to come.”⁵ For both Spivak and Haraway, worlding is world-building—the co-forming of material and meaning. 

Building upon the notion of worlding, reworlding often signifies a reclaiming of power or agency in world-building processes. For Indigenous Australian artist-researcher Jen Rae and writer Claire G. Coleman,⁶ reworlding resurfaces relationships to land, language, culture, kin, and other people that were severed through colonization.⁷ Arts and culture play a vital role in this process, enabling the urgent reimagining and reshaping of futures in response to the climate emergency. For Rae and Coleman “to survive, unfuck, and reworld is to honour resurgence, intergenerational justice, rematriation, and culture.”⁸ Reworlding recognizes the injustices and impending doom of existing worlds and works to reorient, repair, and reconstitute them. 

Unworlding, on the other hand, starts with collapse. As defined by theorist Jack Halberstam, unworlding is a philosophy and an anti-anti-utopian idea that breaks with traditions of world-building towards acts of undoing and dismantling that embrace entropic unravelling.⁹ As a project it understands utopia as delayed until we unmake the world that we are currently living in. Unworlding builds on the idea of world’s end, from post-apocalyptic and speculative fiction literature, that is intended to break with the continuity of history, the relentless onward march of progress and the focus on individual survival.¹⁰ Unworlding is very much rooted in queer studies and the politics of representation oriented around trans and queer bodies. 

While I think Halberstam would protest at me using the concept of unworlding together with renovation, I insist that renovation, as a process, necessarily involves demolition and collapse. Collapse, Halberstam writes, “stages nothing, sets the stage for nothing, delivers nothing. And yet, like tea leaves left over after drinking the tea, the rubble created by collapsing structures reveals patterns of futures occluded.”¹¹ Renovation both allows undone materials to be used or seen in new ways and also counters extractivist tendencies. I understand (un)worlding as both a concept and a method, and have introduced the parentheses to indicate that the undoing is followed by a doing anew. This doing anew replaces progress and novelty with maintenance and care, and actively works against systems of exclusion and individualism by foregrounding accessibility and interdependence. A period of closure instigates a break with history—a dismantling of what was there before. How can combining an exhibition with a renovation operate as a method for (un)worlding, allowing art institutions to critically undo and remake their spatial, social, and structural conditions? 

Closing prefaces opening. 

Brief: Collapsing exhibition and renovation 

To explore this notion, that an exhibition combined with renovation is a method for (un)worlding, I will refer to my experience designing and curating the project Hosting Space at Hordaland Kunstsenter (HKS), the regional art centre in Bergen, Norway. Hosting Space approached the exhibition not merely as a presentation but as an investigative tool in the renovation process, becoming an experimental ground. As a project it provoked and questioned institutional critique, participatory spatial practices, accessibility work, material choices, and collective authorship. 

In April 2022 I was invited by HKS to discuss a possible renovation project. The brief was to transform the art centre’s entrance, reception, cafe, bookstore, and terrace, what we called their hosting spaces, to reflect their focus on community, mediation, and exchange. As an interior architect and artist, this presented me with an exciting opportunity to blur my two professional titles. There were concrete needs HKS outlined, such as installing automatic entry doors to improve accessibility, ensuring the cafe space could host thirty–forty people for special events, and creating an inviting reception with adequate storage. On a more conceptual level, the design was intended to rethink and challenge ways of hosting, welcoming, and engaging with visitors at an art institution such as HKS.  

Implicit to this brief was a reflection on the inequalities and exclusions that exist in art institutions—a questioning of who or what is present and, in turn, who or what is absent. This tied into my own practice, which had been engaged in revealing and challenging inequalities embedded in space and spatial practice and thinking about how bodies and space shape one another. By spatial practice I mean disciplinary and interdisciplinary practices within architecture, art, design, and other fields engaged in studying, transforming, and creating space.¹² In search of a more holistic and open approach that addressed these issues, I developed a proposal that combined the renovation with an exhibition. I was sceptical that a new design done in isolation would fulfil the brief. 

Hosting Space took place at HKS throughout June 2023, followed by a renovation period in August. The final design was completed in collaboration with Kevin Maung Aye (Rundt Arkitektur). For the exhibition I invited the architecture collective fem_arc to create a spatial installation in the main gallery space of HKS that consisted of a large workshop table, two sets of shelves messily filled with objects from the art centre, and a long cushion. This installation hosted the workshops, talks, film screenings, and a reading group led by additional guests: Jos Boys (The DisOrdinary Architecture Project), Erika Brandl Mouton, Staci Bu Shea, Maud Ceuterick, Emne Studio, Exutoire, NOGOODS, and César Reyes Nájera. My roles were twofold—designer and curator—and the guests and participants (both staff and visitors) of the program were specialist consultants. Each event connected to one of the spaces addressed in the renovation as well as topics of access, support, and gathering.  

This hybrid approach allowed for a deep dive into the context of the project—the site of the art centre, its physical spaces and systems of operation, and broader discourse on emancipatory institutional and spatial practices. Afterall, “before a world can be unmade, it must be understood—rendered legible and visceral.”¹³ Hosting Space forced HKS as an institution to reflect on what their brief truly involved, offering an opportunity to critically reflect on whether a variety of fundamental aspects—including access—for contemporary functioning art institutes were being upheld and enacted. 

Survey: Critiquing existing worlds 

(Un)worlding is inherently critical of existing worlds. “World” can be interpreted in various ways and at various scales—from that of a planet to that of an institution to that of a body. A survey of the existing world is therefore a necessary first step. As a project, Hosting Space is situated in traditions of institutional and disciplinary critique. The institution being critiqued is the art centre and the discipline is architecture and other space making practices. 

As defined by Julia Bryan-Wilson in A Curriculum for Institutional Critique, “institutional critique interrogates the ideological, social, and economic functions of the art market, particularly museums, patronage, and other mechanisms of distribution and display”.¹⁴ Emerging in the late 60s and early 70s, its early forms were diverse, including artistic works, interventions, critical writing, and (art) activism. Whilst institutional critique was originally conducted mostly by artists, or external actors, and directed against the institution, today it is increasingly common for this critique to be internalized, instigated by curators and directors of the institution itself.¹⁵ In this way the art institution becomes both the problem and the solution. While Hosting Space follows this direction, inviting critique into the building, I would like to propose it rather engages a critical institutional practice. 

This term builds on the notion of a critical spatial practice that has emerged from the disciplinary critique of architecture. As defined by Jane Rendell, critical spatial practice describes projects located between art and architecture that both critique the sites into which they intervene as well as the disciplinary procedures through which they operate.¹⁶ According to architects Nikolaus Hirsch and Markus Miessen, it is a way of rethinking one’s mode of action and codes of conduct.¹⁷ Critical self-reflection and acting on this reflection, offering alternative ways of working, is an important part of such practices. A critical institutional practice therefore critiques the operation and the site of the institution—as in (un)worlding, it actively assesses, dismantles, and shapes anew what the institution is and how its architecture acts.  

For Hosting Space the current conditions of the site were assessed by various means. In the lead-up to the exhibition, I used methods such as a photographic survey, interviews with the staff working the reception, and anonymous questionnaires filled in by visitors. The interviews and questionnaires revealed internal and external insights that didn’t always align. For example, when asking how people usually approach the reception, answers included “the reception is a barrier”, “eye contact is there from when you try to get in the door, it feels very approachable, is inviting to talk and ask questions”, “people often come in asking about parking”, and “works well for some people but not for everyone, for those that are unsure the reception feels inaccessible, for those that are sure they are happy to come in and say hello”. In regard to questions about what does or does not work with the current spaces, answers varied from “the openness (of the spaces) may be intimidating, for people who want to take a moment alone” to “the windows work well, giving a clear overview of the surroundings”. These contradicting answers show the complexity involved in participatory processes and how diverse experiences of the same space can be.  

Moving beyond dialogue, parts of the event program also engaged in assessing, dismantling, and shaping anew the art centre together with both staff and visitors. An example of this was Scoring Space: A Critical Mapping and Furniture Workshop, hosted by the critical spatial practice Exutoire and platform NOGOODS. Through mapping exercises, participants reflected on their individual perception and experience of the art centre. A worksheet and a library of materials gathered from previous exhibitions was then provided to facilitate the construction of new furniture and architectural elements, responding to a feeling or desire that arose from the mapping exercise. These answered some of the same issues identified in the interviews and questionnaires. New elements included a swing made of tension belts that playfully bridged the gap between the entrance and reception desk, a library cart of books from the bookstore available for reading on the terrace, and a yellow timber bridge connecting the cafe window and adjoining sidewalk. Interestingly, many of the spontaneous interventions mirrored ideas that came up in the survey and interviews. In actively shaping the art centre, the roles of guest and host were complicated, as participants of the workshop became co-authors of the space.  

Hosting Space sketched out future forms of the art centre from dismantled exhibition materials. The project facilitated spatial propositions that were messy, unfinished, and, unexpected. They were unmade, made, and unmade again. It proposed futures that “are not the shiny or new futures that imaginative acts of world-building promised and foregrounded in their advertising, but rather, dim outlines of a gritty, dirty, messy, disorderly, unworld to come”.¹⁸ 

Precedent Study: Institutional renovations 

As the museum emerged as a distinct architectural typology in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, so too did debates around its ideal form and the implications of its design.¹⁹ Across time, scales, and locations, art institutions have combined renovation with artistic programming, treating the process as an opportunity to rethink its formats and form. While the motivations for renovation—and the ways it ultimately reshapes an institution—vary widely, such moments often expose underlying questions about institutional identity, structure, and access. 

In some cases, renovation and institutional formation have been driven directly by artistic programming. A well-known example is MoMA PS1, which opened in 1976 with its inaugural exhibition Rooms. The exhibition invited more than seventy artists to create site-specific works within the disused and dilapidated spaces of a nineteenth-century public school building in Long Island City, Queens. Emerging from the alternative space movement in New York, Rooms responded to a surplus of urban infrastructure and, in parallel with institutional critique, articulated a dissatisfaction with the spatial and organizational constraints of mainstream museums. 

Remodelling has also been utilized as a site of public discourse on the role of cultural institutions. During its extensive renovation in 2007, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin organized My Construction Site, a program that opened the construction site to the public and hosted discussions on the cultural, social, political, and economic conditions shaping different forms of exchange and dialogue. Here, renovation functioned not only as a backdrop but as a discursive framework through which institutional responsibility was questioned. 

In other contexts, renovation is positioned less as a finite phase than as an ongoing institutional condition. Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons in Utrecht, for example, defines itself as an institution in continual transformation. Casco frames institutional change as a sustained practice, embedded in its organizational structure, programming, and day-to-day use. 

These precedents demonstrate how renovation can function as more than a technical necessity and the diversity of opportunities it presents. When combined with an exhibition, renovation becomes a method through which institutions critically undo and remake themselves. 

Sketch Design: Future forms made anew 

By combining a renovation with an exhibition, space can be made for sketching and testing out new forms. In line with a process of (un)worlding, what already exists can be dismantled in order to address issues of absence and externalize internal structures. In Hosting Space, another such sketch of a future form of the institution was the installation created by fem_arc that occupied the main gallery space of HKS and facilitated the event program.  

Through an assemblage of objects collected from the art centre, the installation made visible the hidden and undervalued infrastructures of care and support that make up art and cultural spaces. It consisted of a large workshop table, two sets of shelves, and a long cushion. The shelves were laden with materials used during workshops, documents from the design process, as well as objects from the art centre’s archive, cafe, bookstore, and staff, such as recipes, cleaning and maintenance equipment, and administrative documents. Materials leaned against each other, secured with clamps and tension belts, allowing them to be easily disassembled and reused in the subsequent renovation.  

This collection of objects by fem_arc sits within a lineage of feminist artists and spatial practitioners drawing attention to care work within and beyond art institutions, asking who is doing this labour, how it is valued, and how it manifests in space. A famous example of this is artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ 1969 Manifesto for Maintenance Art. The manifesto proposed an exhibition titled “CARE” in which her everyday work as an artist, woman, wife, and mother was carried out.²⁰ Interviews with what Ukeles recognized as an undervalued underclass of carers, cleaners, and maintenance workers and the daily delivery and processing of refuse at the museum are imagined to take place alongside this work. The refuse, such as a container of polluted air or ravaged land, would be purified, rehabilitated, and conserved on site. In doing so, Ukeles insists on the artistic and aesthetic value of care work—it is both the method and material. 

In asking what (un)worlding looks like, I would answer that we see it in Hosting Space, just as we see it in Ukeles’ manifesto. Answering the same question, Halberstam refers to the work of American artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978). Matta-Clark’s anarchitectural practice, Halberstam argues, unworlds—demonstrating ideas of creative destruction through site-specific cuts into abandoned buildings, criticizing the market system of real estate.²¹ Anarchitecture, as described by Matta-Clark, involves “working with absence”, “opening space to redistribute mass”, and “emphasizing external structures through extraction”. Hosting Space operated in a similar way, punching holes through the fabric of the art institution to unearth absent objects relegated to janitor closets and detritus trucked out of the city. It invited mess, dirt, and dust, and made us pay attention to structures of care and interdependence. In doing so, a sketch for the future form of an art institution emerges, one which centres the people, relationships, and care that construct and maintain it.  

Material Specification: Unravelling spaces and bodies 

In processes of (un)worlding, both materials and established (knowledge) systems unravel. In Hosting Space, the choice of materials (standard construction materials), aesthetics (DIY), and form (assemblage) were chosen to give a sense of flexibility to the project. I wanted to promote the idea that it is always possible to make, unmake, and remake space – that the space of HKS is never really fixed anyway, but shaped and re-shaped by the bodies that inhabit it, and that it is not precious, but should be touched and explored. The project was equally concerned with the material of the body and with paying attention to the diverse material realities we each experience. 

In thinking about how visitors were hosted in, welcomed to, or engaged with the art centre, accessibility became a core topic of Hosting Space. Access describes not only the ability to enter a space, but also to take part in it fully. In an art institution this may mean engaging in an exhibition, talk, or workshop. Barriers to access can be both hard, physical, or visible ones, and soft, invisible ones. Intersecting aspects of an individual’s social and political identities, be it disability, gender, race, class, or sexuality, can assist or impede access. As part of the event program, I invited curator, writer, and death and grief companion Staci Bu Shea to lead two workshops: an internal workshop for staff called Commoning Accessibility, and a public workshop titled Is It Even Possible to Arrive Alone?.  

In both these workshops, Staci shared examples of tools that were developed by or in dialogue with disability communities and that can be implemented by artistic institutions to improve accessibility, communication, and establish safe and secure frameworks for collaboration. In Is It Even Possible to Arrive Alone?, Staci built upon the concept of “access intimacy” as articulated by Mia Mingus. Access intimacy is defined by Mingus as “that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else ‘gets’ your access needs”.²² Interdependence is a key part of this concept—access is never an individual project, and as a process it always relies on more than one person.  

To emphasize this interdependence, Staci invited workshop participants to bring another person with whom they wanted to deepen their access intimacy. This could be a relative, a friend, or a colleague. Together, we shared the access barriers we had each encountered, highlighting that everyone navigates the world with different needs. There was an intimacy and vulnerability that came up during this conversation that was warmly facilitated by Staci. Intimacy—whether physical, familial, emotional, intellectual, political, sexual, or access—can feel out of place in an institutional setting. Yet this vulnerability resonates with the human quality of access Mingus points to, shifting it from a matter of logistics to one of relationships. Access, as Staci and Mingus describe it, taps into the transformative power of disability, challenging ableism and the myth of independence by insisting on interdependence as our shared condition. We are always dependent on others and our surroundings in some way, shape, or form. 

In a process of (un)worlding, a world being undone can be a body that is liberated from normative understandings of what a body should be, or how it should behave. It can also be the undoing of independence, wholeness, and singularity; as Halberstam points out, “if we are to unworld, we need to unthink the unity of things that has emerged out of a Western philosophy focused on the singular subject and committed to his own centrality”.²³  

Renovation: An (un)world yet to come

 Closely following the closure of Hosting Space, the renovation of HKS took place, completed by in-house exhibition technicians, staff, and Kevin Maung Aye (Rundt Arkitektur). It felt fitting that the physical transformation was done by those who already knew the spaces well, but was also due to a limited budget. The heavy glass entrance doors of the art centre were replaced with automatic ones. The art centre’s bookstore was relocated between the entrance and the reception, softening the threshold between them. Moveable curtains were introduced between the entrance/bookstore/reception and the cafe to create a more private feeling. The kitchen expanded to stretch along the back wall of the art centre and was opened to the cafe, inviting guests to wash their own dishes. A garden bed, established as part of Sukkerbelg: A Workshop on Gardening and Community by Emne Studio and Framtidshagen, framed the terrace, supplying herbs and edible flowers to the cafe.  

The materials specified for the renovation were intended to counter a typical Nordic or institutional palette (whites, greys, beiges). Instead we introduced a soft blue and purple kitchen, light pink bookshelves, a sea green bench and storage elements, butter yellow curtains, and pops of bright yellow in the moveable plywood reception, cafe counter, and book carts. The bathroom was painted a vivid Yves Klein Blue, selected by a spontaneous Instagram poll made by the bookstore manager. I’m a believer that an unexpected and playful colour palette can make more space for difference. 

As important as these transformations were, the immaterial changes that occurred were even more significant: the introduction of access information, connections with local gardening initiatives, and the development of a new mediation program Kitchen Dinners by HKS director Mathijs van Geest and curator Daniela Ramos. Kitchen Dinners invites visitors to share a meal and informal conversation with exhibiting artists in the open kitchen and cafe space. The art centre has seen an increase in visitors and engagement. Importantly, Hosting Space shifted how the art centre thinks about accessibility and hospitality. It was unique in the way it bridged internal and external actors—the staff, invited guests, and visitors all engaged in many of the events and were therefore vital in shaping the exhibition and renovation. 

There were also, as there should be, failures that occurred. Although the exhibition program offered exciting proposals by participants as to how the spaces could change, a compressed timeline meant that the renovation occurred almost immediately after the exhibition closed. This was a decision made to fit within a busy exhibition program, and subsequently meant that many practical decisions already had to be made. For me, it meant a missed opportunity to incorporate a more radical transformation and fulfil the promise of co-creation. Another issue would be that whilst engaging in topics of accessibility and exclusion, the format of many events remained close to what art institutions often offer, and for some we had very few participants. On reflection I think a deficit of time was the largest contributing factor. New relationships require time and care to evolve, as does making space for visitors who want to come to an art institution but do not yet feel welcome or are able to. In a process of (un)worlding, “entropy or disorder increases over time”.²⁴ Hosting Space asked for more from HKS but also from me and its audience. It asked for more time, as well as more vulnerability, participation, and care. 

Opening

As a method for (un)worlding, combining an exhibition with renovation interrupts continuity and the upholding of the status quo. Projects such as Hosting Space are a form of institutional unmaking and remaking infrastructures of care, access, and ways in which art space can be inhabited.  

Closing is an opening made through interruption. Perhaps the exhibition itself—which by its very nature is built up, opened, closed, and dismantled—can ultimately be conceived as a space for openness and (un)worlding. The exhibition can therefore be seen as a continuation of the renovation of the venue, and as one possible way of pursuing this opening up to other potentials and perspectives. This broadens the notion of an exhibition in its mission, which is not only to temporarily display things, but also to restore the link between the venue and the outside world each time.  

For curators, designers, and art institutions, this means that each exhibition or renovation presents an opportunity to renovate not only the institution but also ourselves. You have the capacity to decide what will be infused into the exhibition format, and which worlds will be made, unmade, or made anew.  

Opening, after all, precedes closing. 

Sensing my approach, the automatic glass door swings open.