About
Offices are the seemingly neutral grounds of existence for workers today. They are non-descript, unobtrusive spaces as well as operating systems for work-life across the globe. Or perhaps the office indicates a way of life that is already fading into memory, as remote access and digital nomadism encourage working anywhere any when. What was the office, what could it have been for, and why does it produce such a sense of nostalgia?
This essay springs out of artistic interventions working within the limitations of offices. The structuring of a text is itself a managerial task, with pressure to turn thinking into efficient sense-making apparatus. To allow experimentation within boundaries, the essay is formatted as a series of file entries on office (art-)work across a range of media (images, videos, non-institutional exhibitions, streaming and tv series, web-based gaming, online attention economies).
Fig. 1: Andreas Ervik: Office Nostalgia, 2014. Photo: Siv Dolmen.
