What follows is taken from a piece by Kit Merritt that can be seen in the exhibition 'Powerless Structures' at Schwatz Gallery.http://www.schwartzgallery.co.uk The exhibition runs 19th January – 25th February 2012. Private view is Wednesday 18th January 2012, 6 – 8.30 p.m
ii.i
Double aspect, with the interior window dressed in heavy woven green fabric,
the right pane accented by a diagonal streak of old crusty food remnants.
When I moved here, it was rumoured there was a recovering junky or alcoholic
living there. I never saw anyone, just intermittent lights on.
A year or so later, the first real signs of life were a couple with a young
child, who had their older mother living with them. In the summer, before
curtains were fitted, I’d see the old woman sat on the sofa, which faced
across the room. The child, who must have been three or four years old stood
in front, holding her hands and jumping, jumping up and down. I don’t know
how long the old woman stayed, though it must have been a rather cramped
existence for four people, though it always seemed a much more wholesome
alternative to some of the other occupancies.
After a while, a platform was built across the window, obscuring most of the
view in. On top, became a double-bunk, the mattress level with the top foot of
the window. The sheets always unmade and occasionally, on hot summer weekends,
a long, pale, idle limb would be visible, running along the width of the
window, tapping or twitching along rhythmically to music I couldn’t hear.
The thick green curtain went up and remained pulled. Shortly after, a tin
take-away tray appeared lodged between the mattress and the window, its thick
creamy contents spilt down the inside of the glass. After not moving for a few
days, it began to irritate we. How could someone neglect to notice they lost
their dinner in bed?
Eventually, the tin tray disappeared, maybe the curtains were opened. The
white food-slop remained, turning from cream, to yellow, to orange, baking in
the summer sun. It is still there to this day, the green curtains are never
drawn and the windows are never open.
ii.ii
The couple with the window boxes and the indoors shed, were friends of mine,
so there was little to speculate, that I didn’t already know about them. They
lived directly opposite and never put up curtains, neither did we, so our
close proximity allowed us an uncommonly intimate existence. I’d admire their
closeness and affection from my washing up position by the window. We’d
frequently wave to each other, we occasionally caught one another in the nude.
Most of our communication consisted of notes stuck in the windows.
They left last spring. I was sad to see them go, but excited to see who’d move
into their slot. I wrote window notes to the new guy, he wrote back a few
times. He unpacked, hung artwork, got the projector screen working again, then
bought curtains, which remain drawn most the time. Occasionally we shyly wave
to each other when the curtains are pulled back. The plants in the window
boxes have all withered and died.
ii.iii
Another double-windowed place, with brown curtains and empty window sills. The
curtains are fading from the bottom up, with frilly watermarks. I assume its
always been the same people, its always been the same drawn brown curtains.
The lights are always on late into the night. A couple of cats occupied the
window sill when I first moved in, but the tenants only become apparent by
night, when thin slivers of light slip between the curtains. There are
saucepans hanging on a rail and a patch of golden shining spots made by a
tangle of fairy-lights somewhere on the other side of the room. I think there
may be a table in the middle, which sometimes has the outline of two or three
people sat round it all night long.
The windows are left open sometimes and I think thats where the occasional
shouting and even less frequent sex noises come from, though sound does
strange things in these buildings.
ii.iv
Another curtainless window shrouded with improvised veils, this time, with a
selection of hung shirts and sellotaped posters. It used to be a studio for a
very hard working (or quite nocturnal) artist. The lights were always on at
night; she’d work past midnight, but never, to my knowledge, sleep there. For
a long time I thought there were two people, the artist and a model, a very
still model. Eventually I realised the model was a life-size photograph. It
had been stationed in the window perfectly still for longer than was humanly
possible to retain a fixed pose. The window figure was quite unnerving at
times, generally, nobody ever appears to be looking back from the other side.
At some point, someone began sleeping there. The men’s shirts hung from the
top of the window and then an easy chair in front of it. A tall skinny white
boy was there for a while. He would brush his teeth whilst wandering naked
round the room, idly playing with himself. There was also a youngish black man
there with him sometimes, but always sat on the far side of the room, on a
hard-backed chair, up against the wall. Sometime there were more visitors,
sometimes dinner parties, I think there may even have been a karaoke night.
The tenant changed again, a single man. On bonfire night we had a party and so
did he, but his one had dinner with speeches and clapping and dancing. Despite
rarely seeing more than one person there, the space is now dominated by a
large dining table, though the view is mostly obscured by the posters, flags
and shirts in the window.
ii.v
A smaller window, which looks to have been replaced over the years and
partially bricked up to the halfway point. Its a window onto a bed. Heavy
swathes of cheap market-synthetics in purple velour and faux zebra skin. The
one occasional sign of life is an outline of a body, pressed against the
glass, from behind the folds of the zebra skin curtains.
Once she appeared as real limbs from inside the fabric den. Two white skinny
arms brandishing a can of expandable wall foam, meticulously reworking old
cracks in the window frame, ready for winter.
ii.vi
The ones with the blinds; white, starchy, semi-opaque, non-descript. The
lights are always on after dark and are equally bright and even and nondescript.
The most remarkable feature of the place is this idea of stark,
white cleanness, as perceived from outside the blinds, at a discord with the
rest of the building. Looking down on the window sill, there’s a modest
succulent in a terracotta pot on a terracotta plate. A tall thin blue vase and
two glass jugs, one inside the curtain, one outside. Then a green canister,
maybe a soda-stream, maybe one of those nitrogen things, intended for chefs,
but mainly found at student parties and festivals.
Beyond this, there have only ever been silhouettes. Propped rectangular
boards, a heater on wheels. A desk, a chair and a hunched figure over a piece
of machinery that looks like a sewing machine.
ii.vii
One window is a new double-glazed one, the other is one of the original
frames, with peeling, sun-bleached green paintwork. The new one is draped in
brown sheets, the big panes always open, even in winter, the old one has three
slides stuck in a vertical strip down the right pane, on the window sill
there’s an old carved wooden figure with raffia hair. Inside there’s a man
with the dog, only ever visible in the green window. I know the dog’s name,
but not the man’s. Sometimes he’s (the dog) scouting round the yard when I
come back. The place looks like it always has, though I don’t remember who was
there to begin with, only the changes:
Two years back, some guy in the car park said his cousin was going to be there
for a while. The two young girls that appeared shortly after for the summer,
announced their arrival by pulling down all the sheets from the windows. The
windows were flung open, music was playing, there were frequent parties and
laughter till dawn. They cleared the bit under the mezzanine that fills the
left window and draped it with delicate whites, floral dresses and lacy
smalls. The two girls apparently became just the one; maybe they were never
home at the same time, it was hard to say. Whoever was there took to wearing
less and less round the space, dressing and redressing by the window for
anyone who happened to be watching - mostly us upstairs, not that I could see
who else was looking.
There was also an increasingly frequent visiting boyfriend. One Sunday,
ironing in the window, I witnessed her sucking him off on the sofa. They never
seemed too concerned, or aware, of the vantage point from one floor up.
Winter returned, as did the various sheets and rugs to block up the windows.
New piles of old boxes. The girl(s), the fun, the frolicking and the floral
fabrics disappeared. Now there’s the guy with the dog. We wave and exchange
hellos in the yard. Whilst I still had a cat, sometimes we’d force the cat
and the dog wave to each other. He has a sofa and a desk by the window, where
the sheets are pulled back to let in the light. He sits at the desk on a
computer, sometimes late into the night. When he’s here, he can see me, when
he’s on the sofa, he can’t. On the sofa, he’ll play guitar, sometimes there’s
other people and sometimes they’ll all be singing. By day, the dog sleeps on
the sofa for the most part.
ii.viii
One window, never catches my eye. Its a struggle to go beyond a physical
description: Old green frames, the window is shorter than it is wide, by
design, rather than a later bricking-up job. It draws a blank, a real closed
door. Tight, off-white, slatted blinds, always drawn. Unremarkable by day,
occasionally lit with a glowing light by night.
ii.ix
A big plastic drain pipe runs under the window ledge, which has lost all but 3
of the red brick tiles. Faded wood revealed from the patches of paint loss on
the worn wooden frame. A thin wire trails out from under the left panel and
disappears from view into our building opposite. Theres a moulded plastic
window box balanced on the remaining ledge, containing other smaller empty
plastic plant pots.
Inside the thin beige linen sheets are old and sad-looking, the drapes, a
little tilted, so the horizontal seams ride up to the right. The bottom right
corner is drawn back revealing a dark triangle into the otherwise lightless
space.
ii.x
Another one of the original windows, old faded paintwork framing equally old
faded curtains, sagging and neglected, the lining patterned with various
watermarks and stains, creased and crumpled, probably intended for taller
windows than the ones they occupy. To the far right, they are pulled back a
fraction and the fabric is curled round revealing woven stripes of dusty
orange, cream and yellow, some reclaimed 70’s home design.
The curtains remain shut at all times, with the right corner providing an
opening through which the occupier accesses the ledge, which acts as a pantry.
It currently holds a jar of something yellow, another jar of something brown,
with a handwritten label, a 6-egg egg box and a double-bagged Costcutter bag
which looks to contains a few more items.
Lights come on in the evening, revealing life, though bodies are never seen.
Sometimes the outline of large frames and stretchers are propped against the
windows.
ii.xi
From this angle, you can see where a thick layer of dirt and pollution has
built up along the tops of all the white double glazed window frames, though
the insides are smartly dressed with mahogany coloured wooden slatted blinds.
The right blinds are raised higher than the left ones. Below the blinds are an
assortment of well kept potted plants; a small spider plant on the far left,
and aloe vera and a large indoor succulent in the right window. The only
visible section of wall is covered with white printed stars on a blue
background, like a small section of the American flag, blown up big. By night,
soft lamplight filters out onto the roof below.
We always referred to them as Du-du-du-du-dum-duh. That sums up the one and
only repetitive tune that creeps up and through the open windows, drowning out
music on the radio and quiet conversations. Its the practice space for a band
and - as mentioned before - sound travels oddly between the buildings, making
some particular noises more penetratingly close than they physically are. I
hear them much more than I ever see them, and the only real clue to their
whereabouts, is the slices of rhythmically nodding bodies holding instruments,
as spied through the wooden blinds.
ii.xii
A single dusty pane, with the original green, peeling wooden frame. A rather
dark space, always lit up, with yellowy light streaming out the undressed
window. Inside there are men sat at desks, with computers, all day and all
night. They rarely seem to talk to each other, sat facing the walls on the
left and right, backs turned to the middle of the room. They are older than
anyone else in the building and busier than everyone else, though what it is
they are doing is a mystery. It involves closely watched computer screens and
talking on the phone. The only furnishings other than the fold-out desks and
office chairs, are a couple of cluttered shelving units, piled high with small
yellow cardboard boxes and trailing wires.
