Is Labsome a Place?
Most of my teaching has always been more or less within the traditional humanities – even where most of it has been in computer labs. We talk, we work in the lab much like a tutorial, and make stuff and try to think about it.
Now things are different. As the new head of Honours I asked for, and received, a studio, or a lab. Well, at the very least a specific space that is for honours only (though I am very keen to share it with others so that it becomes a vibrant, active space), and this becomes interesting. Why? Well, one way to approach this is to recognise that in trad. humanities (which I’d defie as having a written based and print literate methodology and practice) place is rendered secondary to idea. We write, and what is written is always regarded as more important than the act of writing (the first separation of theory and practice in trad. humanities practice), and where we write is rarely, if ever, regarded as significant. (Unless you become really famous and you then visit where Wittgenstein wrote, or Proust’s bedroom.) Which is the second separation of theory and practice in trad. humanities practice. This distinction is a product of print literacy since it institutes the distinction between mind and body. A very protestant distinction, where mind as idea (Platonic too I suppose isn’t it?) is what is on the page and that is what matters. The body, as place, as form (what writer actually cares about what font their work is published in?) as empirical and experiential thing is elided into the ideality of text on the page.
So place doesn’t matter. Hence lecture theatres can be monochrome, uncomfortable and uniform as they are about training the mind, not pleasuring the body (so food and drink is banned, and so on) and are the same the world over. But now I find I have a studio, or a lab. A dedicated space. What does that mean? Well, that it is not only an idea (which after all is all that hypertext.rmit and all those other web based research activities really are) but is a location. As a place (as opposed to space) it has identity, history and all the practices that are required to constitute this. Space is the embodiment of practice (and vice versa) and so labsome, at the moment (as we are all working out and experimenting what a communication studies research studio might be and do) is somewhere between a lab, a studio, and a classroom. Except most of the students, and our disciplinary histories, have no real idea of what each of those things, except the classroom, might actually mean (that is our experiment).
So, the current students have just spent $1500 at Ikea on furnishings – a couple of couches, a really nice rug, coffee tables, stools and some children’s furniture which will become pigeon holes for each of us. This is now a studio, not a classroom, and so it is not only mind but also body. (Aside from our desire to let the studio feel and look like a creative, embracing and engaging space.) I know some of my colleagues have wondered about this, which given our traditions is hardly surprising, though the answer is to just remember that our workspaces (our offices) are one minor model for the humanities studio. It is no longer an empty room that different groups enter to use (a space), but a continuous owned location for a single group (a place).
As a place that is why Honours is now known as labsome, because that’s the name of the studio (or lab). As a place it will have an identity, not just because it has a geographic and architectural location, but because as a place it will also be a site of a particular type or sort of practice. This practice is what will make labsome labsome, and labsome will be the activity of this practice. Places are constituted by singularities of practice, their singular eventfulness, and my job for the rest of this year is to demonstrate the relevance of this place – for the students, my colleagues, and of course the university.
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