My Dinner Table

17.02.2022

In my apartment there is a dinner table. It's where I'm sitting right now as I type this out. I only have two chairs for it at the moment, but soon it will be four. I call it the dinner table but actually there is a lot more that goes on here. At the moment on the table is a stack of books (Countryside by Rem Koolhaas, The Age of Earthquakes by Shumon Basar/Douglas Coupland/Hans Ulrich Obrist, Network Imaginaries by Hackers and Designers, Collins Nature Guide to Birds of Britain and Europe, Donald Judd Writings,The Artist As An Instigator of Changes in Social Cognition and Behaviour by Stephen Willats and the Are.na Annual 2022). There is a chess board with only two moves made. There is a fabric net bag with presents for a friend inside it, there is a stack of paper with instructions for some walks that I did with W in the last few weeks. There is a candle holder from Cornwall. The tables surface is also covered in the remnents of my bread making activities from a few days earlier, I should give it a wipe.

There is somehow order and disorder to my kitchen table and I like it that way. When I wake up in the morning or when I come home in the evening, the table and all of its contents are there to welcome me and remind me of what I like. I didn't think I would like having what could be considered a mess on my table and especially when it comes to making and working on things, I thought a clean space offers a clean mind. But now that I live by myself, I find it quite important to have things around me. This feeling kind of grates against my future-self knowing eventually I'll have to move all this stuff, but right now it feels great to be surrounded by my detritus.

I think my dinner table could be considered a picture of me right now. A self-portrait through arrangement. I am going to keep note of this for the future and make note of how this space changes as I also change.