At Home with Doors: Practising Architectural Elements in Yes, These Eyes Are the Windows and Between 13 and 15 Steps

Abstract

This article investigates artistic responses to doors in Yes, These Eyes are the Windows (2014), an installation, and Between 13 and 15 Steps (2015), a practical workshop ‘laboratory’, which both took place in houses. It argues that doors provide critical points of focus for the practice and study of artistic engagement with place. In so doing, it responds to recent interest by architects and theorists in doors as architectural ‘elements’, notably Von Meiss, who defines doors as ‘site’, ‘object’ and ‘threshold’ (Koolhaas 2014, Von Meiss 2013). The article considers how artists reveal and reflect on the significance of practising doors as a means of opening up understandings of place. The article proposes that, by addressing ways in which artists attend to elements of architecture, in installation and performance, we will better understand the significance of such elements, separately and in combination, on our sense and practices of place. It addresses performances of external and internal doors in Yes, These Eyes are the Windows and Between 13 and 15 Steps. In both works, artists articulated, commented upon, reimagined and reshaped the ways in which specific doors determine relationships between people and place in a house, and between life in a house and in its local context. The article invites further exploration of doors in installation and performance, as part of a broader investigation of the significance of practising architectural elements in artistic engagements with place.