Domestic occupation

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: Contemporary Site Investigations (CSI) Flinders Street was commissioned by the City of Melbourne as part of their Public Art Grant Program. Six artists were granted unprecedented access to dormant spaces within Australia's busiest station - Flinders Street. They spent a month working there. For 'Domestic Occupation' Carey occupied Room 244, a former mail room and uniform depot on the station's second floor. For five years, the space had been a dumping ground for objects past their use-by date. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: In 'Domestic Occupation' Carey archived Room 244. He painstakingly categorized and filed discarded office materials and so created intricate wunderkammers of railway workers' pasts within the room's pigeon-hole cabinets. This cataloguing honoured the past lives of these objects and the people who used them, thus reanimating the abandoned and discarded. Carey also reshaped dust and vacuumed detritus to create monumental 'dust paintings', large-scale, ephemeral abstract compositions that rendered the [im]material and exposed the unseen, proposing new poetic and practical uses for abandoned sites, objects and materials. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: 'Domestic Occupation' was a major public artwork funded by City of Melbourne, the Victorian Government, Federation Square and others. The project was exhibited at Federation Square on 19 October and footage of the artists' work, was screened there over that weekend to thousands of viewers. Significant media coverage further demonstrated the work's value. A four-minute film, 'Inside Flinders Street Station: The Mailroom' - on 'Domestic Occupation' - was published on 'The Age's website on 15 October. See, also: 'The Age', (John Bailey, 'Ball may be over but there's life in the old girl yet', 14 October 2012); 'Architecture Australia' (Peter Salhani, 'Flinders Street Station speaks' 19 October 2012), ABC Arts 'Out and About' blog (26 October 2012) and the Culture Victoria blog (30 October 2012)

【研究背景】墨尔本市政厅将弗林德斯街站当代场地调研项目（Contemporary Site Investigations, CSI）纳入其公共艺术资助计划。该项目为六名艺术家提供了前所未有的使用权限，使其得以进入澳大利亚最繁忙的交通枢纽——弗林德斯街站的闲置空间开展创作，艺术家们在此驻留工作一月有余。其中，艺术家凯里以《居家侵占》（Domestic Occupation）为创作主题，进驻了车站二楼的244号房间：该房间曾为邮局与制服仓库，在过往五年间一直被当作已过使用期限的废弃物品堆放场地。
【研究贡献】在《居家侵占》项目中，凯里对244号房间进行了档案化整理：他一丝不苟地对废弃办公物料进行分类归档，依托房间内的鸽笼式储物柜，搭建起还原铁路从业者过往风貌的精巧奇珍陈列柜（wunderkammers）。此类编目工作致敬了这些物品及其使用者的过往生命，由此唤醒了被遗弃与废弃之物的生机。此外，凯里还将吸尘收集的粉尘与碎屑进行塑形，创作了具有纪念碑质感的“粉尘画作”——这类大型且转瞬即逝的抽象作品，既诠释了非物质性的存在，又凸显了被忽视的细节，为废弃场地、物品与物料赋予了全新的诗意与实用价值。
【研究意义】《居家侵占》是一项由墨尔本市政厅、维多利亚州政府、联邦广场等多方资助的大型公共艺术作品。该项目于10月19日在联邦广场展出，艺术家创作过程的影像也于同期周末面向数千名观众展映。大量媒体报道进一步印证了该作品的价值：10月15日，一部时长四分钟、以《居家侵占》为主题的纪录片《走进弗林德斯街站：邮局房间》在《时代报》（The Age）官网发布。此外，相关报道还包括：《时代报》（约翰·贝利，《赛事落幕，但这位‘老姑娘’仍有生机》，2012年10月14日）、《澳大利亚建筑》（彼得·萨尔哈尼，《弗林德斯街站的诉说》，2012年10月19日）、ABC艺术频道《外出见闻》博客（2012年10月26日）以及维多利亚文化博客（2012年10月30日）