The Becctionary

Words and Phrases that are essential to my practice, defined by me.

“Commute conscious” 

To be “Commute Conscious” you must be actively engaging in and being aware of the daily practice of commuting. To passively interact with the commute is how it was designed to be engaged with, so to consciously, actively, mindfully partake in this activity is to deny the system its design. To be “Commute Conscious” is not a consistent thing you can be. You have to actively choose the consciousness, work on it, actively fight the urge to drift away. 

“Switch-off Space” 

Switch-off Space follows the pathway set by Marc Auge’s “nonplace” and Rem Koolhaus’ “Junkspace” but adjusts its definition for my purposes.To me, a Switch-Off Space is a space that is only designed to be inhabited in a bad scenario. For example, if the system that surrounds it is working efficiently and as it should, you spend as minimal time there as possible, but when that system breaks, you are stuck there for extended amounts of time.  I feel that both “Junkspace” and “nonplace” are disrespectful to the spaces themselves, my work is a love letter to these places, so to use terms that dont give them the respect that my work intends, it undermines my practice. 

Switch off spaces are exactly that, spaces that are designed to switch you off. A train station, a bus, a waiting room, a reception area, they are spaces that aren’t designed to be inhabited for extended amounts of time. They encourage transience. They are designed as neutrally and uniformly as possible, if every bus looked different then you would pay attention to each one, but because every bus is designed mostly the same, you don’t have to worry about it. Most importantly, they are spaces in which most people are physically there but mentally elsewhere.