A still image drawn from the Splitting film shows Gordon Matta-Clark holding the house in Englewood after altering its foundation and levering one half of the building down [Figs. 2.13]. The image shows the moment in which the forces of the built structure are redirected, and the artist not yet knows
whether the house will hold up or collapse. It holds, and the alternative household that the image of Matta-Clark makes manifest lingers for a moment as an image illustrating the present study’s main hypothesis that the artist’s gesture holds a promise for contemporary dwelling. This promise that the alternative house holds is a re-valuation of the living space that becomes a kind of de-valuation when Matta-Clark cuts through the house. The objectification that is performed by this cut sets both home and house apart in a gesture questioning the relation between the container and the contained. A reference can thereby be drawn to the Greek term oikos, from the outset simply a house but also the root of the term oikonomia meaning household management. The English terms ecology and economy draw on this ancient concept of the household as a basic unit of the larger economy of the city – the polis. That the
household must be balanced in accordance with its larger context is implicit the term.154
The connotations of the oikos and the household that the term signifies are relevant for the overall economy/ecology between home and house in Matta-Clark’s work Splitting. Once the former residents’ abandoned belongings are discharged, because the artist cannot overcome their presence loaded with emotional content, the house itself is treated like an object when cut through, unsettled and disfigured. In between these extreme gestures, the open void of the cut house marks an irreversible shift of whatever value the house and private belongings might have held for the previous owners. Matta- Clark’s gesture of revaluation aligns the house as object with the private belongings as objects, rather than retains one as the container of the others. The notion of the oikos economy, following which the dwelling house is only one type of object belonging among others, is thereby maintained. In the form of this object house placed in line with other object belongings defining the household, the house, itself conventionally seen to frame the inhabitants and their belongings, changes status.155
In addition, the house, perceived as a thing among others rather than an all-embracing structure, is countered by the signification of the oikos as the floor plan of an ancient Greek house. This plan conventionally has a central court in the form of an outdoor space at the heart of the household, and this reference is important because the notion of a central, yet external, space around which the household is organised parallels the central void of the split wall diagram discussed above [chapters 3 and 4]. A tension between the house, containing a central void, and the object house, standing in line with the rest of one’s belongings, outlines a positive-negative figure of the contemporary dwelling that the thesis returns to in section 5.2.8 below. In the meantime, when Matta-Clark cuts the house straight through and sets home and house apart as objects belonging to a shared household, he revaluates the notion of dwelling. While the house becomes and empty container, the private belongings are like free
154
Etymologically, oikos, in the sense of house, is the root of the terms ecology and economics. As noted by Janett Morgan, Athenians had no word for house and “the terminology in classical texts simply indicates a differentiation between the natural and the built environment.
Houses appear not to have existed in a modern linguistic sense” (2010: 52/53). Again, Hollander’s note that the German word Haus appears
to have no root comes to mind – what kind of house is this rootless shelter? If it seems that this house, distinct from the antique oikos, is in a state of crisis, then the thesis suggests that the notion of the household is relevant for the present age.
155
In Sarah B. Pomeroy’s translation of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus (1995: 31), the oikos is explained as “a large entity embracing the members of the family, slaves, animals, the house itself, land, and all that was produced, consumed, and disbursed by the household.” Pomeroy further positions the oikos as the basic unit of Greek society and Xenophon’s writing from the 4th century BC as the earliest surviving work dedicated to the subject.
agents with the potential to demarcate another living space. Entered into a constellation somewhere else outside of the house, these objects might outline another residence, someone else’s home, and for that reason, Matta-Clark had to reject the former residents’ abandoned things.
When the dweller places his/her belongings for the purpose of demarcating a dwelling area, or leaves them behind to demonstrate a need for detachment, the gesture performs a placing that gives the individual a sense of belonging to this place, or not. The notion of belonging to a place emerges through this placing of one’s belongings for the purpose of establishing a deeper relation to a given location, even if of a temporary nature. Belonging to a place, as the grounding of the dweller somewhere, becomes the
placing of belongings, as the grounding of the dweller in this situation. The home- and houseless individual places him/herself by arranging personal belongings in a particular way. By the same token, the house
as belonging – the house that sits in line with the rest of the household belongings – is no longer a house in a conventional sense.
The domain that the dweller’s placing claims is never simply appropriated for the first time. By placing his/her personal things, a familiar ground is retraced and the placing recalls something already known. When inhabiting a new space, the dweller marks out his/her domain through the placing of belongings that used to belong somewhere else. This repetition of a familiar setting becomes the repetition of a home, and the dweller opens a new space for living through this repeated retracing of a house. S/he does so in line with the artist’s stroke that repeats itself while drawing a space for the other. The trait that the dweller and artist repeat is the trait of home and work, respectively. As such, the dweller’s placing and the artist’s tracing meet in the repetition of a trait that draws something familiar out as distinct from something unfamiliar.