After living in London for some seven years I have a particularly bodily association with being a commuter. The monotony of my old morning routine, journeying from the calm waters of South to the intolerable torrent of Central, is marked in my mind by the memory of being crammed into a boxy TFL vessel, be that a tube carriage or a double-decker, clutching some handworn red pole whilst a close stranger's coffee breath tickles my ear. I didn't much care for this commute nor the job lying in wait for me but I stuck with it, out of fear I suppose—a fear of being left behind, discarded. Katie Watchorn’s Commuter, 2024, riffs off this memory experience. Newly reworked, the component parts of this installation transform an otherwise mundane staircase, the final leg of most commutes, into an echo of capitalist productivity.
Commuter consists of two air curtains—the plasticky air-conditioning units usually found lingering over shop doorways—here vertically installed to enliven the landings just below and just above Shimmer's gallery space. Fitted with motion sensors, starting the walk up the building's modernist stairway I hear a click, then a dumb yawn as these air-cons kick into action. Click, whoosh. The noise of this pressed air intensifies with my journeying steps skywards. Or so it seems. Blown softly past the first of Watchorn’s repurposed ‘supair’ units, awkwardly positioned next to a porthole window—click, click, click—the speed and velocity of the air streaming out of the second of these threshold objects races ahead of me. I try to move faster, to keep pace with this object’s cold call but the clicks come at double time. Click-click-click. Rather than increasing in volume these mechanical jabs perforate the sound of the rushing air, becoming extra disquieting like orders given by a managerial ghost. I am soon overwhelmed by this roar of air, left feeling anxious, it is as if I am being told to “hurry up!”; it is as if I am about to come face to face with a Boss Man’s explosion: “YOUR LATE.” CLICK. I am wide-eyed and in suspense as this shout reaches its climax. Click, click, click. A shift in tempo, and this grating dictate, now exhausted, begins to pant slower, the sound of its call returning to nothing more than a post-traumatic yawn.
Enabled by a partnership between Shimmer and X Amarte, this site-sensitive commission has allowed Watchorn to adapt an aspect from a previous installation, a relay of air-conditioning units—see Watchorn's contribution to Underbelly at De Ateliers, Amsterdam, 2024—to create an art encounter deeped in bodily criticality. Installed here, in the former offices for Rotterdam’s public transport authority, this recontextualisation of a once component detail mirrors Watchorn's wider practice—one in which minor objects are dislocated from their ‘real world’ function in order to malform the systematic arrangement of everyday life. Further, as a building lying in between the idle flow of the Nieuwe Maas River and the industrial Port of Rotterdam, this installation makes haptic the most mundane of city life routines: the movement from home to work—the bodily movement from the outside to the inside of labour time. Watchorn’s second-hand air curtains do more than translate the transitory nature of a commute into something spatially effective; they position the threshold structures of commerce in direct confrontation with a labouring body, revealing how we are left breathless in the face of capitalism’s cold cacophony.
Standing above the installation, leaning over the ledge of the stairwell, it's hard not to associate Commuter with a sense of capitalist vertigo—a bodily feeling of instability or uncertainty experienced when running to perform in line with the operations of late-capitalist social life. In an age marked by optimisation and efficiency, politically known as austerity, we all fear being left behind or rendered replaceable—for a wonderful account of this state of affairs I would recommend reading Amber Husain's book Replace Me. Watchorn gives this sense of fear a sculptural presence throughout the installation. Cheekily positioned about the stairway space, behind doors and on out-of-reach alcoves, a series of thermos flasks, three real and one cast from jesmonite, stand as anthropomorphic bodies frozen in time. With the purpose of prolonging one's morning coffee, these receptacles accompany many a commuter, allowing them to circumvent long queues at city centre chain cafés, ultimately reducing the risk of a delayed start to the working day. Hidden out of sight and fragile, in the case of the jesmonite flask, it is as if these vessels of efficiency stand discarded, the human receiver of their life-giving fluid (my grand definition for coffee) already replaced by the breathy cackle of machines.
Katie Watchorn makes sculpture. Key to the artist's process is an exploration of the history and functions of objects and materials. By immersing herself in the full context of these items, Watchorn seeks to ‘unlock’ their hidden qualities, fostering a dialogue between the components that invites new sculptural possibilities. This process allows items to communicate with one another, opening up a fresh narrative that was previously concealed.
Recent presentations include dry brimmings at mother's tankstation | Dublin, 2024, Underbelly, De Ateliers, Amsterdam, 2024; Move-Set-Move, The Complex, Dublin, 2023, From Here to There, The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin 2021-2022; and Zero Grazing, Studio Pavilion, Glasgow International, 2021.
Toby Üpson is a writer based in Glasgow. His first collection of poems will be published by La chaise jaune in spring 2025. He is the writing mentor for What Could Should Curating Do's education programme as well as an Ambassador for Amsterdam Art.
