Today, my next to last day in Doha, I found a space where I could see myself sitting to work: the library at the gorgeous Mathaf museum, housed in a converted school and designed by Jean-François Bodin. The library is cool and calm, with long white tables affording views of the shelves of books on one side and a grassy courtyard beyond the large windows on the other.

Part of my search for the perfect work space is no doubt a form of extreme procrastination; I tell myself I can’t possibly write Provocation # 8 until the conditions are favorable. But my interest in desks goes beyond my own work-avoidance tactics: Since I was a child I’ve collected bureaucratic  paraphernalia such as rubber stamps saying things like “priority” and “air mail,” staplers, carbon copy pads, and post-it notes. In fact, I’m kicking myself for not having bought an intriguing looking 12-inch record in the Champs Élysées “antique” shop the other evening, made by the BBC Sound Effects department circa 1966, and containing the sounds of key punches, card-sorters, and other bygone office equipment. If anyone else shares my strange obsession, check this out. My freelance practice is called The Desk of Alice Twemlow, I’ve written about desks here and spoken about them here.

My trusty friend Georges Perec has insightful things to say about the desk. His 1976 essay ‘Notes Concerning the Objects that are on my Work-table’ is both a meditation on curatorial practice and the role of objects in autobiography, and an attempt to consider ones work “not at the level of its remote reflections, but at the very point where it emerges”—a concept which bears thinking about for a moment.

I’m fascinated by the sites of making, whether the making of writing or of design. Of course, I’m not the only one: there are several books which portray designers’ studios, and most designer profiles include the requisite shot of the designer in their studio or at their desk. With the gathering backlash against the homogeneity of globalization, and increasing interest in all things local, comes a growing desire to explore the relationship between a location and its products, and not just a regional location but the precise one of the rectangular territory upon which design happens—the “very point where it emerges.”

But this is hardly news to designers; at the colleges of art and design where they train, the desk and the pin-up board are considered integral parts of a student’s work. They way they collect and juxtapose images and objects on the horizontal and vertical surfaces around them starts to shape how they see the world and how these elements might feed into their work. Some say this is happening less, as students do much of their inspiration gathering and research online and do their pin-ups on sites like Pinterest. But here at VCU Qatar students have the luxury of unlimited space in which to express themselves through the medium of the desk-space.

PROVOCATION # 8: Write and photograph a simple tour guide to your desk-space/work-site. In what ways does it provide a way for you to talk about your work, your background, and your preoccupations—about where you are coming from? Think about  the kinds of objects and images you have gathered around you and ways in which they might converge upon “the very point where [your work] emerges.” 

Background reading:
Georges Perec, ‘Notes Concerning the Objects that are on my Work-table,’ Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, originally published in 1976.
Alice Twemlow, ‘Massimo Vignelli’s Desk,’ Design Observer, September 15, 2010.