Boredom and Bedroom: The Suppression of the Habitual

Author(s): Georges Teyssot and Catherine Seavitt

Source: Assemblage, No. 30 (Aug., 1996), pp. 44-61
Published by: The MIT Press
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1. Stills from Jim Jarmusch,Mystery

Train,1989

Georges

Teyssot

Boredom

and

The

Bedroom:

Suppression of

the

Habitual

Translatedfromthe Frenchby Catherine

Seavitt
GeorgesTeyssotis a professorof architecture(historyandtheory)at Princeton
University,Schoolof Architecture.

30:44-61 @ 1996bythe
Assemblage
Instituteof Technology
Massachusetts

Can there be anything like an "everydayarchitecture,"

similar to the notion of "everydaylife"?One must firstask,
what is everydaylife? How does it manifest itself?Does everydaylife have a form or is it formless?Perhapsthe best
answer is given by Jun, the Japanesetouristwho appearsin
Jim Jarmusch's1989 film MysteryTrain. Jun photographs
only the interiorsof the motel rooms in which he sleeps
during his tour of the United States.Asked why he takes
pictures of this kind of banal, even trivial,material,rather
than of the cities, monuments, and landscapes he visits, he
answersthat he photographswhat he would easily forget:
"Those other things are in my memory. The hotel rooms
and the airportsare the things I'll forget."
A properexample of an "everydayarchitecture"might be
found in one of those nineteenth-centuryviews through a
section of Parisianimmeubles.One might obtain the same
visual effect when overlookingan interiorcourt in a Mediterraneancity or a huge residentialbuilding in New York
City: especially at dusk, it is as if one were cutting a section
through the building, revealing in each of its apartments
the multiple and small events of everydaylife. Of course,
like Grace Kelly and James Stewartin Alfred Hitchcock's
Rear Windowof 1954, one guiltily senses that one should
not be looking. What appearsin the section cut? Some
people work, some don't; some people are old, some young;
some are noisy, some are quiet; some are wealthy, some
poor; some are healthy and some have diseases.

45

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assemblage 30

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2-4. Stillsfrom Todd Haynes, Safe, 1995:

Carol in her suburban Californiahouse
realizes her "environmental allergy";
Carolseals herself in a porcelain-lined
igloo in the New Mexico desert; Carol
stares at herself in the mirror,and, safe
at last, declares, "Ireally love you."

Disease derivesfrom dis, "the contraryof," and ease, from

the French aise, or in the plural, les aises, referringin
general to comfort. Priorto its application to maladies or
pathological statesof health, dis-ease referredto something
that was literallyuncomfortable.The word comfortin English derives from the French confort,originallyreferringto
moral or psychological comfort. Thus welfare and "feeling
well" had an initial moral meaning. It was only during the
eighteenth century that comfort acquired its modern meaning, indicating materialand technological circumstances
that enabled physical "well-being."

Disease of the Soul

Are there diseases or maladies that belong particularlyto
houses and apartments,to the places where one lives? It is
a question that circulates through Todd Haynes'sfilm Safe
of 1995, whose central character,Carol, becomes allergic
to her environment. To consider everydaylife (when and
where one lives), one must consider the two main categories of existence: time and space. One might create dual
lists: diseases of time, or "temporaldiseases,"and diseases
of space, "spatialdiseases."Anxiety is a disorderof time
perception;this panic is described as a fear of the instant.
Nostalgia, a social disease, a longing for past time, is also a
temporal malady.'Another malady of time, melancholy,the
medieval melancholia, was thought to be caused by an
overabundancewithin the body'sorgansof "blackbile,"
one of the four bodily humors that determined habitual disposition. Physiologistssince the nineteenth century have
described the human body as a kind of thermodynamic
motor and have analyzed its dispersionof energy through
entropy;this is the notion behind fatigue, both physical and
psychological. Jet lag, a result of the disruptionof the
body's circadian rhythms,epitomizes the contemporary
time disease. Of the spatialdiseases, the most obvious is
claustrophobia- or, in America, "cabin fever"- which
occurs when an individual remains constrainedfor too long
in a constricted space. In counterpartto claustrophobiaare
claustrophilia,the love of or need for being enclosed and
confined, and agoraphobia,the fear of large, open spaces.
The malady of homesicknessis the spatial correspondentof

46

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Teyssot

5. Gustave Caillebotte, The Parquet

Floor Planers, 1875

nostalgia.Another form of spatial disease, uncanniness (the

Unheimlichkeit)is the perturbingand uneasy feeling derived from habitual surroundingsthat suddenly appeartoo
familiar.
Of all the maladies that thread through a discussion of everydayarchitecture,the one that seems most common, and
perhaps least tragic, is boredom,a peculiar state of melancholy and sadness bound to the perception of time and
quite close to some of the diseases just described. Its origins
probablylie in the medieval acedia, the torporthat afflicts
monks in the cloister, the psychological consequence of
taedium vitae. Instilled by the dreaded "noontide demon,"
it appearsin the space of the soul, abstractand transparent.2
In modern times, acedia would transforminto spleen and
ennui. Spleen manifests itself as a shroud outside the body:
the black color of melancholic bile emerging to wrap the
body in the dress of the dandy, the flaneur, immersed in the
crowd of the metropolis. Ennui moves beyond the physical
limits of the body, to reveal itself in the intirieur, the interior rooms of domesticity, where intimate space cloaks the
body with the uncanny shapes of familiarity.3
The state of the eternal return,the immutable sameness in
the seemingly new, the semperidem, can bring forth tedium. Walter Benjamin addressedthis in an important
early essay, "Trauerspielund Tragidie" of 1916, in which
he distinguished two "metaphysical"principles of repetition: the cyclic process of eternal recurrence representedby
the circle and the repetition of alternation.4The latter,
based on the oscillation of the partsof a clock, is established
on basic intervalsof duration. It is the monotonous tic-toe
that divides hours into minutes, minutes into seconds,
chopping duration into small slices. Of course, one never
senses this measurement of time as an exact dimension, but
ratheras a "subjective"perception. Benjamin's premises
were reprisedand amplified with his 1928 thesis on the
German Trauerspiel,the baroque dramawhose characters

6. Caillebotte, The Man at the

Window, 1876

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7. Caillebotte, Interior (Woman

at the Window), 1880

47

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assemblage 30

lament their destiny on Earth and await their liberation

from life and release into Heaven.5It is the sublimating
workof the negative that is being enacted and reenacted.6
In the later Passagen-Werk,Benjamin's ideas of sadness
(Trauer)and melancholy underwent a mutation. This created a necessarytransposition,whereby the analysisof sadness in the Renaissance and baroque periods becomes a
theory of boredom or ennui (Langeweile,literally"long
while"), the life of which extends throughoutthe nineteenth century. In his notes, Benjamin alluded to a historical-materialistinterpretationof this state:"factoryworkas
economic supportfor the ideological boredom of the upper
classes."'The boredom supportedby the repetitiveworkof
industrialproduction correspondsto that of the new boulevardsof Parisof the Second Empire and the Third Republic: "These big streets,these big quays, these big buildings,
these big sewers, their physiognomybadly copied or poorly
imagined. ... They exhale boredom."8One thinks of the
many paintings of Gustave Caillebotte, Paris on a Rainy
Day of 1877 or the famous Bridgeof Europe or The Man at
the Windowof 1876. To escape this ennui, this "diseaseof
the soul," present in the Parisiansalons since the eighteenth
century, one resortedto games and diversions:9posing as a
dandy and distractingoneself by immersion in the crowd, as
epitomized by Charles Baudelaireand his "painterof modern life," Constantin Guys."'According to Benjamin, "the
idleness of the flaneur is a demonstrationagainstthe division of labor";"here, "demonstration"is to be understood
in its political sense. Boredom, then, creates the conditions
for the frenetic dedication to games that Benjamin would
compare to the repetitiveactions of industriallabor. And it
was this comparison that would lead him to an interesting
theory of shock, the foundation of a new metropolitanperception.12

Sensory Deprivation
Ennui, it has been said, is a "domesticdemon." This remarkby the philosopher ArthurSchopenhauer revealsthat
within the space of the house and the time of everydaylife,
something happens that has to do with ennui: boredom belongs to a sort of demonology, or actually, a "eudaemonics,"

in an Aristoteliansense." Another philosopher, Vladimir

Jankelevitch,has made a study of what he distinguishesas
"adventure,""seriousness,"and "ennui."'4Life is absorbing
when it is condensed, that is, when time passesvery quickly.
The most interestingmoments in one's life are related to
beginnings: embarkingon an adventure,whether in relation to a love affairor a voyage, one experiences the advent
of the future within the present. Hence, one lives a condensation of duration:everythingseems to collapse into an instant.At another level, someone who is serious considers
the possibilityof a future by extending the present time forward. He organizeshis own activityaccording to a "project"
and projects (literally,throwshimself forward)into the future. It is this that a serious person does when "designing,"
"projecting,"a family, a house, or any other building.
Someone who is bored, however, lives exclusively in the
present:he is totally immersed in the intervalof duration.
For him, the future is too far away to be interestingor to offer any possibilityof hope. Thus ennui is neither directed
towardthe past, as in nostalgia, nor to the future, as in the
adventure,but to an exclusive present.
Jankl1Ivitchhas likewise established a distinction between
anxiety and ennui. The anxious person waits with fear for
the deadline of the instant. Each instance of life, at any
moment, carriesfor the anxious some sort of danger. By
contrast,the bored person, the ennuyd,exists betweentwo
instants;his is the state of mind defined as the unhappiness
of being too happy. This form of ennui, "fromplenty," is
the "sicknessof happy people," the "rottenfruit of civilization and pleasure,"according to Emile Tardieu'sL'Ennui:
Etude psychologiqueof 1903.15Ennui was also for Tardieu a
"diseaseof nothingness,"a condemnation by the "sense of
the nothingness of life." The poet Giacomo Leopardihas
described ennui, in Italian la noia, as "figliadelle nullitA,
madre del nulla":daughterof null things, mother of the
void.16 The notion of ennui was invented to explain this perception of a void, a void usually recognized in the circumstances of everydaylife. It appearsas a pure possibilityand is
characterizedas an indifference to form. Indeed, boredom
denies any form: it induces the uniform, the shapeless.At
the same time, it is also multiform:a mishap, the effect of
the "misshapen."Boredom may dictate a kind of polymor48

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Teyssot

8. MihSlyMunkbcsy,Interior in
Paris, 1877

lit

phism, an excess of ornament;or, as in the nineteenth-century bourgeois apartment,it may induce effects of exaggerated polychromy.
Ennui must also be understoodin a kind of paradoxicalcausality,for it is not very clear what produceswhat. There seem
to be general causes: inaction or idleness, solitude or loneliness, monotony or dullness, fatigue or weariness.But do
these, in fact, generate ennui? Jankel1vitchsuggeststhat ennui producesthese effects, which then reestablishennui itself, in a cycle of cause and effect. One might conclude that
ennui isolatesthe bored, homogenizing things around him
and increasinghis dispositionto inertia.Inaction, solitude,
monotony, fatigue:borne out of ennui, they reinforceennui.
The bibliographyof boredom is immense. One should,
however, mention one of the firsttheories of ennui, presented in an aesthetic treatiseof 1715, Traitedu beau by
Jean-Pierrede Crousaz. A Calvinist from Lausanne, who
wrote extensivelyabout science, he thought of beauty as an
effect of varioussensorial incitements:
Sentimentsare,in effect,whatdetermineourhappinessandour
unhappiness.Bornas we areto feel, the moreintenseareoursentiments- providedtheyarenot painful- the moreis ourstate
perfectandproperto the fulfillmentof ourpurpose.Thuswe all
like to be occupiedwithstrongsentiments.Of all emotionalstates,
it is ennuithatwe findmostunbearable,and,despiteournatural
repugnanceforhardship,the mostlaborioustasksceaseto repel
us as soonas theybecomenecessaryto drawus out of ennui.Yet
therearethreeprincipalqualitiesthatgivethoseobjectswhich
possessthemthe powerto occupyus withintensesentiments.
Thesethreequalitiesaregrandeur,novelty,anddiversity.17
In what has been called an "aesthesis,"a doctrine of intense
sensation,Crousaz suggestedthat the essential merit of the
beautiful is to offer man an escape from ennui.'"One discovers an intriguingcontinuity between the eighteenth-century

aesthesisand the theoryof stimuli used in contemporary

cosmonautics.To combat the "sensorialhunger"deplored
by the cosmonautYuryGagarinand the space psychologist
L b dev, the senses are artificiallystimulated:"forlong
missions ..., we send the cosmonautssmells, and tapes of
noises that constitute their familiarterrestrialenvironment:
sounds of birds ..., of wind in the trees ..., of running
water.""9
One might also recall that, for twentieth-century
physiologistsand engineers, the notion of comfort is tied to
the body'salleged preferencefor a state untroubledby external disturbance:the zero degree of corporealexcitation. In
this view, comfort equals the absence of externalstimulation
- a sort of sensoryweightlessnessresemblingthe "sensory
deprivation"promotedin the United Statesas a relaxation
technique. This state is defined as "well-being."One attains
this homogenous "ideal"throughthe use of technological
apparatusesthat guaranteeclimate control (aeration,ventilation, heating, humidity), energy management,and network
connection (lighting, electronics, telecommunications).20
In the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies,ennui would
become a favoritesubject of psychologyand sociology.The
psychoanalystOtto Fenichel, in "On the Psychologyof
Boredom"of 1934, defined boredomas the self-evident
"unpleasurableexperienceof a lack of impulse."2Basinghis
diagnosison the "classical"distinctionbetween the "pathological"and the "innocent"(equivalentto the "normal"),
Fenichel attemptedto establishthe followingdistinction:
"The firsttype of boredomis the orgiasticallyimpotent individual who is in a stateof longing because he is unable to
enjoy pleasure.The second type is the 'Sundayneurotic'
mentioned above [SandorFerenczi'ssymptomof one who
is boredon Sundaysor duringvacations].We believe that
in both cases boredomhas a physiologicalfoundation,
American
namely, that of the damning up of the libido.""22
behavioralistscientistssuch as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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assemblage 30

meaning, alwayslurksat both ends of the continuum from

banalityto noise."24Redundancyand varietyalike spell
boredom.
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9. Walter RichardSickert,
Ennui, circa 1914

In Jank616vitch's
opinion, ennui is neither an economic nor
a medical nor a sociopsychologicalphenomenon:to attribute
physiologicalor psychologicalcauses to boredomwould be
like tryingto cure nostalgiawith pills. Ennui is to be bored
by variety,not monotony.Ennui is to be bored by rest,not
weariness.Ennui is to be bored by idleness, not work.Ennui
is to be boredby happiness,not sadness.Probablythe best
representationin literatureof an ennuy6is the dressing-gown
existence of IvanGoncharov'scharacterin the novel of 1859
that bearshis name, Ilya IlyitchOblomov, who could not rise
from his bed and dress.25One might say that ennui is a disease of luxury,a luxuriousdisease.Its natureis paradoxical,
equivocal, contradictory,ambiguous.It has been suggested
that ennui is the oppositeof masochism,since it consistsnot
of the pleasureof suffering,but rather,of the pain of enjoying. Ennui is a failureof happiness,the resultof a decay, a
slovenlinessof the instantin the intervalof duration.Happiiii
ness is lived and experiencedin the flashof an instant;it is a
high condensationof time. Any attemptto maintainthis instantof happinesswithin the flow of durationcreatesa confusion between the instantand the interval.This confusion
induces a strongdisappointmentthat may, in turn, engender
ennui. Thus when one proposesa stabilizationof pleasure as in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuriesmany
philosophersdid throughtheories of utilitarianismand
positivism26 - one only provokesennui.

.:X

The Mirrorof Inner Space

would look for "theoreticalmodels for enjoyment"in various
games or sports,including "Chess,Rock Climbing, Rock
Dancing."23And the AmericansociologistOrrinE. Klapp
would attemptto establish,with the help of "science,"the
connection between boredomand the phenomenon of entropyin informationtheory:to show "howcommunication
could fail to deliverinformation(surprise),from extremes
either of redundancyor variety.One cannot be surprisedif
things are all the same or all different.Entropy,as loss of

Happinessenjoys itself completely only if it doubles its own

image in the mirrorof reflection. Happinesswantsto be
both subject and object: the subject of its object and the
object of its subject. There is no happiness if one is alone;
happiness must be shared,it needs a public. If there is no
one else, one needs a mirrorto reflect the self. The nineteenth-centuryDanish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard,living in a small apartment,regardedthe subject as the only
truth and believed that realityconsisted only of his thinking
within his room. Anythingthat happened outside his win-

50

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Teyssot

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10. Johann ErdmannHummel, Drawing

Room in Berlin, circa 1820-25

dow, any public representation,was merely an illusion exactly contraryto what Hegel had been saying in Berlin.
Kierkegaardwas perhapsthe firsttheoristof privateness,the
firsttheoristof the inwardnessthat the German had defined
under the word Innerlichkeit.This "inwardness"is usually
associatedwith the interiorsof middle-classhouseholds,
which, from a stylisticpoint of view, describedthe
Biedermeierperiod between 1820 and 1850.
One might consider the watercolorDrawing Room in Berlin, circa 1820-25, by Johann Erdmann Hummel, a contemporaryof CasparDavid Friedrich. During this period in
Germany, a genre was developing within painting that represented the space between an interiorand what is outside,
seen through a window. Within this space is an "inner
world,"the world of the "inner conscious." Occurring in
this inner world are both personal feeling and privatethinking, moments traditionallyidentified by idealism as "reflection." Thus inner space becomes the space of reflection. In
the seventeenth century, privatespace was often defined as

the place of the relationshipbetween an individual and

God, the place of prayer.During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this place was transformedinto a space of
intimacy. Intimate spaces, then, are those where the individual may have his own reflections and feelings. Were one
homeless or without "a room of one's own," one could not
belong to this world of reflection.
Hummel's painting makesa clear division between the interiorand the worldof things outside the window. The large
room is like a box, on one side of which the viewer is situated. A mirrorcentered between the two windows reflects
the closed door on the oppositewall, the wall where the observer,or the painter,should be. But the observeris absent.
The viewer of the painting looks into a room that looks back
at him througha mirror;but he does not appear.One might
interpretthis absence as an inclusion of the subject in the
room. Because he is not representedwithin the room, it is as
if the subject has become partof the room itself. One might
also note the manifold reflectionswithin the room: not only
51

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assemblage 30

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11. Leon Spilliaert, Self-Portrait

at the Mirror,1908

the reflection along the central axis, which emphasizesthe

general symmetryof its boxlike aspect, but also the reflections that occur among differentmirrors.The windows,too,
are reflected in the mirrors,by which an importanttransformation takesplace. Both mirrorsand windows,because they
acquire the same luminosityand chromaticweight, become
the same kind of object within this painterlyrepresentation.
And, if the windowsare mirrors,perhapsthe exterioris a
total illusion: there is no outside world. Here, the outside
world is but a kind of representation.One existsonly within
this Innerlichkeit,this inwardness.It has been writtenthat
German interiorsare ruled "bythe principle of mirroring
and doubling."27
Consciousness is recognizing one's image in the mirror;
but at the same time, as the individual approachesthe self
reflected upon the glass, the mirrorfogs with one's own
breath. The self disappears;an attempt is made to wipe
the mirror,yet one cannot help breathing.The image is
blurredby a covering mist. This interiorrefersto happiness,
to protection;but it contains as well the seeds of boredom.
Perhapsbecause it protectstoo much, this mirroredinteriority leads to a kind of excess of interiorlife, an exaggeration of introspection.
The refuge of the interiorapparentlyofferedan alternative
to boredom, as Benjamin described in his notes on the arcades of Paris:"Boredomis a warmgraycloth that is padded
on its inside with the most glowing, colorful silk lining. Into
this cloth we wrapourselveswhen we dream. Then we are
at home in the arabesquesof its lining. But the sleeper looks
grayand bored under it. And then, when he wakesup and

12. Max Klinger, The Philosopher, 1909

wants to tell what he dreamtof, he communicates often

only this boredom. For who would be able to turn insideout in one motion the lining of time?"28Perhapsit is possible to turn inside-outthis lining of time, which is not only
the arabesqueof the box, but also the design of the carpet,
of the wall, and of the reflection between the mirrorsand
the windows.
To understandthis relationshipbetween the subject and
the mirror,one might examine Leon Spilliaert'swashed
pastel drawingSelf-Portraitat the Mirrorof 1908 or observe
Max Klinger'setching The Philosopherof 1909, from the
series Of Death, illustratingthe tense relation among the
notions of interior,reflection, and introspection.These images might, in turn, be associatedwith the mirrorin which
Igitur,a literarycreation of St phane Mallarme, sees himself. Here, in one of his most obscure and interestingtexts,
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Teyssot

13. RichardHamilton, Interior

II, 1964-65
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the poet describes a collapse among the past, the present, and
the possibilityof a future. At the moment of his suicide attempt, as Igitursees himself in the mirror,past, present, and
future merge to form the pure time of boredom, crystallizing
only at the instant of death: "The understoodpast of his race
which weighs on him in the sensation of finiteness, the hour
of the clock precipitatingthis ennui in heavy, smothering
time, and his awaiting of the accomplishment of the future,
form pure time, or ennui." As he dies, Igitursearches for
himself in vain in "the mirrorturned into boredom."29
Two kinds of experience have been defined: First is that of the
dandy or flaineur,the man who has time to waste. He strollsin
the streets,stopping at anythingthat happens, any event, any
accident. The city and the crowd are a huge spectacle for
him. Second, on the other side, is that of the philosopher,best
personifiedby Kierkegaard,or the man within the bourgeois
intirieur.Theodor Adorno called Kierkegaardthe flaneur who
promenades in his room: "the world only appearsto him reflected by pure inwardness."30
For the philosopher,"inwardness"and "melancholy"are the constituents,"the contours of
'domesticity,'which . . . constitute[s]the arena of existence."
Adorno continues: "He who looks into the window mirror,
however, is a privateperson, solitary,inactive, and separated
from the economic processesof production.The window mirror testifiesto objectlessness - it casts into the apartment
only the semblance of things - and isolated privacy.Mirror
and mourning hence belong together."3'In Adorno'sreading

14. David Hockney, Mr. and

Mrs. Clarkand Percy, 1970-71

of Kierkegaard,one finds this remarkableconnection between

the mirrorand the notion of boredom.

Neurotic Households
Within the domestic environment, the themes of boredom,
melancholia, and repetition are often intrinsicallyconnected.
In an essay of 1938-39 entitled "CentralPark,"Benjamin
wrote:"Neuroses manufacturemass-producedarticles in the
psychic economy. There it has the form of an obsession.
These appear in the household [Haushalt] of the neurotic
as the always-the-samein countless numbers."Further,he
would add: "the return of everydayconstellations."32Benjamin is alluding to the neurotic, or compulsive, renewal of
things within the household. Things must alwaysbe new and
are continuously renewed according to fashion. The need to
inhabit is traditionallyassociatedwith having habits. In fact,
there is an etymological connection between habit and habitation. Habitationsare actually places for long habits, places
where habits may be inscribed in a space that awaitsthem.
But as soon as the condition arises in which everythingmust
be continuously, neurotically renewed, one needs to shorten
one's habits. Indeed, one might think that modernity,at least
within the domestic environment, has brought about a shortening of habits. Nietzsche, in his time, would say, "I love the
A poet like Baudelairewas alreadyincapable
short habits.""33
of developing steadyhabits;for instance, he had numerous
53

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assemblage 30

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'*"'
,l A ,i /,

/~~

.-

15. Still from David Byrne, True

Stories, 1986

addressesin Parisduring the course of his life. The same

would be true of Benjamin, until his death at the FrancoSpanish border in 1940.
Ennui is a way of being, enmeshed in the everydaynessof
life. Ennui can be lived; it rarelycauses death or personal
desperation.Ennui is viable; it may become habitual. In
English etymology, the word malady comes from "male
habitus"or "in bad shape."Habitat,habit, habitus, and
malady all belong to the same family of words,which reveals strikingconnections. Gilles Deleuze has defined
habitus as "the passivesynthesisof time as living present,
the memory of practices in space." He continues: "Habitus
resolvesrepetition in conformitywith the contemporary
present according to a cycle of custom."34
As a maladyof duration,ennui can lead to a lack of hope, to
a lack of belief in values. Within a state of boredom, any criteria of evaluationdisappear.Insofaras perspectiverefersto

a projection,a projectionalwaystowarda future that one

wantsto build, a worldof ennui, a space/time of ennui, is a
worldwithout perspective.The BritishPop artists,such as
David Hockney and RichardHamilton, offeredan interesting iconology of the boring.With his silk screen InteriorII of
1964-65, for example, Hamilton describedthe modern neurosiswithin the interior:the woman in his designed interior
seems to be completely dispossessive,to lack "perspective."
In his film TrueStories,produced in 1986, David Byrne
addressedsimilar issues. The characterof Miss Rollings,
"the laziest woman in the world,"never gets up from her
bed. Like Oblomov, she doesn't need to, for everythingis
brought to her: food, sex, entertainment,and so on. She
never wearsreal clothes, only a series of two-dimensional
outfitsapplied to the front surfaceof her body. Yet everyday
she changes these fronts.In English, there is a perfect anagram between bedroomand boredom,which enhances the
tantalizingrelationshipbetween milieu, percept, and affect.
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Teyssot

The lazy woman'sbedroom is a space "withoutperspective,"

without future. "Inabilityto tolerateempty space limits the
It presentsthe characteristics
amount of space available.""35
of any room, perhapsa motel room, and is describedby
Byrnethrough its lack of quality.Notice one thing: the observer,who in this case is the camera man, occupies precisely the same position as the observer,or painter,within
Hummel's DrawingRoom - along the central axis of the
room. The camera man, too, is not representedwithin the
frame;once again, the subject is outside of, yet totally integratedwithin the picture. What is the lazy woman looking
at? None other than the observer.Watching the film, one
learns she is actuallylooking at the television, for her television set is situatedexactlyin frontof her. As the television
has often been described as the viewer of the interior,an
engaging connection is establishedbetween the interior,
where one looks at the television, and that which is shown
on the television. For instance, within the space of a
"sitcom"there is a kind of mirroredsymmetrybetween the
televised interiorand the viewer'sown interior.This is the
kind of dissymmetrythat Byrne has analyzed in his film:
the hybrid,or grotesque, collapse of inside and outside, of
realityand its representation.One might say that these
spaces are no longer three-dimensional,for space loses its
projected dimension. Thus the "lazylady"wears two-dimensional outfits. Things that she uses for food, for health,
for care, are distributedoutwardin space from a thinking
center (the woman) towardsurroundingconcentric circles.
At the same time, the self has ceased to be the privileged
center of perspective.Today, just as in the lazy woman's
room, the self thinks of itself as a thing between things, as
an indifferentbody among other bodies.

16. Gordon Matta-Clark,Splitting,

1974

Shortened Habits
The interior is often described by customaryor habitual
rituals. Samuel Beckett characterizedthis fundamental experience of repetition as "the compromise which is made
... between the individual and his properorganic exaltaHabit and
tion, the guarantee of a dismal invulnerability."36
of
are
the
two
extremes
forgetfulness
not-knowing.The hain
its
bitual, comforting
guaranteedsecurity of the nearness

17, 18. Vito Acconci, Multi-Beds:

Five Types of Interconnected
Single Beds, 1991-92, beds 3
and 4

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assemblage 30

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19. David Ireland, 500 Capp Street,

1985-, interior view in 1988

of things and persons, pervertsthe gaze. Today, in response

to the comfort and repetition of everydaylife, many artists
and architectsare attemptingto suppressthe habitual. It
may be impossible fully to suppresshabits, but, recalling
Nietzsche, one may try to shorten them. In a way, this attempt to suppressthe habitual informed the workof many
American artistsof the 1970s and 1980s:from Gordon
Matta Clark'sSplitting of 1974 to Vito Acconci's The Board
Room, also called WhereWe Are Now (WhoAre We Anyway, of 1976 and his Multi-Bedsof 1991-92.17
Another example is the house of the artistDavid Ireland.
One might call Irelanda sculptor,but he has also practiced
a kind of twelve-yearexperimenton his own home, at 500
Capp Street in San Francisco.38Originallybuilt by a Navy
captain, it appearsfrom the exteriorto be an averagenineteenth-centurytownhouse. Inside, however,the artisthas
been peeling awaythe layersthat constitute the life of the
house. Nothing is replaced;everythingis left in its original
state, but repairedif reparable(the electrical appliances, the
plumbing, the door jambs).The house existsas a kind of

technological ruin; its entire historyrevealedto the viewer

through a process of dismantling,undoing, scraping,and so
forth. To insist on this process, some objects, like the television, are opened up and dismantled.The television works
perfectly,but it has been strippedof its exteriorskin. The
window mechanism, too, is undone and revealedto the
gaze. The workthat Irelanddoes as a sculptorhangs within
the house, "unidentifiedobjects"that take on the appearance of housewares.
The workof Elizabeth Diller and RicardoScofidio has also
tried to addressthis kind of shorteningof the habitual.39In
their 1987 house installationfor the Capp Street Project,
San Francisco, entitled withDrawingRoom,they analyzed
and revealedthe differentcodes that constitute the domestic
environment, creatinga similarprocessof "undoing"to that
of Ireland's.The house is cut according to hidden lines that
have meaning only in relationto what is happening within
the city. The television is strippedof its structureand skin.
The family dining table is raisedto an uncomfortablyhigh
level, indicated by a dotted line. These artistsand architects

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Teyssot

20. Ireland,stripped television, 1988

workwith the traces left by everydaylife, the traces of the

previousoccupants - nails in the wall where pictures once
hung, remnantsof paint that have faded over time, marksof
a saggingdoor on the floor - and they addressthe signs that
objects inscribe within the domestic environment.

21. Ireland, Untitled Objects, 1988

Anotherprojectthat disruptsnotions of the habitual is that

of the artistsand architectsKate Ericson and Mel Ziegler,
PictureOut of Doors. In 1988 the ContemporaryArtsForum
in Santa Barbarasponsoredan exhibition entitled Home
Show, in which privatehouses were given over to variousartists as sites of experimentationand, for a month during specific hours, opened to the public. In one of these houses,
Ericson and Ziegler created a piece by removingall the
doors - to rooms, cupboards, drawers, closets - and stack-

ing them in descending height in the living room. A disruption occurredwithin the house: everythingthat was normally
out of view was revealed.This operationcreateda new vision, the possibilityof a new gaze, that was "inhabitual."The
artistsobserved:"Byexposingand makingpublic the most
privatepartsof a home, one places the invited guest in an
uncomfortablevoyeuristicposition.""Instinctively,the owners, David and Pat Farmer,wanted to reorganizethe objects
on their shelves and in their closets, suddenly realizing that
strangerswere going to look at the accumulation of their
belongings:
The removalof a cupboarddoorin a little-usedbackhall wasa
heavyassaultto ourcollectiveego. The accumulationof unrelated,unneeded,unwanteditemsrevealedon thosedustyshelves
thismassiveevidenceof procrastinawasstaggering.Furthermore,
tion hiddenfromthe world,fromourselves,felt disgraceful.Taking offthe bedroomandbathroomdoorscreateda different

22. Ireland,scraped window in 1990

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assemblage 30

......................

...
el .

...

....................

xZ?
..........
.

MR:

x.:
Ni-:
........
..... ..........

24, 25. Kate Ericsonand Mel Ziegler,

Picture Out of Doors, 1988, views of
living room and of kitchen

23. Elizabeth Diller and RicardoScofidio,

withDrawing Room, 1987

sensationaltogether.Likethe classicdreamof appearingnude

beforean audienceof completelyclothedviewers,life in spaces
is fraughtwithfrightening
wideopento the gazeof non-intimates
We experienced,therefore,a profoundchangein
vulnerability.
ourhome,involvedwithoureveryaction,dayandnight.Yet,the
becameonlymoderatelyunsettling.We
realityof self-exposure
moredelightedthaninweremorestimulatedthanembarrassed,
convenienced.41
These worksprovide possible strategiesof suppressingor
"undoing"the habitual;strategiesthat are not just theoretical, but that present ways of thinking that have led to real
experimentation.It is thinking about comfort that requires
a thinking about discomfort;for example, thinking about
what it means to be "atease," not only etymologically but
also subjectively.Comfort and easiness can be understood
today only in relation to what is not-homely:the unhomely,
which may sometimes be the uncanny. These thoughts
could lead to considerationsof those who do not have a
home, to notions of nomadicism or of homelessness. The
suppressionof the habitual is thus a powerful, dangerous
moment of knowledge.
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Teyssot

Notes
This paper was first presented at
the symposium Turning the House
Outside Out, AddressingDomestic
Space, American Institute of Architects, New YorkChapter, 1993, and
again in the series Nuevos Modos de
Habitar (New modes of inhabiting),
Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos,
Valencia, Spain, 1995.
1. For interesting correlations
among the notions of the "everyday
lifeworld,"nostalgia, and repetition,
see Susan Stewart,On Longing:
Narrativesof the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir,the Collection
(Durham: Duke UniversityPress,
1993), 3-36, esp. 23: "Bythe narrative process of nostalgic reconstruction," observes Stewart,"the present
is denied and the past takes on an
authenticity of being, an authenticity which, ironically, it can achieve
only through narrative.Nostalgia is
a sadness without an object."
2. These themes were often discussed in one of my graduateseminars, "The Domestication of Space:
Disembodiment and Displacement
of Architecture,"at Princeton
University'sSchool of Architecture.
For her brilliant suggestions,I would
like to thank Catherine Seavitt (Fall
1994). See Reinhard Kuhn, The Demon of Noontide:Ennui in Western
Literature(Princeton: Princeton
UniversityPress, 1976), and Wolf
Lepenies, Melancholy and Society,
trans.JeremyGaines and Doris
Jones (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
UniversityPress, 1992).
3. See Giorgio Agamben, Stanzas:
Wordand Phantasmin Western
Culture, trans.Ronald L. Martinez
(Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 1993); esp. the firstsection, "The Phantasmsof Eros,"
3-28. On acedia, tristitia,taedium
vitae, see 4ff.; for a discussion of

Baudelaire,the dandy, and melancholy, see 8 n. 4. Agamben points

out that Heidegger uses the filiae
acediae, evocative of patristicstudies, in his analysisof the quotidian:
evagatio mentisbecomes escape,
diversion, entertainment;verbositas,
idle talk;curiositas,curiositythat
"searchesfor that which is new only
to jump once more towardthat
which is yet newer";instability,the
"impossibilityof pausing,"the constant availabilityof distraction,5.
On melancholy and its treatment
before Sigmund Freud, see 11-28.
4. Walter Benjamin, "Trauerspiel
und Trag6die,"vol. 2, bk. 1, of
Gesammelte Schriften(Frankfurt
am Main: SuhrkampVerlag, 1970),

133-37.
5. Walter Benjamin, The Origin of
German Tragic Drama, trans. John
Osborne (London and New York:
Verso, 1990). In German Trauerspiel suggests "mournful representation," as distinguished from tragedy.
Trauerspielhas as its object history
and not myth, even if, given the baroque vanity of every temporal being, history is for Trauerspielmore
"naturalhistory"or "destiny,"an allegory of the precariousnessof every
worldly power. On baroque Trauerspiel, Calder6n de la Barca'stheater, the romantic tragediesof fate
(Schicksaltrag6die),and their reading in Benjamin and Brecht, see
"Puppet Play and Trauerspiel,"in
Rainer Nagele, Theater,Theory,
Speculation: Walter Benjamin and
the Scenes of Modernity(Baltimore
and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 12ff.
6. The work of mourning (Freud's
Trauersarbeit)recognizes the tragedy, literally a Trauerspiel:the playing of the partof a mourner, the
mournful play. See Sarah Kofman,
Me'lancoliede l'art (Paris:Galil6e,
1985), 86. As an artistic representa-

tion, the lamentation of the baroque drama will take the form of
words uttered on the platform, but,
from the seventeenth century onward, it will mutate into music, into
teatrodell'opera,the operatic form.
Soren Kierkegaarddescribed a similar transposition:"A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by
secret sufferings,but whose lips are
so strangelyformed that when the
sighs and the cries escape them,
they sound like beautiful music"
(Kierkegaard,Either-Or[1843];
quoted by Philip Sandblom, Creativity and Disease [New York:
Marion Boyars, 1992], 24).
7. Walter Benjamin, Das PassagenWerk,ed. Rolf Tiedemann, vol. 5,
bks. 1 and 2, of the Gesammelte
Schriften (Frankfurtam Main:
SuhrkampVerlag, 1982), bk. 1,
D2a, 4, 162. See also Siegfried
Kracauer,"Boredom"(1924), in
The Mass Ornament:Weimar
Essays, ed. and trans.Thomas Y.
Levin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
UniversityPress, 1995), 331-34.
8. Louis Veuillot, Les Odeursde
Paris (Paris, 1914); cited by Benjamin, Passagen-Werk,bk. 1, D2, 2,
160.
9. See, for example, Benedetta
Craveri, Madame du Deffand e
il suo mondo (Milan: Adelphi
Edizioni, 1982), 141-53, 338, for a
discussion of ennui as a "disease of
the soul." One can cite Madame du
Deffand's letter to Horace Walpole
of 1 May 1771: "Everyoneis bored,
no one is sufficient to himself, and
it is this detestable boredom, by
which one is persecuted and which
one tries to escape, that sets everything in motion" (143). See also
Robert Mauzi, "Les Maladies de
l'ime au dix-huitieme siecle," Revue des sciences humaines, n.s. 100
(October-December 1960): 45993, and idem, L'Ide`ede bonheur

59

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dans la litteratureet la pensde

frangaisesau XVIIIesiecle (Paris:
Armand Colin, 1965).
10. See Roger Kempf, Dandies:
Baudelaireet cie (Paris:Seuil,
1977), and Charles Baudelaire,
"Le Dandy," in Le Peintrede la vie
modeme, in Oeuvrescomplates
(Paris:Gallimard, 1962), 1177-80.
Benjamin, Passagen-Werk,bk. 1,
D5, 3, 168, cites Baudelaire'sparaphrase of Guys in Le Peintre:"any
man ... who is boredin the midst of
the multitude, is an idiot!" See also
ibid., D4a, 2, 167, where Benjamin
cites Roger Callois, "Paris,mythe
moderne," Nouvelle revuefrangaise
25, no. 284 (1 May 1937): 695 and
697: "Romanticismleads to a theory
of boredom, the modem sentiment
of life to a theory of power, or, at
least of energy."
11. Ibid., M5, 8, 538.
12. See Ibid., O ["Prostitution,
Games], all entries, 612-42. Of
particularinterest is 012a, 2: "The
significance of time for the intoxication of the gambler has already
been evaluated by Gourdon, and
similarly by Anatole France. Both,
however, only notice what significance time has for the gambler's
pleasure in his easy-come-easy-go
profit that multiplies itself a hundred fold through the countless
spending possibilities that remain
open-ended, and especially through
the one real one that multiplies itself a hundred fold as mise en jeu in
the imagination. Neither Gourdon
nor France, however, notice the significance time has for the operation
of gambling itself. The game's entertainment value is indeed quite
a different matter.A game is increasingly entertaining the more
abruptlyriskmanifests itself, and
the smaller the number or the
shorterthe sequence of combinations that can be placed during the

assemblage 30

course of a game (des coups). In

other words:the higher the risk
component the fasterthe game
moves. This condition is decisive
where the issue is the determination
of that which causes the real 'intoxication' of the gambler. It is based
on the peculiarity of gambling to
provoke the presence of mind by revealing in quick sequence constellations that appeal, independent of
each other, to a quite new, original
reaction of the gambler. This fact is
reflected in the habit of the gambler
to place the bet, if possible, only at
the last moment. This is simultaneously the moment in which there
is only space left for a purely reflective behavior. This reflective behavior of the gambler excludes the
'interpretation'of chance. Rather,
the gambler reactsto chance like
the knee reacts to the hammer in
the patellar reflex."Of equal interest is 014, 4: "The ideal experience
of shock is catastrophe."His ultimate account of the theory of shock
is found in "Obereinige Motive
bei Baudelaire,"in Gesammelte
Schriften, 1: bk. 2, 605-53. See also
the critical edition of Benjamin's
writings on Baudelaire in Walter
Benjamin, Ecritsfranqais(Paris:
Editions Gallimard, 1991), 231-45.
13. ArthurSchopenhauer;quoted by
Vladimir Jank6lvitch, L'Aventure,
l'ennui, le se'rieux(Paris:Montaigne/
Aubier, 1963), 136. From an etymological point of view, bore, in English, is a rathermysteriousword,
arising"after1750,"according to the
OxfordEnglish Dictionary.The first
citation of the noun boredomis from
1864. In English, the use of the
French word became fashionable
during the late seventeenth century.
Ennui, in French, traced to the
twelfth century, derivesfrom the
Latin in odio and inodiare,associated with the hatredof life. Ennui in

English is also related to older adaptations of the French word, such as

"annoyance"or "to annoy."Supposedly, ennui was specifically French,
just as spleen was assumed to be
typicallyEnglish.
14. Jankel6vitch,L'Aventure,
l'ennui, le se'rieux.For a biographical glance of the French philosopher, see idem, Une vie en toutes
lettres(Lettresa2Louis Beauduc,
1923-1980), ed. Franqoise Schwab
(Paris:Liana Levi, 1995).
15. Emile Tardieu, L'Ennui: Etude
psychologique,2d ed. (Paris:Alcan,
1913), 136.
16. Giacomo Leopardi,Zibaldoni,
frag. 1815, 13 September 1821. On
ennui, see also idem, Pensieri(1845;
Milan: Adelphi, 1982), 63-64.
17. Jean-Pierrede Crousaz, Traite'
du beau, chap. 7, "De l'empire de
la beaut6 sur nos sentiments";
cited by Baldine Saint-Girons,
Esthetiquesdu XVIIIe sikcle:Le
Moddle Frangais (Paris:Philippe
Sers Editeur, 1990), 59.
18. The term "aesthesis"(from
the French neologism esthe'sique)
used by Saint-Gironsis taken from
Jean Deprun, La Philosophie de
I'inquie'tude(Paris:Vrin, 1979),
chap. 5.
19. Claudette Seze, "Habiterdans
les 6toiles,"Autrement10 (January
1994): 62.
20. See Philippe Dard, "Le Destin
de la norme," in Du luxe au confort,
ed. Jean-PierreGoubert (n.p.:
Belin, 1988), 115-35, esp. 119.
21. Otto Fenichel, "On the Psychology of Boredom," in The Collected
Papersof Otto Fenichel (New York:
Norton, 1953), 292; quoted by
Patricia Meyer Spacks,Boredom:
The LiteraryHistoryof a State of
Mind (Chicago: Universityof Chi-

cago Press, 1995), 4-5.

22. Otto Fenichel; quoted by
Donald Moss in Documents 1-2
(Fall-Winter 1992): 84. In the same
issue, see Geoff Waite, "On the Politics of Boredom,"93-109. See also
Patrice Petro, "AfterShock: Between
Boredom and History,"in Fugitive
Images:FromPhotographyto Video,
ed. PatricePetro (Bloomington and
Indianapolis:Indiana University
Press, 1995), 265-84, where the
author'sinterestoscillates between
the categoriesof the boring and the
banal. On the banal, see Naomi
Segal, The Banal Object:Theme
and Thematicsin Proust,Rilke,
Hofmannsthal,and Sartre(London:
Universityof London, 1981).
23. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,Beyond Boredomand Anxiety (San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass,1975).
24. Orrin E. Klapp, Overloadand
Boredom:Essays on the Quality of
Life in the InformationSociety (New
York:Greenwood Press, 1986), 82.
25. See Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov,
trans. Natalie Duddington (New
York:Knopf, 1992).
26. Between 1776 and 1794, the social theory of collective happiness,
or eudaemonism,was developed by
JeremyBentham, who would define
moral obligation by reference to
personal well-being through a life
governed by reason. See John
Dinwiddy, Bentham (Oxford:Oxford UniversityPress, 1989).
27. Ulrike Brunotte, "Innerwelten/
Inner Worlds,"Daidalos 36 (June
1990), speaks of "Prinzipder
Spiegelung und Verdoppelung."
28. Benjamin, Passagen-Werk,bk.
1, D2a, 1.
29. Stephane Mallarme, "Igiturou
la folie d'Elbehnon," in Oeuvres
completes (Paris:Gallimard, 1985),

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440: "Le pass6 compris de sa race

qui pasesur lui en la sensation de
fini, I'heure de la pendule
precipitant cet ennui en temps
lourd, etouffant, et son attente de
l'accomplissement du futur,
forment du temps pur, ou de
l'ennui."; English trans. in Grange
Woolley, Stiphane Mallarmn,
1824-1898 (New Jersey:Madison,
1942), 161.
30. Theodor W. Adorno,
Kierkegaard:Constructionof the
Aesthetic (1933), trans. Robert
Hullot-Kentor(Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 1989),
chap. 2, "Constitutionof Inwardness," 41.
31. Ibid., 42: "Spiegel und Trauer
geh6ren darum zusammen."
32. Walter Benjamin, "Central
Park,"New German Critique 34
(Winter 1985): 37. From a historical point of view, see Martha Banta,
TayloredLives:NarrativeProductions in the Age of Taylor,Veblen,
and Ford (Chicago: Universityof
Chicago Press, 1993), esp. chap. 7,
"House Lives."
33. Friedrich Nietzsche; quoted by
Benjamin, "CentralPark,"37.
34. Gilles Deleuze, Differenceand
Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New
York:Columbia UniversityPress,
1994), 7, 94.
35. Wilfred R. Bion; quoted by
Adam Phillips, On Kissing,Tickling
and Being Bored:PsychoanalyticEssays on the UnexaminedLife (Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniversity
Press, 1993), 71.
36. Samuel Beckett, Marcel Proust
(Zurich, 1960); quoted by KristaR.
Greffrath,"Proustet Benjamin," in
WalterBenjamin et Paris, ed. Heinz
Wismann (Paris:Les Editions du
Cerf, 1986), 115.

Teyssot

37. The Multi-Bedswere shown by

the BarbaraGladstone Gallery,New
York,and by the Anne de Villepoix
Gallery, Paris.See also the exhibition cataloguesVito Acconci:A Retrospective,1969 to 1980 (Chicago:
Museum of ContemporaryArt,
1980); Vito Acconci:Domestic Trappings (La Jolla, Calif.: La Jolla Museum of ContemporaryArt, 1987);
and Vito Acconci (Grenoble:Centre
National d'ArtContemporain,and
Prato:Centro per l'ArteContemporaneaLuigi Pecci, 1991-92).

11. Mus6e des Beaux-Arts,Ostende.

12. Museum des bildenden Ktinste,
Leipzig.
15. Warner Brothers, 1986.
16. Photographcollection of
SalvatoreAla, Milan.
17, 18. BarbaraGladstone Gallery,
New York.
19, 20. David Ireland:A Decade
Documented, 1978-1988, exhibition
catalogue (Berkeley:Universityof
California, Berkeley, 1988-89).

38. See David Ireland:A Decade

Documented, 1978-1988, exhibition
catalogue (Berkeley:Universityof
California, Berkeley, 1988-89).

21, 22. Photographsby Georges

Teyssot.
23. Capp Street Project, San Francisco.

39. See Elizabeth Diller and

Ricardo Scofidio, Flesh:Architectural Probes,introductionby
Georges Teyssot (New York:
Princeton ArchitecturalPress, 1994).

24, 25. ContemporaryArts Forum,

Santa Barbara.

40. Home Show, ed. Dore Ashton

(Santa Barbara,Calif.: ContemporaryArts Forum, 1988), 17. A sequel, Home Show II, was organized
by the ContemporaryArtsForum in
the spring of this year. Many thanks
to Nancy Doll, CAF's director, for
sending their publications.
41. Ibid., 36.

Figure Credits
1. Orion Pictures Corp., 1989.
2-4. The Chemical Films Ltd.,
1995.
5. Mus6e d'Orsay,Paris.
6, 7. Privatecollection.
8. MagyarNemzeti Galeria,
Budapest.
9, 13, 14. The Tate Gallery,
London.
10. Museum fforKunsthandwerk,
Frankfurtam Main.

61

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