A Room of One’s Own

About

A Room of One’s Own functions as an “apparatus” to unlock all the restraints accumulated during the lockdown. Entering this room, you will be trapped again in an enclosed space, but this time for only a short period, until the apparatus works its magic. An apparatus is described by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben as literally anything that has in some way the capacity to change the behaviours of living beings. For Agamben an apparatus is a school, prison, madhouse, factory, museum, and - Urso would like to add - art installation. From the outside A Room of One’s Own appears to be a tiny black cube, but when inside the installation expands and extends the space beyond its claustrophobic walls which then reveals the outside world to the watchers. Kept in a yellow vessel for safe keeping, A Room of One’s Own is gently taken out by Urso and carefully carried around to give a chance to the watchers that are “inside-the-cube” to see St Pancras from a different point of view. After the exploration has reached its climax, the cube is placed back inside its vessel; and finally, the watchers can leave the apparatus. Provoking emotions by using immersive and sensory installations is central to Urso’s art. In his works, Urso aims to explore the intangible contradictions that linger underneath our longestablished beliefs. Questioning the way we relate to reality, he turns statues and symbols upside-down, overlaps sounds and languages, and utilizes surveillance cameras to encourage and enable self-perception. Urso has created installations that challenge our perceptions of the way we see, hear, and express fear; and he is particularly interested in seeing how those installations affect the behaviour and movement of people responding to his work. People crave predictability in their life, but in A Room of One’s Own any predictability is denied, leaving room only for wonderment.