The Comfort of Things and The Performance of Homelessness

Thursday, 6th July, 2023
Conference Paper, Presented
The Politics of Housing (6th - 7th July)
Panel 2: Agency with Mark Sister and Professor Paul Watt
The University of East London
Written and Presented by Andrew Martin Lee
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-politics-of-housing-6-7th-july-tickets-638780799567

The Midnight Florist Collective’s performance of The Comfort of Things (2017) was an autobiographic account of the lead artist’s experiences of rough sleeping and housing vulnerability, performed whilst the artist was still living in the situation on which the performance was built. This performance-presentation will seek to explore the wider cultural questions raised by the situation of homelessness through the lens of performed autobiographic experience and will reflect on the artist’s continuing experience of housing precarity.

The performance-presentation, like the performance that inspired it, will draw from Daniel Miller's The Comfort of Things (2008) and Stuff (2010) to explore housing as a concept of luxury rather than human right, and how, through that lens, capitalism’s modes of production and profit renders the regular social function of the home defunct. The presentation will be delivered as a practice-as-reasearch enquiry involving ‘performative’ elements.