Prem Sahib
Semi-Permanent Interventions
2022
On the occasion of Magic Stop, an artistic occupation situated in l’èdicule de la Maladière in Lausanne, Prem Sahib’s Incubator will be viewable from the outside of the structure from sundown to sunrise every night from this Summer. When considering the naval trajectory embedded within this project’s historical research, Incubator suggests both a lighthouse, and the ‘blue light’ of surveillance, law enforcement, insomnia and device fatigue. Lighting up and then diminishing again, each time shedding a new light on its surroundings, Incubator is a roaming work that highlights the parameters of Magic Stop’s ground-level architecture while simultaneously narrating an imaginary overflow from the toilet downstairs.
Incubator is a nocturnal gesture that marks the first in a series of semi-permanent interventions in the space. It was first conceived for Mendes Wood in 2017, and will run in tandem with Magic Stop’s ongoing program until the end of the year.
Claudio Santoro: In our conversations leading up to this project, we often considered an invisible or ghost-like entity, like hidden plumbing, inclusive urbanism, an absent figure from an online chatroom. How real are those entities to you in your practice?
Prem Sahib: Ideas around presence have always been a big part of my thinking, so the question of how real these things are in my practice is an important one. Some of what you mentioned can seem elusive at first— things that are not immediately seen or noticed, like the plumbing of a building, urban planning decisions, or even the ghostly resonance of a person discussed through hearsay in an online chat room, but their existence can still have tangible effects on how we think about, understand, navigate, behave in, or experience a space.
I’ve explored some of these ideas quite differently within my practice more broadly. Like with the sweat paintings I make using resin (Descent, 2020), works that reify an otherwise transient moment of bodily contact with a wet surface, where near-invisible abstract interruptions on the surface look like they’ve arrived from outside of the painting, produced by a body that has pressed up close and left traces of touch. Or with light boxes (After Hours, 2015) that mimic public toilet windows, introducing spatial contexts that seem to exist beyond the here-and-now. Or with neon lights that are programmed to simulate breathing. Even through processes such as casting— replicating objects in materials that sit at odds with their intended function, restricting or inhibiting them in ways that reveal something about where they come from, or how we might think of them to act. Or by creating facsimile environments, or by implanting narrative suggestions through posters that hint at alternate possibilities or fictitious happenings… I could go on.
But returning to your original question, I guess all these things amount to a kind of investigation into how the built environment can manipulate the way we move around, interact and feel. In considering this, I am always interested in how surfaces and materials collude in the process of producing certain realities, but also how they can be exploited or unsettled in ways that challenge the rigidity of the distinctions that maintain what is made possible, imaginable, or allowed in a space.
I think it’s sometimes assumed that space is experienced in the same way by everyone, or that space is made for everyone, but this is often a question of design, or rather who or what, is or isn’t part of the design. I want to reflect the multiplicities of realities that are complicated, sometimes contradictory and nuanced. Ghosts, then, might become reminders of a not so distant past, a kind of anti-sanitisation device that can infect or haunt the present. Just as hidden parts of a building might demystify the workings of a larger system, where we might even draw parallels with our own bodies, systems in themselves that architecture seeks to contain, where plumbing can be reimagined as veins, or walls as membranes that separate or hold certain actions.
But how ‘real’ something is can also be what qualifies it to be surveyed, managed and controlled. So, I’m equally interested in what that space of elusiveness and non-presence can afford, and how something might exist on the margins of meaning and being. This is partly why I’ve been drawn to using abstraction with some of my work.
When you first invited me to be involved in the project, Incubator was always one of my initial thoughts for the space for a number of reasons, both practical and conceptual. The work is comprised of a very direct gesture— of filling the entirety of the space with a blue light, allowing it to take on a kind of physicality. But as we soon discovered, there are crevices that light can’t always reach, because for instance we couldn’t get electricity into parts of the space, like downstairs beneath the glass structure that exists at ground level. But I was excited to learn that this less visible space underground, is a disused public toilet facility. Initially I wanted the blue light to leak into all of the space, in a way that outlined the parameters of the architecture. Despite the fact that Incubator only occupies the space as seen at ground level, this particular tone of blue still carries an indexical relationship to the space below it that interested me.
I had initially been drawn to this colour because it reminded me of an urban design strategy that is used as a deterrent for certain types of ‘antisocial behaviour’. In London, I would see a similar colour awash in estate corridors and public toilets, where (black light) is supposedly used to discourage intravenous drug use by obscuring the visibility of veins. This is of course a questionable and hostile example of a spatial intervention. Some studies have even outlined that it can create even more harmful conditions for drug users. It was these types of considerations, to do with access, exclusion, design, use and displacement that were part of some of my initial thinking with this proposal.
CS: We decided that these interventions will develop gradually based on our conversations and influences over time, starting with Incubator in the summer. Does adding duration as a dimension of the work alter its meaning to you somehow?
PS: Duration is already a big part of the work, since the blue light only illuminates the space at night. I have only shown this work once previously and that was in a commercial gallery where it was exhibited alongside a nest-like sculpture I made called Heron (2017). In that situation, the two titles suggested a relationship of something being nurtured or growing in the space. In this new context, the work will now share the space with different exhibitions for the duration of the program, so for half the day it will create a new lighting condition for the works inside to bask in, or a lens through which they can be viewed. It is important for me that Incubator always positions the viewer on the outside of the space looking in. Because it is public facing, it can be viewed by anyone passing-by, so I hope its duration also disrupts the usual gallery and museum models for audience engagement.
I think every opportunity to exhibit the work creates shifts in its meanings and I’m very happy for this to be in constant flux. For me, it keeps the work alive and makes it more dialogical. Like Liquid Gold (a similar premise with yellow light), I see Incubator as a ‘roaming’ work, by this I mean it is always moving into new contexts and never settles. Perhaps the work itself is actually an accumulation of all these iterations over time, endlessly lighting up and then diminishing again, each time shedding new light on its surroundings. It’s uncertain how the work will operate until we try it. We might find that the light becomes a nuisance for people? Or maybe it will make the space a temporary landmark? I guess the extended duration allows me to react and nudge the direction of the work depending on how it speaks back in this context. It’s definitely an opportunity to be more experimental and test things live. I already feel that its title becomes more suggestive of anticipation, about what exactly is being incubated and what if anything, might ultimately emerge.
Iacopo Spini: We asked you to consider the historical references related to the Maladière when thinking about works in the space. The aedicula is located near Roman remains and the Olympic headquarters, which is today a connecting area between the city of Lausanne and the lakefront. It is a transitory place that people walk through to get to the beach Tired bus drivers walk up and down the Maladière steps before finishing their shifts, pedestrians too, curiously or by mistake. The structure is a spontaneous urban shelter due to its special configuration. What interested you from this research and how did it translate into thoughts about a spatial intervention?
PS: There were many things from the research you shared that interested me. You described the Maladière as existing within a ‘naval universe’, structurally sharing similarities with Jacques Piccard’s design for a submarine. This made me think more about its proximity to the beach and the otherworldliness that is implicit in its design. I was aware that the relationship with a blue light may bring some codified associations to water, both from the lake as well as a kind of imaginary overflow from the toilet below. But also within this ‘naval’ trajectory and space made for the flow of associations, I began to think of the illuminated structure as a lighthouse, with its extended blinking on and off each day signalling a shift in use. Especially based on what you told me about the location being quite transitory, a place predominantly used by people waiting to get elsewhere, or by those who might be finishing late shifts. For me there is also something about the ‘blue light’ (not just a literal blue) and its contemporary associations to the relentless staying awake, of work, of not being able to sleep, of non-stop scrolling and the centrality of screens in our lives, all of which feel related to this nocturnal light, which in some ways appears specifically for those who are awake while others are asleep. You had also mentioned the panopticon to me, which was originally a disciplinary and observational device. It might be a stretch, but I couldn’t help but think about the blue light of law enforcement, when considering surveillance or the regulation of public space. It was also interesting to learn of the aedicula, an ancient shine, and what connotations this brought to the idea of presence, immateriality and transcendence.
The work of Prem Sahib (b. 1982 in London) embodies a poetic and provocative "destabilised minimalism". It references the architecture of public and private spaces, structures that shape individual and communal identities, senses of belonging, alienation and confinement. Mixing the personal and political, abstraction and figuration, his formalism is suggestive of the body as well as its absence, drawing attention to traces of touch and frameworks of looking.
Sahib’s work has been shown widely including solo institutional exhibitions Balconies, Kunstverein Hamburg, 2017 and Side On, ICA London, 2015, as well in group shows at spaces that include Sharjah Art Foundation, Migros Museum, Whitechapel Gallery, Hayward Gallery, KW Institute of Art, Des Moines Art Centre and the Gwangju Biennale. His work is in the collections of Tate, The Arts Council, Government Art Collection, UK, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Norway, MONA, Australia.
Prem Sahib, Semi-Permanent Interventions, installation view at Magic Stop, Lausanne, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Magic Stop.
Prem Sahib
Semi-Permanent Interventions
2022
On the occasion of Magic Stop, an artistic occupation situated in l’èdicule de la Maladière in Lausanne, Prem Sahib’s Incubator will be viewable from the outside of the structure from sundown to sunrise every night from this Summer. When considering the naval trajectory embedded within this project’s historical research, Incubator suggests both a lighthouse, and the ‘blue light’ of surveillance, law enforcement, insomnia and device fatigue. Lighting up and then diminishing again, each time shedding a new light on its surroundings, Incubator is a roaming work that highlights the parameters of Magic Stop’s ground-level architecture while simultaneously narrating an imaginary overflow from the toilet downstairs.
Incubator is a nocturnal gesture that marks the first in a series of semi-permanent interventions in the space. It was first conceived for Mendes Wood in 2017, and will run in tandem with Magic Stop’s ongoing program until the end of the year.
Claudio Santoro: In our conversations leading up to this project, we often considered an invisible or ghost-like entity, like hidden plumbing, inclusive urbanism, an absent figure from an online chatroom. How real are those entities to you in your practice?
Prem Sahib: Ideas around presence have always been a big part of my thinking, so the question of how real these things are in my practice is an important one. Some of what you mentioned can seem elusive at first— things that are not immediately seen or noticed, like the plumbing of a building, urban planning decisions, or even the ghostly resonance of a person discussed through hearsay in an online chat room, but their existence can still have tangible effects on how we think about, understand, navigate, behave in, or experience a space.
I’ve explored some of these ideas quite differently within my practice more broadly. Like with the sweat paintings I make using resin (Descent, 2020), works that reify an otherwise transient moment of bodily contact with a wet surface, where near-invisible abstract interruptions on the surface look like they’ve arrived from outside of the painting, produced by a body that has pressed up close and left traces of touch. Or with light boxes (After Hours, 2015) that mimic public toilet windows, introducing spatial contexts that seem to exist beyond the here-and-now. Or with neon lights that are programmed to simulate breathing. Even through processes such as casting— replicating objects in materials that sit at odds with their intended function, restricting or inhibiting them in ways that reveal something about where they come from, or how we might think of them to act. Or by creating facsimile environments, or by implanting narrative suggestions through posters that hint at alternate possibilities or fictitious happenings… I could go on.
But returning to your original question, I guess all these things amount to a kind of investigation into how the built environment can manipulate the way we move around, interact and feel. In considering this, I am always interested in how surfaces and materials collude in the process of producing certain realities, but also how they can be exploited or unsettled in ways that challenge the rigidity of the distinctions that maintain what is made possible, imaginable, or allowed in a space.
I think it’s sometimes assumed that space is experienced in the same way by everyone, or that space is made for everyone, but this is often a question of design, or rather who or what, is or isn’t part of the design. I want to reflect the multiplicities of realities that are complicated, sometimes contradictory and nuanced. Ghosts, then, might become reminders of a not so distant past, a kind of anti-sanitisation device that can infect or haunt the present. Just as hidden parts of a building might demystify the workings of a larger system, where we might even draw parallels with our own bodies, systems in themselves that architecture seeks to contain, where plumbing can be reimagined as veins, or walls as membranes that separate or hold certain actions.
But how ‘real’ something is can also be what qualifies it to be surveyed, managed and controlled. So, I’m equally interested in what that space of elusiveness and non-presence can afford, and how something might exist on the margins of meaning and being. This is partly why I’ve been drawn to using abstraction with some of my work.
When you first invited me to be involved in the project, Incubator was always one of my initial thoughts for the space for a number of reasons, both practical and conceptual. The work is comprised of a very direct gesture— of filling the entirety of the space with a blue light, allowing it to take on a kind of physicality. But as we soon discovered, there are crevices that light can’t always reach, because for instance we couldn’t get electricity into parts of the space, like downstairs beneath the glass structure that exists at ground level. But I was excited to learn that this less visible space underground, is a disused public toilet facility. Initially I wanted the blue light to leak into all of the space, in a way that outlined the parameters of the architecture. Despite the fact that Incubator only occupies the space as seen at ground level, this particular tone of blue still carries an indexical relationship to the space below it that interested me.
I had initially been drawn to this colour because it reminded me of an urban design strategy that is used as a deterrent for certain types of ‘antisocial behaviour’. In London, I would see a similar colour awash in estate corridors and public toilets, where (black light) is supposedly used to discourage intravenous drug use by obscuring the visibility of veins. This is of course a questionable and hostile example of a spatial intervention. Some studies have even outlined that it can create even more harmful conditions for drug users. It was these types of considerations, to do with access, exclusion, design, use and displacement that were part of some of my initial thinking with this proposal.
CS: We decided that these interventions will develop gradually based on our conversations and influences over time, starting with Incubator in the summer. Does adding duration as a dimension of the work alter its meaning to you somehow?
PS: Duration is already a big part of the work, since the blue light only illuminates the space at night. I have only shown this work once previously and that was in a commercial gallery where it was exhibited alongside a nest-like sculpture I made called Heron (2017). In that situation, the two titles suggested a relationship of something being nurtured or growing in the space. In this new context, the work will now share the space with different exhibitions for the duration of the program, so for half the day it will create a new lighting condition for the works inside to bask in, or a lens through which they can be viewed. It is important for me that Incubator always positions the viewer on the outside of the space looking in. Because it is public facing, it can be viewed by anyone passing-by, so I hope its duration also disrupts the usual gallery and museum models for audience engagement.
I think every opportunity to exhibit the work creates shifts in its meanings and I’m very happy for this to be in constant flux. For me, it keeps the work alive and makes it more dialogical. Like Liquid Gold (a similar premise with yellow light), I see Incubator as a ‘roaming’ work, by this I mean it is always moving into new contexts and never settles. Perhaps the work itself is actually an accumulation of all these iterations over time, endlessly lighting up and then diminishing again, each time shedding new light on its surroundings. It’s uncertain how the work will operate until we try it. We might find that the light becomes a nuisance for people? Or maybe it will make the space a temporary landmark? I guess the extended duration allows me to react and nudge the direction of the work depending on how it speaks back in this context. It’s definitely an opportunity to be more experimental and test things live. I already feel that its title becomes more suggestive of anticipation, about what exactly is being incubated and what if anything, might ultimately emerge.
Iacopo Spini: We asked you to consider the historical references related to the Maladière when thinking about works in the space. The aedicula is located near Roman remains and the Olympic headquarters, which is today a connecting area between the city of Lausanne and the lakefront. It is a transitory place that people walk through to get to the beach Tired bus drivers walk up and down the Maladière steps before finishing their shifts, pedestrians too, curiously or by mistake. The structure is a spontaneous urban shelter due to its special configuration. What interested you from this research and how did it translate into thoughts about a spatial intervention?
PS: There were many things from the research you shared that interested me. You described the Maladière as existing within a ‘naval universe’, structurally sharing similarities with Jacques Piccard’s design for a submarine. This made me think more about its proximity to the beach and the otherworldliness that is implicit in its design. I was aware that the relationship with a blue light may bring some codified associations to water, both from the lake as well as a kind of imaginary overflow from the toilet below. But also within this ‘naval’ trajectory and space made for the flow of associations, I began to think of the illuminated structure as a lighthouse, with its extended blinking on and off each day signalling a shift in use. Especially based on what you told me about the location being quite transitory, a place predominantly used by people waiting to get elsewhere, or by those who might be finishing late shifts. For me there is also something about the ‘blue light’ (not just a literal blue) and its contemporary associations to the relentless staying awake, of work, of not being able to sleep, of non-stop scrolling and the centrality of screens in our lives, all of which feel related to this nocturnal light, which in some ways appears specifically for those who are awake while others are asleep. You had also mentioned the panopticon to me, which was originally a disciplinary and observational device. It might be a stretch, but I couldn’t help but think about the blue light of law enforcement, when considering surveillance or the regulation of public space. It was also interesting to learn of the aedicula, an ancient shine, and what connotations this brought to the idea of presence, immateriality and transcendence.
The work of Prem Sahib (b. 1982 in London) embodies a poetic and provocative "destabilised minimalism". It references the architecture of public and private spaces, structures that shape individual and communal identities, senses of belonging, alienation and confinement. Mixing the personal and political, abstraction and figuration, his formalism is suggestive of the body as well as its absence, drawing attention to traces of touch and frameworks of looking.
Sahib’s work has been shown widely including solo institutional exhibitions Balconies, Kunstverein Hamburg, 2017 and Side On, ICA London, 2015, as well in group shows at spaces that include Sharjah Art Foundation, Migros Museum, Whitechapel Gallery, Hayward Gallery, KW Institute of Art, Des Moines Art Centre and the Gwangju Biennale. His work is in the collections of Tate, The Arts Council, Government Art Collection, UK, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Norway, MONA, Australia.
Prem Sahib, Semi-Permanent Interventions, installation view at Magic Stop, Lausanne, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Magic Stop.