Hospitality is something that we face on an everyday basis and at the same time it is a term and a topic that has an array of theories. However we understand hospitality, it’s indisputable that it involves a host, a guest, and a place where they have a chance to meet each other. Following Derridean writing, the moment of the meeting is characterised as an ‘encounter’, something that has the potential to change all parties concerned. The writing below looks behind-the-scenes to consider how artist residences, as agents of hospitality, process, act and think. It illustrates the impossibility of acting institutionally, where the experience of personal encounter is missing.

I
I am closing a door – automatically, mechanically, unconsciously... normally, in the way that I always do. I don’t think about how smoothly the key moves in its keyhole, how my hands don’t need to press anything, or how my eyes discern enough light in the twilight to be able to see. I throw the key into the pocket of my bag and I notice something quite big and round in there. I am not sure yet – it is not entirely tangible, or perhaps I’m not fully awake – but it seems this time I carry a thread ball with me.

It is easy to forget about what you carry in your bag, and the ball dissolves in my urgent thoughts and cloudy mind. I am heading from A to B, thinking about numerous but dispersed things. I follow my needs occasionally, even if just routine. Once I am back home, I abruptly recall that I should have written up the route. I take a piece of paper and start drawing.
When I look at my rough sketch I see a sort of constellation, so utterly expanded that it would be an overstatement to call it intelligible. I guess I have included some extra stars. I try to remove some, but all of them claim that they are indispensable.

They don’t yield, not one. In fact, the opposite happens: each time I make an effort to erase a simple pen dot, it grows to a glittering star.

I name my stars: pharmacy, grocery shop, friend’s gallery, gym, restaurant, fruit shop, chocolaterie delivery point, post office, the place where I used to work, a coffeeshop that I especially like. Another coffeeshop that I don’t like that much, but where there are always people to chat with. A museum, a residency, a place that I could call my office, and a place that I definitely can call my home.

The next morning, I focus on that ball of thread. I allow it to follow my steps and draw my path. It runs behind me, independent and faithful. I cast a glance back and I see that it is forming a line. Not exactly a straight one – one that loops and sways – but still, a line that is very much capable of tracing out the direction of my route. It doesn’t matter how long my stroll will last. The thread is stubbornly real enough to become more than my shadow.

When I’m back home I lay out its woven line on the table in front of me. I try to unbend it, to unfold unnecessary polygons, to cleanse my docile thread of add-ons, to cut fringes and to rectify turns. I clear it all up, and then I overlay all my drawings. This way I create the most reliable map I am able to make. My personal experience is packed down into it, ready to share, as is my attitude to home, as is my approach to the place I am about to gift to the guest I am awaiting.

II
If I were to present myself as a home in which someone lives, I could situate myself in any corner of the world. Imagining myself as a home, I would enjoy seeing myself as a freely moving portal, always readily available to those who reside in it. Like a crazy Willy Wonka glass elevator, I would travel through space following the sum of the wills of those who randomly inhabit me. I would waver in drowsy gaps of time, catching the amazed gazes of casual passers-by.

I would welcome guests, and my first guest would be Amphitryon, the hospitable host – the one who is desperate to outline my borders, to feel my interiors.
I would sleep under forgotten blankets and
I would shiver when not feeling enough love and I would thrive when crowned by friendship and gilded by the laborious persistence of my current hosts.
I would sweep my threshold with a broom, keeping it neat and tidy and ready for any welcoming gesture – for an opening smile, for forthcoming warmth, for air to share.
I would fantasize about being someone who cherishes, who sways the cradle as the music diminishes from rain to drizzle and slowly dies away, its echoes mesmerizing.
I would be a sacred asylum, bringing brilliant disguises to cover up, conceal, hide, and camouflage.

I would change the masks, maintaining them gold and polished. I would be incredibly good at developing mimetic features. Well, indeed, I would be a chameleon. I could be the best person to find a secret place in the middle of the woods. I could become as transparent as trembling water sub- merging a peaceful meadow. I would dazzle myself by being properly conventional when I assimilate myself with peaceful, fatigued city buildings.

A sensible, reasonable question would be to ask how big I would be. In some countries they say: it doesn’t matter how big the house is, when your heart is big. I can’t agree – well, not completely. It would matter that the house be spacious enough to ensure my welcoming smile. I would do my best to enlarge the smallest corners I possess. I would prefer this place to be an ideal home, but the ideal is not what I am – it is what I become only when people enter my premises.

III
I have arrived, I am finally here! At least now I can refresh myself. Yes, that is what I need. I have to confess, I am quite fastidious about my surroundings, how everything is set up and cleaned. Travelling for me is always a weird combination of disgust and joy. I don’t need much, any bed is okay, but blankets, even if I don’t use them, I need to have more than one. Because, obviously, it can be very cold when you are alone somewhere you have never been before.

Well, right now I could sleep anywhere – I am so tired after taxi – plane – waiting – plane – train. A sure measurement for my travelling tiredness: I can’t turn on the shower. I don’t know why, even a basic shower system magically converts into a spacecraft control panel when I’m this fatigued. Curtains are also important, but I never have problems with them.

The next morning I wake up early, I’m hungry. It’s still dark and I can’t find a light switch. Moving clumsily around, I reach a kitchen area. A fridge is always the noisiest operator, so it’s easy to find, even with your eyes closed. Actually, my course towards the fridge is purely intuitive, but full of hope – I haven’t put anything in there because my flight last night was – as always – delayed. Lucky me! I discover a parcel left for me (for me?), I guess, by my hosts. There is everything one might need for a proper breakfast!

The fridge’s magic solves everything. I find out how to turn on the light, serve myself a generous breakfast, pour coffee. There are some papers on the table, it seems these are the maps – quite rough but somehow also very careful, almost meticulous, plans of the surroundings of my temporary home. Hm, interesting. First, I adapt this temporary dwelling to my taste by moving some small things around and by unpacking properly. Next, I take a map, step outside, and try to follow the path of my host, using the maps. They have some very personal instructions scribbled in the margins (maybe not for me?).

IV
The three sketches above represent the three subjectivities we meet when practicing hospitality: host, home, guest. The imagined situation conveys the arrival of a resident to a residence. This narrative moves through the thoughts of a residency manager or curator (no doubt a person on the verge of burnout), whose task is to create a kind of perfect environment for a coming guest. Then it takes up the fantasies of some hybrid object which is eager to become an ideal home. Then, finally, it follows the first blind steps of a resident who has just arrived.

The encounter is a key notion for any theorization of hospitality. Yet these three given situations testify to loneliness rather than to togetherness. The reality of the encounter doesn’t give a hint of the loneliness of those present. So, in the first story we see someone who tends to act mechanically, who isn’t resourceful enough to be proactive in giving. Still, we can hope that through rounds of wondering preparation this person will find that their reason for doing this work will slowly return. The home is so ready to be a home, that we already know that none of its real becomings can be satisfying. Our third protagonist is someone who became a guest, but the moment of this becoming: of entering the house, trespassing, stepping over the threshold – is omitted in his tired speech.

The humans described here suffer from endless fatigue, and the main (and only) object is intentionally animated. The magic of hospitality is left unspoken. Perhaps the real experience of hospitality is one of these moments of our life we shouldn’t even try to put in words: the most thorough description wouldn’t capture it. Words only beat around the bush. They thrive on tons of pages that seek to formalise the ethics of being hospitably polite and correct, but they will never touch the ground of the real encounter.

Hospitality is always personal: institutional hospitality is merely a concept. Ideally, we’d forget about it or just ignore it. Behind any kind of institutional collaboration and interaction, we are always looking for a personal touch. And so, building confidence between institutions is only possible on a personal level. The contracts must be signed, but mutual understanding lies beyond that. True meetings and productive experiences can arise between people and people, people and spaces, or people and artworks, but never between abstract entities. Residences are rarely more than small bodies and they must not confine themselves, like beautiful shells, to be attractive and captivating, but enclosed by their own layers of formalities. Probably, what we are searching for is a silent encounter, a dialogue from pearl to pearl. A silent, but life-enhancing one.