Fire at Interim, Oakland, CA. June 2017    Untitled (California), 2017 Aluminum, oak, light fixture 72" x 16" x 16"  Lot, 2017 xerox on paper dimensions variable   Untitled, 2017 found smoke detector    Axeman, 2016 Digital C Print 5"x7"   A university building housing multiple departments at Laney College held a vacancy in late 2016. Peralta Community College District’s Laney College is funded annually by federal and state education budgets in combination with student tuition. Each year the college’s needs are assessed, and compensated by a raise in tuition, taxes, or reallocation of existing holdings. Surplus in a university budget is rare. Bucket whose rim is as high as its contents. Bracing for annual budget assessment departments will fill vacancies to maximize budgets, and in this case a single office was designated for interim use. In this instance a current employee without a promotion was relocated to this interim office space. The department is able to retain the multi-use office space without losing next year’s funding. In this way the department is able to manipulate its workforce to extract the same employee’s time twice to fill an office and the annual budget requirements until a new hire is elected. Movement and production come at a toll. Moving through tolls you become liable for payment of that toll. In some jurisdictions tolls are not physical barriers. Shifting goods, populations and property can be taxed as a way to accrue capital funding for infrastructure, campuses, museums and such. In 2014 a neighboring University of California, Berkeley closed it’s museum’s doors for good. Berkeley Art Museum closed in 2014 due to being seismically unfit for continued use. Since then the university erected a new museum across campus, the old facility has become a candidate for continued multiuse space. Exploiting the captivity, and fining movement of assets is a form of governance. In the case of this office it’s being used in resistance to the college’s governance. In its stasis this office has avoided the inevitable reallocation of its ownership, and avoided being fined. I have composed an inventory listing the brief holdings of the office. This includes the current resale value, and funding source of each item within the office. I have also provided a number of fixtures that can either be adopted by the College of Alameda, or be returned after their limited lease. I have loaned a smoke detector, a standing lamp that I made, and a photograph of the loading dock of Berkeley Art Museum and Film Archive. |