Through my research I encountered over and over a method that I did not consider: memory. Faced with a stagnant space, I engaged with it in a way that challenged how I previously viewed the Contact Lens Room at my part time job. While regarded by many as a space of transience and of little interest, I took the time to sit with it and discover its charm, similar to George Perec’s ‘The Street’ and ‘The Neighbourhood’ from his work Species of Spaces and Other Places (1974). Perec examines the ordinary, unnoticed aspects of urban life, which inspired me to follow a similar theme in my work. In The Street, Georges Perec uses observation as a method of capturing memory—by writing down every small detail of the street, he preserves its essence in a way that otherwise might be forgotten. This use of memory as a way of partaking in not only documenting but encouraging your mind to recollect a space was very enlightening to me, as I found my mind naturally filled in gaps with information it assumed instead of recalled. The contact lens room, much like the street in Perec’s work, is a place of unnoticed significance, where people pass through, but few stop to reflect on its role in their daily lives.
As for the process of my investigation, I was inspired by Agnès Varda’s ‘The Gleaners and I’ (2000) to approach my space from an observational point of view. Varda’s documentary, The Gleaners and I, follows the lives of modern-day gleaners, people who collect discarded food, often in fields or on city streets. Through her lens, Varda turns these acts of gleaning into a meditation on human survival, poverty, and resilience. Varda does this by interviewing and observing the gleaners as the work, which inspired me to take a similar approach. As my space cannot speak, I decided to observe the space as I sat in it and interview people who did the same, my coworkers. Due to the fact these interviews were short and oftentimes during our shift, I was unable to write them down, this is where my memory as a method comes in.
Both Varda and Perec use detailed observation to show how much meaning can be found in the ordinary. The tone of both works—thoughtful and reflective—invites the audience to slow down and reconsider the details of their own lives. Similarly, my research on memories of unimportant places mirrors the way both texts highlight the beauty in things we might otherwise dismiss. Unimportant places, like an empty street or an underused room, hold memories we might forget if we don’t take the time to notice them. These places are important because they carry moments of our lives, even if they seem trivial at first glance. Just as the gleaners in Varda’s film find sustenance in discarded items, we can find meaning in spaces that seem to have no value.