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It all begins with an apartment and some of my frustrations with feeling captive by the limitations of a few square meters. It’s in these situations that common sense might lead one to an awareness that form is as much a subjective limitation as it is a physical one. For example, we know well that Modernist architecture often aspired to make us think and act in ideal ways, but the feelings of alienation, despair, or boredom are its melancholic symptoms—its obverse, unintended affects. Lauren Berlant succinctly summed this up with what she calls cruel optimism:

A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. It might involve food, or a kind of love; it might be a fantasy of the good life, or a political project. It might rest on something simpler, too, like a new habit that promises to induce in you an improved way of being. These kinds of optimistic relations are not inherently cruel. They become cruel only when the object that draws your attachment actively im­pedes the aim that brought you to it initially.

This is often how I feel about the problems of housing. But beyond that, what I am trying to say is that intention, or indeed desire, does not necessarily lead to satisfying our wants or needs. More practically, in this context of looking at art in an apartment, it’s part of staging a broader question concerning art’s ability to sew in some doubt to the habitual, or what we take for granted in our most private of settings. Still, that’s an optimistic view on art, which I often feel is doomed to the more passive functionality of decor.

— Nicholas Tammens