Project: To utilize given space at city hall, floor 25 as a meditation on and refiguring of an "office" space. Considered within the literal parameters of this project is the development of business-like content with which to fill this space. This project will have three inter-related dimensions:

Physical: The office motif will draw on resources available at City Hall, both those in the space and those potentially available (desks, partitions, general office equipment) as well as resources brought into the space from sources outside of City Hall (a harness, audio-visual media equipment).

Material:
space-related: All communications will be saved and/or captured on appropriate media. Contained in the space there will be an audio-visual component detailing, among other things, the process of assembling the office, communications to and from City Hall and appointments and "work" done under the official guise of "professional generalist" (see below).
generalist-related: The creation of the "business" will exist exterior to the site until the exhibition itself. There is a website consisting of professional advertisement, business cards, and other tangible communicative devices: http://www.buffalo.edu/~pmlehnen/generalist.html

Performance: At the time of exhibition I will be "working" in the office space (interacting with clients and/or potential clients as they enter the space, taking and making phone calls, serving refreshments from the drawer of my desk ala the businessman sneaking a mid-day drink). I will be considering my use of language, as well as (avoiding/embracing?) stereotyped or counter-intuitive developments that would occur in this role. The performance space will be a modified office space with a façade of televisions playing segments of recent works completed by the generalist and advertisements for services. The space will be cleaned, painted and revised as a stark reconsideration of the office space. My physical person will be positioned in a harness that provides a fluid mobility and ease around the space.

Background: This project is intended to draw attention to the space as it is, at least cursorily, intended by the City of Buffalo. What does this space offer as a potential office space to members of the community? I am also considering the relation of the office to corporate America and to how a view from the twenty-fifth floor might play into this psyche and/or be decimated or overlooked in the context of an office-work-space. Finally, considering the outward flow of job and business opportunities in downtown Buffalo, this project hopes to tease out the conception of viability of work and/or work space and to address stereotyped notions of business as they conflate with art, work, and feasibility. In this form the project hopes to confuse associations of work-business, worker-employee and place-office while also challenging the roles ascribed to people in these positions with the role of student. It is with the intention that the literal reading of an office is juxtaposed with the more conceptual position of the generalist. I will be contacting individuals associated with general (-ist, -ism) blog and web sites for help with attracting attention to my site and for "referrals".