The Architect and The Housewife
Maike Hemmers

I wake up and run, I shower, I make breakfast and test a batch of cookies while eating oats, I drop pieces of coconut milk caramel in the dough, it’s a mess, I send a picture of the cookies next to my hand to the client, the caramel is a failure, I drink coffee and check Instagram, check emails, check Facebook, I write back standing up and scrolling and turning from one side of the kitchen to the other, I walk to the other room and cut up big pieces of heavy fabric, I take the gun, I put on soft music and contemplate carefulness of coordination, I lean the gun onto the stiff fabric, I push it once, twice and hard to attach two rags, I turn the gun around, I reload, I push the gun heavy onto the fabric, I push with my whole body, twice, turn around, reload, push, turn around, reload, I get up and walk from one room to the other, I go back and take the gun and push, turn around, reload, I push, turn around and reload, leaving now and then for distraction, I keep the fabric spaciously aligned, I don’t care, I cut of what sticks out, I eat the cookies, I give up on coconut milk caramel, I push, turn around and reload, push turn around reload, push turn around reload, I put the gun on the floor, the cushion is deflated, a useless pocket or drained chair, I take a stick and make it stand up.

Frances Stark wrote The Architect and The Housewife (London: Book Works, 1999) as a sequence of interrelated texts dealing with, among other topics, production at home versus reproduction in the public sphere. The proposition of the housewife and the architect describes the tension of private production, which occurs without a trace of productivity, and autonomous exterior production, which disrupts and transforms material reality.