Vacant possession

I acknowledge the country we stand on, that of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and pay my respects to elders past and present.

This talk won't offer, say, a resolved analysis of what's going on with creative activity and the Central Park development.

What I will do is mark a few particular moments in the timespace of the development that I'll try to hold together under this category of vacant possession.

Vacant possession refers in this case to a condition of property being sold from one party to another. The vending party provides vacant possession by ensuring the property is clear of occupants and of objects which are not included in the sale. It may also apply to supplying a property that is fit to be occupied.

I made a community news story about the development in 2007, which I became interested in through a friend, who I'll talk about later. In making the story, I was advised by the Frasers Property Group that they purchased the Kensington Street properties as vacant possession, with no existing tenants in place.

I. 30 Days 30 Nights

The last time I was here [in a former warehouse on Kensington Street, Chippendale; adjacent to the Central Park Sydney site now owned by Frasers Property Group] was for the opening night of FraserStudio's 30 Days and 30 Nights, celebrating the 1,386 days that Queen Street Studios had overseen the use of this space for creative and community activities. As I wandered around with my glass of delicious, free wine from the Cake pop-up bar, I watched Sydney's Lord Mayor make a beeline for the group of people in business suits who were milling

around Arunas Klupsas' documentary photographs. As the formalities began I realised that these were the entourage of the Managing Director of Fraser's Property Group.

My friend Lex, chairperson of Queen Street Studios, introduced the proceedings. He made a gentle joke about this space's shabby chic, and its amenability to artists who couldn't generally expect to afford to occupy such a space, shabby or otherwise.

Frasers' Managing Director was magnanimous in the speaker's spot, referring to the village feel of Chippendale, its creative industries and creative communities, the desire of Frasers to invest in this community and the way that FraserStudios created a pulse around this site. Several references were also made to the buildings on Kensington Street being disused and abandoned at the time of Frasers winning the two billion dollar contract to begin this Central Park Broadway development.

II. Eviction

In 2007 there were people living in the cottages on this street, including another friend of mine who makes artworks and teaches artmaking in the local community. These people were tenants of the Carlton and United Brewery, who charged them minimal rent to live in the cottages, which were built for the workers at the brewery back when that was a necessity. Carlton and United Breweries (under the Foster's Group) had been attempting to sell the site for some time and wanted to ensure there was no longer anyone living on the site. Eviction notices were issued in April 2007, with 27 June issued as the deadline for tenants to leave. The site was purchased by Frasers Property Group on 29 June 2007. The brewery offered to pay forward rent and removal costs of tenants as compensation for their displacement. I'm told it was a violent eviction for one who refused the payment, with police standing by as brewery officers changed locks and padlocked entrances. My friend mourns this place that was their home for almost 18 years and remembers the street, in their words, as a place people would come and live for a while and get their shit together. Some former residents like my friend have made homes elsewhere; some live in boarding houses now; others, we don't know about. This friend of mine attended an art exhibition in the street about a year later. Someone had made an

artwork out of mail that was still being delivered to the home she'd left under duress.

III. Mad Pride

In between the eviction in June 2007 and the party in June 2012 is Mad Pride, which I attended at FraserStudios. It was an event largely celebrating the lives and artworks of young people who experience 'dual diagnosis', which is how you are categorised if you are diagnosed with both mental health and drug and alcohol related health issues. The space was inhabited somewhat differently at this event, in comparison to the opening of 30 Days 30 Nights. Young people turned up with their families, some with little toddlers in tow. Many parents, aunties and uncles had made and brought food. There were many explicit references to the Gadigal land we stand on. There were also a lot of references to the particular social and economic experiences that often go along with dual diagnosis. It felt like an uncommon use of a temporary art space. I say this because it was not populated so much by practicing artists and their communities. The participants were people who lived locally and did creative work, but who seemed to have less interest in celebrating this. It was more like an event you might attend at a community centre or a clubhouse. what was emphasised was the survival of historic and present displacement; and participants enjoying the spaciousness, the fun the food, and the novelty of pride in so-called madness. Urban researchers Rowland Atkinson and Hazel Easthope might say that my sense of the Mad Pride event being an exception has something to do withcreative city or creative class policies currently favoured by Australian local governments and property councils. They observe a trend whereby, quote,low-cost accommodation for apparently "creative" and artistic uses is celebrated at the same time as space for "non-creative" labour and social groups is lost.' This is not to say that an event like Mad Pride is non-creativebut that it is implicated in categories other than creativity, particularly that of cultural and socialexclusion for which government funding and community support is on the wane.

IV. Refuge

Reading through the handsome book produced to mark 1,386 days of FraserStudios, I was struck by how often the artists who had occupied the space over these days referred to an idea of community.

One resident says that I especially valued the conversations and relationships that developed with the other artists, and the times I spent in the common areas downstairs!; another that: regardless of the time there was someone there doing something and I thought that was really nice; another:there was this vibe of... yeah, it was really just invaluable to see how other artists work; another again says: I loved working among other artists. There is also a palpable sense of refuge. One resident says that working at FraserStudios felt as though sitting in the city is a small utopia. The smell, the space and most of all the feeling that somehow you are sharing a space that sits outside the conformity of the city. The same resident echoes other comments about feeling a sense of ownership over the city; that word ownership comes up a few times, with one resident suggesting that FraserStudios, being right next to Central Station.... [is] the closest I have ever come to having (a fleeting) ownership over the Sydney CBD. V. Renewal I've been researching and thinking about temporary occupations of space like this one. Such occupations have been referred to by Sydney's Empty Spaces project as a lawful version of [a]... squat.1 Across the many examples of this kind of temporary occupation, it is regularly pointed up as providing protection for property owners against squatting. This protection is made available alongside the promise of various forms of capitalisation, such as, again to quote from Empty Spaces, growing the long term value of the property. Not only can (quote) creative activity and creative vitality in an area ... push up property prices, but, legalised temporary occupants can take care of the property to guard against neglect.2 Within this, occupants are felt to specifically prevent the (quote) vandalism and graffiti as well as malicious damage that empty buildings are prone to, along with squatting.3 In this sense, squatting and other abjected uses of urban space form the border between acceptable and unacceptable use of space in the city. This border can be mobilised in asking for access to the space; and in refusing entry to it. This border is also highly aesthetic and visual. It is marked by ideas
1

2 3

University of Technology Newsroom, 'Restore, renew, regenerate', 7 May 2012. <http://newsroom.uts.edu.au/news/2012/05/renew-restore-regenerate> Empty Spaces, 'Landlords and empty spaces', <http://emptyspaces.culturemap.org.au/page/landlords> Empty Spaces, 'A landlord's story', <http://emptyspaces.culturemap.org.au/page/gpt> ; see also 3Space, 'Regeneration' <http://3space.org/resources/regeneration>

of cleanliness, order, and pleasing vistas. VI. So the idea of vacant possession works here in a number of ways. It allows emissaries of the property group to say that the buildings on Kensington Street were abandoned or disused before the Central Park development began. It takes in the division between sanctioned and unsanctioned use of allegedly vacant space, and its visual regime of activation and vitality to counter malice and dereliction. The vacant possession of this space has allowed certain communities to feel in possession of the city. In an event like Mad Pride, those who might otherwise be associated with malice and dereliction become subjects of celebration and sociality. This happens through their occupation of the space. I've been thinking that we need an ethics of urban intervention when it comes to taking up temporary space in the way that has occurred here on Kensington Street. I want us to ask: is the space vacant, and what possesses us to occupy it?

Ann Deslandes Time Machine Festival 29 July 2012, Sydney