On the social architecture of the place that is neither office nor home
For The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine, I write from a members’ club in Shoreditch, where I have come, ostensibly, to work, and where no actual work is being done by anyone, including me. My other dispatches from these establishments are at my page, composed in the comfortable chairs where Shoreditch goes to work at not working.
The Place That Is Neither
The members’ club, and its less exclusive cousin the co-working space, has become the central social architecture of working Shoreditch, the place that is neither office nor home, where the creative class goes to do the work that is not quite work, to be productive in the manner that produces little, to perform labour in comfortable chairs surrounded by others performing the same. It is a space designed for work and optimised for everything but, and I am one of its most devoted non-workers.
The members’ club offers everything the modern creative claims to need to work, the fast internet, the good coffee, the comfortable seating, the ambient buzz of productivity, the company of fellow creatives. And it offers, more importantly, the appearance of work, the setting in which one can be seen to be working, can perform the working life, can occupy the role of the busy creative professional, whether or not any actual output results.
The Performance of Productivity
For the members’ club is, above all, a stage for the performance of productivity, a place to be seen working rather than a place to work. The laptops are open, the brows are furrowed, the coffee is consumed, the meetings are held, and the appearance of intense productivity fills the room. But observe closely, as I do, professionally, and you will notice that very little is actually being produced, that the laptops display more social media than spreadsheets, that the furrowed brows are aimed at nothing in particular, that the meetings are mostly people describing projects they are not working on.
This performance is not cynical, exactly, any more than the uniform of nonconformity was cynical. The members of the club genuinely intend to work, genuinely believe they are working, genuinely experience their hours in the comfortable chairs as productive labour. It is just that the environment, optimised for comfort and company and the appearance of work, is not actually very conducive to the doing of it, and the day passes in the performance of productivity rather than its achievement.
The Social Function
The real function of the members’ club, I have concluded, is social rather than productive, the provision of company and connection and community for a working class whose work is otherwise solitary. The freelancers and the project-pursuers and the creative-class non-workers of Shoreditch work, when they work, alone, and the members’ club offers them an antidote to that solitude, a place to be among others, to feel part of a working community, to escape the isolation of the solitary creative life.
This social function is genuine and valuable, and it is, I think, what the members’ club actually sells, not productivity but company, not a place to work but a place to not-work among others who are also not-working, a community of the comfortably unproductive. The bodies that track London’s changing work culture, the likes of the Greater London Authority, might categorise these spaces as workplaces, but they are really social clubs, gathering places, communities disguised as offices.
The Cost of Belonging
This belonging does not come cheap, for the members’ club charges handsomely for membership, the price of admission to the community of the comfortably unproductive. One pays, in effect, for the company, for the setting, for the appearance of the working life, for membership in the creative class the club embodies. The cost is steep, but the value, the company and the belonging and the validation, is, apparently, worth it, for the clubs are full, the memberships sold, the comfortable chairs occupied by the non-working creative class.
I pay this cost myself, a member of the club, a non-worker among non-workers, a purchaser of company and belonging and the appearance of productivity. I tell myself the membership is for the work, the internet, the productive environment, but I know, really, that it is for the company, the escape from solitude, the belonging to the community of comfortable non-workers that the club provides.
The Work That Awaits
The actual work, of course, awaits, the work that the members’ club is so poorly suited to producing, the deadlines and the deliverables and the projects that must, eventually, despite the comfortable chairs and the company and the performance of productivity, actually be done. This work is done, when it is done, elsewhere and otherwise, in the panicked hours after the club closes, in the late nights when the deadline can no longer be deferred, in the solitary labour that the social club so pleasantly postpones.
The Meeting That Could Have Been an Email
The members’ club exists in part to host the meeting, that central ritual of the non-working creative class, the gathering of people to discuss the projects they are not working on, the meeting that could have been an email, that produces nothing but the appearance of progress, that fills the working day with the performance of collaboration. I attend many such meetings, in the comfortable chairs of the members’ club, discussing projects, aligning on visions, touching base, circling back, producing, at the end of an hour of earnest discussion, no actual decision, no actual output, nothing but the agreement to meet again. The meeting is the members’ club’s natural activity, the social ritual disguised as work, the gathering that feels productive and produces nothing, the performance of collaboration that the comfortable chairs and the good coffee and the ambient buzz are designed to host. I have spent, I calculate, a significant portion of my working life in meetings that could have been emails, in the comfortable chairs of members’ clubs, discussing projects I was not working on, and I have enjoyed it, mostly, the company and the coffee and the appearance of productivity, even as I know that nothing was produced, that the meeting was the work, that the work was not done.
So I will finish my coffee, in my comfortable chair, surrounded by my fellow non-workers performing their productivity, and I will perform mine, and the day will pass pleasantly and unproductively, and the work will await, as it always does, the panicked hours after. The members’ club is where Shoreditch goes to work at not working, and I am among its most devoted members, paying for the company, performing the productivity, and deferring, pleasantly, the actual work to the lonely hours the club so comfortably helps me avoid.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
