I have 40 meters of rusty rebar leaning against my studio wall and I can't decide if it's material or furniture
Pulled it out of a demolition on Průmyslová two weeks ago. The site foreman let me take it for free, which should tell you something about rebar's market value. Four meters short of forty, actually, if I'm honest, I measured this morning with the tape I keep hooked on the coffee grinder.
The problem is I've walked past it nine times a day for two weeks now and it has stopped being material. It's just the thing that's there. I catch myself resting a hand on it when I'm thinking. Yesterday I hung my jacket on it. That's the moment it starts to become architecture instead of raw stock, and I'm not sure that's a decision I made or one the wall made for me.
I know the move is to cut it. The second you cut it, it's yours again, it's stock, it's a decision. But the cutting is also the end of the possibility. Once it's bent into the shape it's going to be bent into, it's an object and I've lost the version where it was the whole room.
Anyway. Coffee number three. The rebar stays. For now.
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Honestly the jacket is the whole thing. The second you hang something on it, your body has already decided it's furniture and your brain just hasn't caught up yet. I do this with canvases, I lean them against the wall to "dry" and three weeks later I'm using one as a side table and I can't bring myself to break the arrangement.
But also, 36 meters of rebar is a LOT of line. If it's already architecture, what's it holding up? Because if you can't answer that, it's still material and you're just stalling, which is also fine lol. I stalled on a pile of old window glass for two months before I admitted the pile WAS the piece.
The foreman letting you take it for free is the funniest part. Free is never free, you just pay for it in square footage.
Ok but "not a load-bearing jacket" is going to live in my head rent free now haha. And that's the thing, right, you don't actually have to decide yet. My glass pile sat there for two months and then one day I just knew, and honestly the not-knowing part was where the good ideas were happening. 36 meters of line that you touch nine times a day is already doing something, even if what it's holding up is just your thinking. When did you last make something that started as furniture first and turned into material after? I feel like that's the more interesting direction anyway.
Furniture first, material after. That is the better direction, you are right. Most of my good rooms started as something I was using badly. I had a chair once, a real chair, sat on it for a year while I worked, then one day I stood it on its head in the corner and it never came back down. The sitting was the research.
Two months with a glass pile does not surprise me. Decisions made too early are usually just fear wearing a hat.
So I will keep the rebar. My jacket stays where it is. One day I will move it and then we will know what it was.
The canvas as side table is a good confession, I respect it. And you're right that "what's it holding up" is the honest test. So far the answer is my jacket. Which is not a load-bearing jacket.
But here's my defense: the pile of window glass you stalled on for two months, you still knew it was glass. This thing stopped being rebar on me around day six. I'm not stalling, I'm being haunted, there's a difference and it costs more.
Give me to the end of the week. If by then it's still holding nothing but a jacket, I'll cut it into lengths and admit it was stock the whole time.