name: yuji / age: 26 / profession: student / location: madrid / weekday: wednesday / reference: waiting for the clothes to be dried at home, once you don’t wan’t to lose thirty minutes and 3,5 euros in a laundry.
occupation
you occupy your dwelling, not just by your physical, bodily presence but also – more so – by bringing in your stuff, arranging it, decorating according to what you consider homely. in occupation, not only is there a sense of claiming a place, you also identify with it. “this is me”, you say, when you show someone your room or apartment for the first time. of course, occupation also designates work, a profession, something that people identify with. ask people to introduce themselves and the chances are they will start by stating their name and occupation. a similar dynamic of claiming and identifying is at work in political occupations: people occupy a square, a university or a political building in order to claim an equal say in how the institutions or structures such spaces represent are governed. often there is no identification with the hegemonic forces symbolized by the occupied space (as in wall street); in occupation, protesters identify with each other, with the movement as a whole.