Maintenance describes a set of necessary functions in all living organisms and complex systems. From the cellular to the infrastructural, maintenance processes are those devoted to repair and renewal, excretion and the removal of waste, continuity and homeostasis. Maintenance activities thus have a particularly structured temporality. As compared to change-oriented temporal concepts like innovation or progress, maintenance often evokes staying the same, or remaining-in-place. As artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles has pointed out, “maintenance is a drag; it takes all the fucking time (lit)(Ukeles 1969).” Cleaning up, laundering, removing waste, dusting, washing, patching, repairing—these are all repetitive activities. We do them over and over again, as long as we want an object, space, or system to be of use or to continue to function. Maintenance is thus not the opposite of progress so much as its necessary companion. Again, in Ukeles’s words, “after the revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning? (Ukeles 1969)”
Speculative Fieldnote
By Blair Bainbridge
"I don’t want to go to the moon. I want to stay with the earth. The worked earth. With the manmade craters, the dark monuments to negative futures always already here."
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Exit, Moon
By Maya Indira Ganesh
"Some people had the option of leaving. Those people who don’t have to take care of anyone else, or anything else. Who feel like they can sever their connections and move on to the next thing. Some times this is survival. Some times it is escape, it is exit."
