The room has already assigned you a role

A room is never truly waiting in neutrality. Before you enter, it has already prepared lines of force, exposures, shelters, centers and margins; it has already decided which bodies will be visible, which will be able to hide, which will have to cross the field of gazes in order to reach a place, which will sit with their backs protected and which will remain in the slightly vulnerable zone, the one where every movement is read too easily. You think you are choosing a position. Often you are only accepting the proposal the environment has made more comfortable than the others. Environments distribute status through signals no one is forced to declare. Who has the most stable place, who can put things down, who has a broad surface available, who must hold everything in hand, who can remain seated while the other arrives, who stands to receive, who is let in immediately and who remains in the waiting area. Perhaps a small form of freedom begins when you enter a place and ask not only where to sit, but which part of you that place is trying to summon. Not in order to resist everything, not to turn every chair into a battlefield, but to notice the invitation. Sometimes it is enough to change sides of the table, remain standing a moment longer, sit where you were not expected, move a lamp, open a curtain, remove an obstacle between two bodies. Minimal gestures, almost ridiculous, and yet able to alter the tone of a scene. The room does not stop speaking. But if you listen closely enough, every so often you can answer it.