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Third Place
Jonathan Middleton’s solo exhibition
Oct 18th - Nov 10th
Middleton presents his video work Third Place, an observational piece capturing the quiet resonance of a 24-hour slot-car race, organised by club racers in southwest England. For the last 15 years, the club’s members have gathered weekly to race miniature, electric-powered cars along tracks with embedded grooves or slots, allowing the vehicles to navigate the course at high speeds. Their practice culminates in this annual 24-hour competition, in which four teams with around four members race through the night.
The featured race is reminiscent of endurance races such as the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 24 Hours of Daytona. Here, the winning team is not determined by who comes first, but who covers the greatest distance in 24 hours. The slot-car version distils the essence of endurance racing into miniature form, with the same focus on skill, resolve and the communal experience of the race itself.
The title Third Place references a sociological concept introduced by Ray Oldenburg in his book The Great Good Place (1989). Oldenburg divides our sphere of existence into three: our home (the first place), work (the second place) and anchors of community life (the third place) that “facilitate and foster broader, more creative interaction”. Conversation is the main activity in third places; it is where you go to relax in public. For the sociologist, places like churches, cafes, bars, clubs, libraries, gyms, bookstores, parks, theatres are fundamental for civil society, democracy and civic engagement because they create a sense of belonging.
Middleton’s work captures this concept in action, documenting the race held in a multipurpose room inside a church hall. We can spot kids’ art exercises, scenes from the Bible, a world map, a notice board; it is a centre where the community gathers in a small town in the countryside. The piece also sheds light into the triple third place occurring through its exhibition: the video happens in a third place (church hall/slot-car racing club) which is showcased in an art space located in the basement of a coffee shop.
Third Place resists an obvious narrative conclusion. There is no climax to the video; we never get to know who wins, what they won, how they celebrate. The title reinforces this point: it isn’t about competing for first place on the podium. In capturing this race, Middleton instead concentrates on the loop, on the flow of time.
Over the course of the 45-min film, we watch glimpses of the total 6,786 laps. We are drawn into the same hypnotic fixation that grips the racers, being invited to a gravitational pull that might seem alien to some of us. There is something meditative and illuminating about the experience of witnessing others live through the full 24 hours of a day and their ritualisation of the passage of time. As soon as the sun sets, the racers turn off the lights to demarcate nighttime; the only luminosity comes from the car lights, remote control and computers monitoring the laps.