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| The Map, 2011 |
I find, one day, the marks of others etched into the landscape. Car keys have scratched at the painted surface of a map of the UK hanging outside a garage. Locations have been pin-pointed and routes have been taken. Journeys have been imagined or are yet to be ventured. Directions have been given and advice followed, or not. The lives of others are marked onto the surface, and these marks are impressions of the past. The map itself has become a landscape of intersections and encounters; lives lived. Time has taken its toll on these traces however, eaten away at them, precision-hits have now rusted and blurred. Exact recall is no longer possible, only tall-stories and re-written accounts that correct and distort the mistakes of the past.
Looked at from above, the landscape appears as a blank canvas on which histories are written. Hovering both above and outside, an omniscient vision of a totality, geography is a way of witnessing the lives of others by examining their spatial traces. Movements are tracked, land-use plotted, settlements monitored, society co-ordinated. However, the landscape at ‘ground-level’ becomes a scrutiny of everyday marks that are left as clues to histories that cannot be known. Thus, when one looks at familiar spaces up-close, one finds the traces of others are unfathomable. All the better then, to re-establish that distance, lest one’s own marks become unreadable also.
Looked at from above, the landscape appears as a blank canvas on which histories are written. Hovering both above and outside, an omniscient vision of a totality, geography is a way of witnessing the lives of others by examining their spatial traces. Movements are tracked, land-use plotted, settlements monitored, society co-ordinated. However, the landscape at ‘ground-level’ becomes a scrutiny of everyday marks that are left as clues to histories that cannot be known. Thus, when one looks at familiar spaces up-close, one finds the traces of others are unfathomable. All the better then, to re-establish that distance, lest one’s own marks become unreadable also.