Sense/Of/Place

Stuck

2008-04-04T14:38:00.000-07:00

I’d seen this house some months ago already. It hardly could have been closer to mine, just on the next crossing street, on the same block, and I can almost see it from my old bedroom window on the second floor. Most likely because of that proximity, it took me some time to realise that it might as well be as mysterious and fascinating as any of the other distant abandoned houses I know.

It used to be just next to an old factory building, that I hardly recall, though it was just there out at my window for years. A few years ago they destroyed it and quickly grew a big orange block of apartments.

Stubbornly still there, just next to that clumsy modern building, the little parpen construction slowly rotted, abandoned. A couple of days ago, i passed by it on my way to the post office, and realised that – strangely on that early spring – the vegetation blocking the entrance had diminished. I figured that I could easily get in.

I approached cautiously, as in that residential street, only ten minutes away from downtown, i was uneasy as to how the neighbours would react to my curiosity. With a single little rangefinder camera in my pocket, i crossed the street and took a couple of pictures of the front and of the surrounding constructions. Waiting for some passers-by to go, I walked around slowly, and then, as things got quieter, i turned back around towards the house 67, rue du marquis.

A woman was standing on the sidewalk, just in front of the house. She was obviously waiting for me, and i feared she would give me the usual paranoid neighbour alarm. But she seemed as uneasy as me. A middle-aged, little woman with colorful square glasses. Without me needing to say anything, she proceeded by telling me what she knew.

« I’m living nex door, she said pointing the little individual house on the opposite side of the new building. I saw you were taking pictures, and i was wondering if ever you were a relative, because i guess it must be some kind of shock to see the house that way. I think they must have crashed the roof while building the new apartments, and you know how it is, as soon as there’s no roof left, it’s the end.
I knew the owners, you know, before they left. They were in the middle of their divorce, and the man hung himself. She left then, she had to settle the loan by herself, and she left and never came back.
So they built the apartments, and it was quickly looted just after. When i saw how forlorn it was, i went to the town hall to get some information. I figured that i could maybe buy the house, destroy it and build me a garage. But it’s a mess, you know, there’s no way. There’s inheritance matters that won’t be settled.
Anyway, I hope i’ve not been to much of a bother. Have a nice day… »

Just as she left, i jumped into the house.
The wall of the corridor, on the building side, had been completely destroyed and was now in a way replaced by the external grey concrete wall just near, which seemed oddly recent compared to the rest of the house.
The planks of the roof were slowly making their way down on a floor i couldn’t figure of what it was made, so much covered as it was with a strange magma of wood, waste, earth and crushed furniture. An old brown leather armchair was emerging out of it, still in front of the fireplace. In the second room, the crashed roof had taken almost all the space, except for a cupboard in a pretty good shape. The worn yellow tapestry contrasted with the blue sky of that sunny afternoon. A broken TV set laid on the cluttered up floor.
On my way to the third room, i encountered my usual friend from the ruins. A grey and white cat was curiously looking down at me from the remnants of the roof.
The last space was the bathroom. Each of the pink ceramic squares on the wall had been pinched and now held a white spot. There was still the cabin of the shower, as it was built in metal and glass. But there was now a tree too.

I stood there for some minutes in the quietness. Once again, surprised by how silent and peaceful ruins can be, even in the middle of the city. The few noises from the street were muted. Then, some people appeared on the new buildings’ parking lot, that i could see from there. The former corridor of the house ended by the kitchen room and there was no wall left to separate the bathroom from the parking lot, only a broad grid. I could see people come and go, unloading their car, but they never saw me. They never looked towards the house, even when broken glass crushed under my feet. It was like the little house wasn’t even there anymore… and had already swallowed me in its inexistence.

I made my way out, and as i stepped on the sidewalk, catched a glance of the neighbour lady putting things out of her house, and in her car.
I left, but still for some reason felt compelled to look back at her. Alone, she was filling up her car with stuff, just as if she was leaving for good : several large travel cases, a little piece of furniture… Stunned, i stopped to watch from a distance. A couple of minutes later, she went out, locked the door, and in her small pink car, went away on the road.

Hollow body concrete

2008-03-07T14:54:00.000-08:00

Sinking

2007-12-14T05:04:00.000-08:00

Last time, when i started my writing by saying that not much had changed in Odomez, i knew that i was already bragging at the fate's face. Or turning my back to it, though almost consciously knowing that it was there, and that things would change anyway, very soon.

And changed they have. One half of the buildings is down, gradually erased by the machines, first tearing them down to rubble, then making piles with bricks, piles with metals, etc. These piles are picked up by a pair of tippers, who slowly go their way up to the water station and deposit everything into a new huge pile. They dig deep and muddy, black trenches onto what was a grass path, going back and forth like tired, giant insects. A couple of guys from the nearby project got the authorization of the site foreman to pick up the metals they could find onto the pile. It's funny how they agreed together on that, like an oral contract with shared interested. The two guys will most likely sell out these metals ; and while they are there, they prevent any damage to happen to the expensive water pump working on the other side of the water station, slowly emptying it. Indeed one week-end, a few weeks ago, some unidentified guys from the project cut a piece of the pipe and stole some cables. T., the foreman, warned us several times against "them", explaining that he once saw a bunch roaming around with large knives. "At this hour of the day it's ok," says he as we arrived, at usual, by the end of the morning. "They're still sleeping. But they come out by late afternoon. If they ever come by you, don't argue, just run." True that with our photo equipment and the flashing security jackets, we're definitly spotted as strangers. We never had trouble really, though it's true one day, as we had came to the water station through the project, we have been almost thrown out by a band of kids, the very same ones that nicely agreed to be photographed in front of the water station a few days ago. That day school was out, and the half-dozen streets of the project were filled with kids at mid-day, screaming and running around. But - never saw the ones with the knives. After that happened, T. hired a couple of nightwatchmen more for the weekends.

We have good relations with that guy, and it's for the best. First we have to be grateful to him letting us come and go almost as we please. We're under his responsibility, and he could have just told us to forget about it. We're not working for anyone, either his demolition society, nor their client, the local metropolis. He's friendly, and seems always happy to answer our dozens of curious questions about the demolition and his plans for it.
But more deeply, what i feel the most thankful for is that he prevented us from sinking into a simple feeling of anger towards the workers and what they do to what became, as we retrospectively realise, our workshop for a year and a half now. If he had rejected us, we would have been compelled to watch the disappearance of Odomez at a distance, without understanding. Maybe watching the whole site from the burned out roof of one of the Compagnons' buildings, as we did once.
Whereas this long agony of Odomez appears on a much less painful way to us as we can still visit the site once a week. And we realise how much destruction was also a full part of it. Each time a building gest crashed, it also opens new ways of seeing the others, new perspectives, not to mention access to rooms that have been shut for decades. Things that we wouldn't have discovered about Odomez if it had stayed wild. Reminds me of that psychological story of the kid who crashes his toy to see the insides, to see how it works. But of course, sometimes, you realise that things won't come up as easily as they got down.

Last monday, we had arrived for about a quarter of an hour when T., who was passing by, came over to us to say hello. Aurélie and I were both standing on the remnants of the former huge hall, once used by the Compagnons to stock their stuff. A week ago, a roof was above our heads, in the large and dark hall, scanded by the copper green metallic girders. But we were standing both fascinated, as a tiny part of the building had been left standing by the machines, to avoid disturbing the guys just beneath that wall still busy with the asbestos. Creating a strange vision of the hall still existing but now exposed to the weather and the sunlight. Water started to gather in flakes on the tired concrete floor, reflecting the girders and the windows, and creating beautiful Stalker-like visions with thing drowned in it. Switches were still on the wall, like nothing had happened for a century. I even stumbled upon a copy of Sega Saturn's game Fifa 97 : box, CD, book, everything was there if you need it ; a trace of the Compagnons' 20 years passage. They couldn't, eventually, erase it completely.
Aurélie was readying her camera on the tripod for a new photo in her serie. T. asked us what exactly we were photographying. I could only answer in a whisper : "There's so much things to shoot !" He laughed. "You have imagination."
Then he started explaining that we week before, they had demolished the other standing building, on the other half of the site. We hadn't seen it yet, as it was hidden from where we were. "It all crumbled at once like a house of cards. We pulled one beam, and everything crashed down with it." The whole thing was about 25 meters wide and 50 meters long, on two floors.

I don't know what i would have liked better, if i could have chosen : be there to see it or not ? and would it have been less bitter if it took three weeks as they planned it would ?
It has been weeks since i was thinking about this moment : when the giants would fall. These anthropomorphic silhouettes had emerged from the disappearance of the roofs. They linked me deeply and emotionally to the whole place, like figures to salute on arrival. At first, i thought it was too obvious, too simple, but why deny any longer that have an anthropomorphic relationship with Odomez ?
By inhabiting it, we gave it (again) a human dimension. Sure, it was never completely void of human presence. Our year is not much compared to the 20 of the Compagnons, who didn't fail to come watching from the other side of the fence, as the machines tore down their building, including some of the bedrooms they had occupied for a while. And the wilder parts have always been used as a temporary shelter by people around, drinking alcohol and who knows what else. Myself, the night after, drowned in half-asleep songes filled with visions of the now buried rooms, like i was trying to pull them out of the darkness they are sinking into. It's nothing like comparing this to the loss of a loved human being, of course.

But first, pointing out that emotional relationship is important to me, for a negative reason. It allows us, what we do and did there, to be distinguished from and over-seen and vile desire to collect places like theses like trophies, like a sport, and extract spectacular images from them. There's dozens of blogs of that sort on the Internet, taking pride from exploring dead/forbidden places. I more and more tend to see these as almost pornographic, driven by a pure scopic desire, used as a spare for a missing real act. One thing that we tried to avoid at all costs, knowing that anyway, what we could do would at best transform into something different from the place itself, and never document it, never give a real feeling of what it was. Places like these are too complex and too polymorphic to be understood on a single, speedy visit.
On a more positive hand, Odomez is of course also a mirror for our selves, and i think this is partly why it works well as a workshop. We see ourselves, our relations to the passing of time, to the nature of modern objects and artifacts, to the relation between man, pollution and nature, in all these rooms. We just found there, formed in cement, concrete, iron, things we had more or less unconsciously in mind. Thus, it also pushed us further, not only by expliciting those ideas, but by imagining what we would create out of them. How we would print our mark on them, how we would handle creatively with what is commonly thought as dead.

For this reason, one thing we fear is what our productions will become when the very foundations of those century-old buildings are erased. When the heap on the side of the water station is bulldozed inside the emptied lake, thus forming, literaly, the tomb of Odomez. As an example, my photographic production has never seemed more important to me, quantitatively and qualitatively, than since i'm working almost exclusively there, and i don't know how or if it will survive. Taking a single picture in a city street or in a house feels awkward. Of course, we already have vague ideas of things to do on the nude site, but will it be powerful enough to stand only on the fragile foundations formed by our former works, our memories, and the legend, the imaginary that we feel is already coming out of them ? I feel it will likely be the hardest part of it all. All the while succeeding in creating out of a sense of loss, out of our emotions, without getting crudely emotional nor exhibiting personal affects that certainly are not unique, and are not the most interesting man have felt.
So, once again, Odomez sends us back our own reflection as we gaze at it, sinking. For what once was a common place, a place for usual habits and lives, has succeeded in transforming its abandonment into something beautiful and absolutely singular, we wonder if we ever will be able to do the same.

Radio Aporee

2007-11-26T09:05:00.000-08:00

Berlin based german artist, Udo Noll has developped a great project, Radio Aporee, which is opened and could interest any people into mental wanderings and sonic explorations. The idea is simple and consist in taking part in a sort of sounds map, with field recordings, easily captured with a phone, or simply uploaded from a sound file. From everywhere in the world, you can add field recordings, and localise the source on a googlemap, with a red circle. The description of this project is available on Radio Aporee website. This project is unlimited and open to everyone who wants to take part in.
Just try to navigate on the map, above New York, and fall on a base-ball field, then after a click on the place, you discover that few minutes of a field recording of a base-ball match can be listened to... Go above Berlin, to Sanderstrasse 13, just listen to the sounds remains of a home-party during a night of last september...

Music of the Woods Afterthought | Birdsong

2007-11-17T12:35:00.000-08:00

After listening to the MP3 and hearing the birds above the music and trees I remembered David Rothenburg's book 'Why Birds Sing'. Rothenburg began playing music 'live' with birds in 2000, as you can imagine this route has led him into some remarkable places, atmospheres and experiences. The extract below is more food for thought concerning our role within nature and the landscape - An area of discussion that has transpired over the last few of posts...

'Bird songs are a genuine challenge to the conceit that humanity is needed to find beauty in the natural world. Whatever processes of evolution have led to their flourishing, no rigorous natural logic explains why they are so multifarious and complex. With deft listening, we can abandon our prejudices to find new expanses of music beyond familiar constraints. Their music is essential not arbitrary; playful but purposeful; repetitive, not boring. It possesses the necessity to which human art aspires'.

(From David Rothenburg's Why Birds Sing)

Music of the Woods

2007-11-13T04:20:00.000-08:00

They led us by long and shadowy ways
Where drops of dew in myriads fall,
And tangled creepers every hour
Blossom in some new crimson flower,
And once a sudden laughter sprang
From all their lips, and once they sang
Together, while the dark woods rang,
And made in all their distant parts,
With boom of bees in honey-marts,
A rumour of delighted hearts.
And once a lady by my side
Gave me a harp, and bid me sing,
And touch the laughing silver string;
But when I sang of human joy
A sorrow wrapped each merry face,
And, patrick! by your beard, they wept,
Until one came, a tearful boy;
"A sadder creature never stept
Than this strange human bard,' he cried;
And caught the silver harp away,
And, weeping over the white strings, hurled
It down in a leaf-hid, hollow place
That kept dim waters from the sky;
And each one said, with a long, long sigh,
"O saddest harp in all the world,
Sleep there till the moon and the stars die!'

(From Yeats's The Wanderings Of Oisin)

I recently returned to an Alder Copse which has a special significance for me and made this recording:

Music of the Woods MP3

I'll write it up when I get the chance on my Landings Diary. If you listen closely, you can hear all manner of birdsong in the tree tops, as well as a crow which kept flying over whilst I played.

in the earth

2007-11-11T14:05:00.000-08:00

As I Came, I Saw a Wood

2007-11-10T12:40:00.000-08:00

(In response to Mark's post)

Where trees craned in dirt, clutching at the sky
Like savages photographed in the middle of a ritual
Birds danced among them and animals took part
Insects too and around their feet flowers

And time was not present none ever stopped
Or left anything old or reached any new thing
Everything moved in an excitement that seemed permanent

They were so ecstatic
I could go in among them, touch them, even break pieces off them
Pluck up flowers, without disturbing them in the least.
The birds simply flew wide, but were not for one moment distracted
From the performance of their feathers and eyes.
And the animals the same, though they avoided me
They did so with holy steps and never paused
In the glow of fur which was their absolution and sanctity

And their obedience I could see that.

I saw I stood in a paradise of tremblings

At the crowded crossroads of all heavens
the festival of all religions

But a voice, a bell of cracked iron
Jarred in my skull

Summoning me to prayer

To eat flesh and drink blood.

(Ted Hughes)

//

Okay, I do sometimes read other things than Ted Hughes, but I thought this poem provided an interesting counterpoint to Mark's post. It presents a wood as a riot of nature. An ecstatic religious ceremony. Something which cannot be disturbed, because it constantly disturbs itself.

I can remember recently going to my favourite wood with a violin, intent on recording the sound of it filtered through branch and leaf. It was 6am and the roar of the motorway two miles away was dimmed to a subtle drone. I found a spot and began to set up my equipment, and then waited for the right moment to begin playing. It was then that I noticed its sheer noise - the cacophony of bird song, the shivering of leaves, the sounds of sheep and horses from the nearby field. Part of me was transfixed by this bristling cloud of sound, and part of me wanted it to go away, so that I could record with less distraction.

Perhaps I was after an idealised, Pre-Raphaelite wood? Something tranquil and pretty. Just a flavour of nature. Not too much. After all, it would drown out the sound of my violin.

Does such a thing exist? I felt like a sham. A tourist. These places should be more than simply "atmosphere". Why didn't I stay at home if that was what I sought? I could more effectively recreate the illusion (delusion) using computer software...

And then I thougtht of Hughes' poem, and I remembered that it was the coming here that was important. Being here at this place and this time. Watching. Listening. Bearing witness... "I saw I stood in a paradise of tremblings / At the crowded crossroads of all heavens."

Perhaps I'll do this more often. Just come out here without any equipment, or pre-conceived ideas...

Maps.01 | Speaking in trees

2007-11-10T03:59:00.000-08:00

‘Though the quiet deep of solitude reigned in that vast and nearly boundless forest, nature was speaking with her thousand tongues, in the eloquent language of night in a wilderness. The air sighed through ten thousand trees…’
James Fenimore Cooper.

Today’s society is a heavily noise polluted environment where sanctuary and stillness is a rarity. The need for silent retreat however is still present and has been since past times when individuals would retire to sanctuaries of silence for re-composure of the mind and spirit. Today we venture into our surroundings and inevitably into nature to find this quilt of bliss and a re connection from what we have been removed so far from – a sense of place.

These woods are full of silence but where Cage's silence was filled with his nervous system and blood circulation, here it is filled with the gentle creaking of entangled bark and the wind that wraps itself around this timberous world. Sitting in the middle of these trees, with dappled light somersaulting dust through the air I realise my hearing is becoming more acute, more alert to the most tiny of noises, the most secrete of sounds. Within these woods and these splintering trees the main protagonist is in fact the wind.

Wind, by its very nature is silent unless objects are put in its way, in this sense the trees become the players, orchestrated by the wind, tuned by the seasons. It seems that trees have voices with the passing of a breeze, some moan, some stretch others become tempestuous knots.

This sanctuary is becoming rare, this place that we are tied and bound to, this earth that we will all one day return to. These trees that provide such a humbling sense of place, a sense of wonder and of sanctuary, if you listen closely you’ll hear them speaking...

Speaking Trees MP3

Q. What is your audio sanctuary? Where do you go to listen? What are your thoughts & memories of such places? Have we become so visually biased that we have forgotten our ears?

leaving a mark..

2007-11-07T08:34:00.001-08:00

The black lake

2007-10-29T08:10:00.000-07:00

Not much has changed yet, nothing really massive, but a lot of important details are different now that the Kuhlman factory in Odomez is newly (but temporarily) inhabited by workers.

These weeks, their main new objective was to empty and depolluate the big pool that's located between the buildings and the former workers' housing estate, along the Escaut river. Now separated from the river, it used to be a water station for the barges that came to the factory.

But, that's not exactly how we perceived it the first times we came to Odomez. It's a huge, concrete surrounded, square pond of black water, and it's now used by the neighbors as a kind of big waste deposit. All around the pond, they have dumped all kinds of stuff, from the usual tires to diverse everyday objects : doors, children's push chairs, umbrellas, washing machines, televisions... and there's not enough depth for these to be hidden. They appear at the surface of the water, still there. Because of that, it's obvious that the pond is not just the abandoned water station, but has now become something different that nobody would have predicted.
It has a presence. Silent, stubborn, but fearful also. People see it from their windows. Some even come around to fish, and children play by.
It fascinates me. Somehow, i always had that image in my head that the periode of our living is surrounded by void, endless and indeterminate oceans of blackess. It's like that black hole. Some say it's the dust to which we all belong in the end, some say it's the big-everything, the unity where everything is gathered again. Visiting Odomez always gave me a strange feeling of time, and of "my time", and the black lake definitly appears to me as a kind of incarnation of this strange representation of temporality. Piercing weirdly, materially, through the wild grass.
It may sound mystic, and it certainly partly is, though i will not enter this matter here. But i think it also has a real psychological, and therefore substantial, effect.
This tendency of the neighbors to use it as a dump also reminds me of the tale of the flute player of Hamelin. There's this tragic twist of fate when, just as you're trying to prevent yourself from being dispossessed, you do so well that you finally end up throwing everything away by your own will. It's what they do. Sacrificing pieces of their lives to satisfy this menacing pond... and eventually, even though it stays calm and doesn't grow, it has eaten everything anyway.

On a more general level, i think it points how weird is the relationship that these people have to waste and pollution. It's definitly a polemic question, and it calls for debate, but we're so much fed with the same ideas about pollution over and over... If anything, it could be a good start to stop fearing it and cursing it, and accept it as a part of our environment. Some places of the Earth's figure have been transformed for good by one of its animal inhabitants, and from an holistic point of view, there's no fear to have about it. Just modifications of the organisations of chaos, i'd say. Of course, i wouldn't even mean to say that the pollution is not a danger for life. But i'd like to call for a more general point of view on the matter, so as to allow us to see other faces of the phenomenon.

The Compagnons du Hainaut (the local Emmaüs community) do not have a really close relationship of neighborhood with the inhabitants of the "cité ouvrière", who sometimes have trespassed upon the Compagnons' land and tried to break and enter in their buildings - perhaps hoping to find hidden treasures among the Compagnons' huge amounts of stuff. However, they share this very odd and unique relationship to waste, where things thrown out are not expected to disappear, collected by the garbagemen in the morning. The Compagnons simply have too much things to throw away to care to have everything recycled and, as time went on, they filled a few areas of their homeland with truckloads of stuff. With the start of the demolition, the bulldozers have returned the soil and unearthed all kinds of things out of the ground. It now feels like the archaeological site of a long-gone civilisation, and i always spend as much time gazing at the ground as at the buildings.
Among these, what the Compagnons are responsible for is not really distinguishable from what the neighbors are. Both, for example, both believe in the role of fire as a good tool for destruction. We often are choked by the black smokes that come out of the Compagnons' chimneys - and there are some black spots where the neighbors burn things out.

What's specific for the Compagnons' is to be found inside their buildings. During these twenty years, they have collected far more objects than they have sold, and huge amounts of furniture, dozens of pianos, tons of dishes, hi-fi equipment, clothes, computers, toys, books, records... basically everything you can imagine as an object was gathered in the building they occupied (now bound to demolition), under the waters piercing through the roof's holes, slowly rotting away. Like a post-apocalyptic museum. A broad selection of the late occidental civilisation production of artifacts, but like dug out of the remnants of the nuclear war. Objects, objects in unnumerable quantities, all in the same status of last stop before the dump (nobody sells things to the Compagnons, everything they have to sell has been given to them). This is definitly connected to contemporary societies of mass production & consumption. It's like they have reached that point where so much things are gathered together, that they all crumble down under their own mass. Not an antithesis for capitalism, but a process pushed so far that it returns against itself.

There is often that same feeling of apocalypse. For example, like in this other room, on an abandoned side of the site. They used to use it a dump, and it has now become completely filled with stuff, melted with the wild vegetation. Recently, i was devastated to see that the workers had almost completely shut down any access, even visual, to that room. It was one of the first spots we discovered. A square room of about 10 meters wide, first floor and roof vanished, and ground completely covered with vegetation and dirty dump. I don't know, maybe you could argue psychologically with the fact that i'm somebody afraid of the future. But it's also a fact that i've seldom felt so peaceful in my life as when i was gazing at this apocalyptical scenery. These feelings are so strong that i'm now surprised when i show pictures of this to people, expecting them to see that beauty, only to hear them complain about the pollution. It'd be a complete misunderstanding to see these clichés as, even partly, political or social, at least in the usual ways of thinking. They're only about apocalypse, that is, to come back to its original sense of "revelation", visions through time.

I've been fascinated since childhood by the very special beauty of this land, "le Nord", which seems to wake up only with the first cold days of autumn, and lies precisely in its raw, scorched earth, flora and industry amalgamated. It's shamely too often despised, even by the people who've been living here for generations. Desolation, failure, loss are inscribed everywhere, and i think it's one of the most beautiful things...
For now, the emptying of the lake is on hold, partly because some of the neighbours claimed their fishes back...

The Lure of the Local

2007-10-08T14:09:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone.

I just wanted to draw your attention to this book by Lucy Lippard entitled Lure of the Local available through The New Press, or at your favorite book retailer, I'm sure.

The book addresses many of the issues that we ourselves are exploring on this site and may provide a great springboard for conversations, etc. Lippard focuses on aspects of contemporary art, history, geography and cultural studies and how they relate to form a sense of or exploration of place. The book is broken up into five sections:

Part I Around Here
Part II Manipulating Memory
Part III Down to Earth: Land Use
Part IV The Last Frontiers: City and Suburbs
Part V Looking Around

Here's a little teaser from the first page:

Place for me is the locus of desire. Places have influenced my life as much as, perhaps more than, people. I fall for (or into) places much faster and less conditionally than I do for people. I can drive through a landscape and find myself in that disintegrated mining cabin, that saltwater farm, that little porched house in the barrio. ( My taste runs to humble dwellings nestled in cozy spaces or vulnerable in vast spaces.) I can walk through a neighborhood and picture interiors, unseen back yards. I can feel kinesthetically how it would be to hike for hours through a vast "empty" landscape that I'm dashing through in a car- the underfoot textures, the rising dust, the way muscles tighten on a hill, the rhythms of walking, the feel of sun or mist on the back of my neck.... Lucy Lippard, (Lure of the Local, The New Press; New York, 1997)

-cory

abandoned trailer, shipton-upon-cherwell

2007-10-07T23:53:00.000-07:00

yesterday, after so many nervous walks around it, i finally braved the insides of the mysterious abandoned trailer in shipton-upon-cherwell. i climbed through the door, and with racing heart, walked slowly through the trailer towards the bedroom.. my eyes fixed on these strange blankets atop a mattress at the far end of the room. such a relief i felt when i learned that nobody was there and i was free to explore. i found torn curtain hemms hanging from rails, a giant screwdriver that had been stabbed right through a wardrobe, barbed wire coiled round a rusting bike, holes in the walls, ceilings and floors.. and dust. everywhere a thick dust. and lingering smell of damp.
there was nothing much to salvage here. mostly trash, a few old abba tapes, cutlery, and a rusted pile of dragonfly fairylights.
perhaps the next time i return, i will leave something there instead.

more photographs here

A Ritual Walk

2007-10-07T13:22:00.000-07:00

If a place has a name and an identity, how much can it decay before it becomes unstable - both literally, and notionally? Will it lose its name with its form, or does the name remain, denuded of context and meaning? Does it hover over the place where something used to be? Snagged in the tops of trees, becoming attached to something else?

I found an old map the other day of an area of Lancashire's Anglezarke Moor. It's a place to which I'm attracted; a place of barren beauty, littered with ruins and shaped by a sense of loss. Current Ordnance Survey maps list quite a few of these ruins. Their names are wonderfully evocative: Old Rachel's, Drinkwaters, Calico Hall, Parson's Bullough. The old map lists many, many more though. One place, for instance, called Alance, now lies under the Yarrow Reservoir, flooded to provide clean water for the nearby towns. Another example of rural folk getting a raw deal.

But the bridge which crosses the reservoir is now called Alance Bridge - I wonder if the stones which made the farm were used to build this bridge? The practice of reusing material was well documented, but there's a kind of poetry to it here - that "Alance" still exists, albeit in a different form - the farm house reconfigured as a bridge.

This suggests that (in certain contexts) a place's identity might be bound up with its very own bricks and mortar. What would happen, then, if I transferred the material from one place, into another?

In August 2007 I made a short walk between two of these ruins, taking a small piece of each with me. As I walked I traced a connection between them. A line which began and ended with them. And by placing a stone from each - in the other - I made explicit that connection. But the gesture also cast them adrift. Are they really now the same place they once were? Or have they changed? Become more diffuse and intangible?

"No-one will know but I will know.
That this place and that place no longer exist.
The two drawn together. Each in each other."

Landings Diary (August 2007)

Overview of an outer place

2007-10-05T04:14:00.001-07:00

I think i might well be writing at lot about Odomez in the upcoming months. Sorry if it seems a bit of a monomania, but after all, every visit we pay to the old giant sets my mind in motion and i might as well put these thoughts down on paper and share them here.

Let's start with a quick overview. What i call Odomez is in fact the name of the town where this abandoned factory is located. Odomez exists since the 12th century, but only grew bigger when the factory opened at the beginning of the 20th century. I'm still missing some infos, but here's what i gathered. It's a small town, about a thousand inhabitants, located in the north of France, just near the Belgian border, about 50km from the nearest metropol, Lille, and 20km from Valenciennes, where my parents live and i spent most of my childhood.

The factory was producing synthetic textile out of chemical processes. It spreads over 7 hectares of land, and used to employ about 1200 workers at its peak. More precisely, it's located on the shore of the local big river, the Escaut, which is know for its barges and "chemins de halage", and, more recently, its pollution.
The factory closed its doors for good in 1962, and remained a virgin land from that time on... until twenty years later, twenty years ago, an Emmaüs community got to occupy about a half of the buildings of the site. Guy Gillet, who founded the community, was then a friend of the proprietor of the site.

I don't know how much is known about the Emmaüs Communities outside France, so i'll go with a little intro about it. It's a charity organisation created by l'Abbé Pierre in the early fifties, independant from the state welfare. These communities basically provide a place where to live to people in need, in exchange for their work. They gather stuff from your attics for free, and sells them inside the former industrial buildings. Half of the money goes to diverse charity plans. Twice a week, people from the cities around come, either looking for low-priced necessities or for lost treasures... Emmaüs Communities are linked with the industrial landscapes and architectural patrimony, because very often, these abandoned sites are the only places where they can get a roof for free (if you read french, there's more info on their website : http://www.compagnonsduhainaut.org/notre%20histoire.html).

That's just how Aurélie and I discovered the place. Went to "Emmaüs" (i use quotation marks because Odomez's community is now independant from the Emmaüs organisation, but still is usually named the same), about a year and a half ago, and stumbled upon this wonderful land of buildings and jungle intertwined... There's a lot of aspects to it, but the community intervenes even inside the abandoned buildings too, throwing away tons of stuff they won't be selling in the empty rooms of the former factory. It's a really impressive process and a fascinating gesture, i think. Some of these rooms are filled with things thrown away, either by the community or by the people living in the houses of what once was the "cité ouvrière" of the factory. These people, though now officially living outside the factory zone, still play a very singular role on it. They live inside what were the houses of the workers. They also have a strange relationship with the water station that is located just between their houses and the buildings. They, very often, throw away their stuff and waste there, down in the dark water.

We got in touch personnally with the Compagnons only recently, when the destruction started. We couldn't come unnoticed anymore, because they have been chosen by the heads of the destruction project to be some kind of nightwatchers. Usually, when a destruction occur, there is always a nightwatcher, and all hope to get inside is gone. But luckily, in fact, the Compagnons are just as sad as us to see the building go away, and they let us go as we please on the site, in exchange for some photo prints for their archives. After all, they've been living here for more than 20 years.

It definitly changed our way of perceiving the whole site, but it's not bad. Less magic, less strange, more human, more about memory, remembering. We used to stay away from historical informations, intentionnally, to keep the strange magic awake, but we can't do that anymore. It's still strange in another way though. It's like we were nostalgic of a time and place where we never have been. I guess somebody has to mourn and remember, and since, to my knowledge, nobody of those of used to work here are still present, why not us ?

I feel this situation really points out how this heavily industrialised region is not at all in harmony with it's own past and memory. Most of the people here feel it's a good thing that all these factories (not only Odomez', but lots of others around) get broken down without any effort or any remembrance. Medias tend to show chemical industries and wastes problems as just bad memories, as things we ought to get rid of. And unfortunately that's just how it is seen i feel. North of France is a highly polluted region, and is bound to have a schizophrenic relationship with its land as long as the medias will only use the idea of pollution as a nightmare.
Yesterday, with Guy, founder of the Compagnons, we were looking at some of the pictures we took so far. He told us that when the Compagnons came over here, they dug a pond for them to relax around and fish a bit. And he said that they had to wait a few weeks before putting the water in it, because when they had turned the ground over, there was a hanging smell of ammonia in the air for days. It was just under one of the tanks used by the factory. Eventually, their put the water, and the fishes did not grew mutant. I think even just the way the vegetation grew wild is a proof that the notion of pollution is relative of a human point of view. On a more general basis about this problem, there is still a debate now, about the Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl. Some reports tend to point out the problems created by the radioactivity, whereas some others show it as an independently created wildlife reserve (Przewalski's Horses, an endangered specie, breed there). Near Odomez, it is know that a rare specie of carnivorous plant is growing, the Drosera.

Before we got outside, Guy also handed us this old image of the factory when it was in activity. It's fascinating to discover buildings that we didn't even thought they existed.

This time, the workers were there, busy at removing the asbesots, so there was no way we were going to go inside this time. Just walking around is already a favor from them, though they are not unfriendly, "just doing their job" i guess...

Aurélie sat down and started drawing for her new project of a mind map. Meanwhile, i went to stalk a part of the area we never explored, because of its heavy vegetation.
I was struck. I stumbled upon one of the old doors of the factory zone, which is still surrounded by a concrete fence. An old, rusted brown iron door that once was a secondary (i think) entrance. I guess workers used to go through that gate.

As i walked a bit further along the fence, i find myself just underneath one of the caretaker's houses. It was impressive, because i really wasn't expecting discovering a new building after all this time. What's even more strange is that i first passed by it without noticing, and then only smelled that chemical smell that floats around some parts of the factory area. There was some barrels beside the walls of the empty house - maybe that was it. I turned back, and saw the house. It's small, two rooms, there used to be a first floor, but there's no floor left, and no roof either. Just the remnants of the fireplace, and the stairs going down the flooded basement. And only one strange inhabitant left...

It's quiet and isolated, so i think we might well be back there to record some stuff live this time, one thing the stress of being inside these odd and forbidden buildings never allowed us to do.

All of this is a bit blurry. I should have started writing sooner, but will try to make up for the delay.

Hello!

2007-10-04T08:09:00.000-07:00

To introduce myself, here’s a tale of a place.
Several years ago, I became fascinated with Barton Moss, an area of land between Salford and Warrington. The M62 motorway to Liverpool crosses the moss; Stevenson built the railway across it, almost floating the sleepers on the unstable ground. It’s an eerie place, odd shacks and houses scattered around, but desolate. I did a bit of research about the place and uncovered a few interesting things. For instance, the Moss is a huge shallow dome: peat and rotten vegetable matter are barely constrained by a kind of meniscus. In the time of Henry VIII, the Moss burst, flooding everything in foetid water. Earlier than that, it appears the Romans burnt down a whole forest to stop the natives hiding there (that’s why it’s how it is today). There’s odd stories about the place: there’s a legend (probably invented by Harrison Ainsworth) that Guy Fawkes fled across Barton Moss trying to escape his pursuers – and funnily enough, in the early 1900s there was a firework factory there, which blew up, killing the owner. When the railway was opened, the local mayor was run over by the first train and killed. There’s more, too. For example, the murdered packman…

Maps (food for thought)

2007-10-04T06:01:00.000-07:00

Sketching our own personal 'maps' would be a great starting point and undoubtedly a fruitful and honest way of sewing the seeds of collaboration. This is a link that will provide more food for thought along with Rich's inspiring quotes, its comes from Marina Warner's 'Memory Maps' teachings:

http://www.vam.ac.uk/activ_events/adult_resources/memory_maps/what/index.html

M.

Maps

2007-10-04T04:36:00.000-07:00

Just got hold of Robert MacFarlane's "The Wild Places". Something from the first chapter to chew on:

"The priorities of the modern road atlas are clear. Drawn by computers from satellite photos, it is a map that speaks of transit and displacement... vehicle brake-lights at dusk, the hot breath of exhausts. The road atlas makes it easy to forget the physical presence of terrain, that the countries we call England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales comprise more than 5,000 islands, 500 mountains and 300 rivers. It refuses the idea that long before they were political, cultural and economic entities, these lands were places of stone, wood and water."

I know it's too early to start proposing group projects, but it might be interesting to consider producing "maps" of those places to which we're attracted. Maps that reclaim those places as physical entities, with all their inherent tactile mystery. Maps that plot our own meanderings, the times we were there, the thoughts we had... Perhaps they could be annotated with photographs, drawings, music & words which describe the sensations & feelings which the places evoke for us?

A challenge, no doubt, as Calvino pointed out:

"A map ... should include all these routes, solid and liquid, evident and hidden. It is more difficult to fix on the map the routes of the swallows, who cut the air over the roofs, dropping long invisible parabolas with their still wings, darting to gulp a mosquito, spiralling upward, grazing a pinnacle, dominating from every point of their airy paths all the points of the city..."

the abandoned toilet

2007-10-02T01:51:00.000-07:00

greetings and salutations to all.
this is a place i discovered on a walk a few months ago... the remains of what would appear to be an old toilet block situated lone amidst a collection of trees.
scattered over and beneath the ground and its foliage were around 20-30 old discarded vinyls. i took most of the unbroken ones away with me, and used them to create the artwork for the sorrel mini cd-r release. they used to play a strange mixture of old 80s music, dance, and rather silly 'easy listening' compilations of classical music. all crackling and picking up these flickers of dust.
i also discovered a strange rusted jar with some unidentified red object floating in this murky water. out of curiosity i took this away with me, but have not braved opening the lid.
i have revisited the spot several times since and unearthed many other treasures beneath the soil.. (photos of which can be found here) and i am sure i will always be finding new things here.

+

2007-09-30T13:20:00.000-07:00

Working at the factory

2007-09-30T05:27:00.000-07:00

Back with more pictures, movies, ideas, recordings, and memories... This week-end, we spent several hours stalking the "factory" in the absence of the demolition workers, ignoring the dissuasion signs and, once again, entering this unique environment. We decided to trespass, and did well. It was magic, once again.
Two days ago, the weather was clear, and we admired the light of dusk piercing through the odd holes of the walls and the sheds of the roofs. Took some new pictures of Aurélie's actions, which might well look great too...
Yesterday, we returned, with more equipment, and we entered into the part that's occupied by the demolishers now, since they're busy "cleaning" the big rooms and removing the asbestos, a toxic insulator that's been under media's cover in the recent years. Which, by chance, provides a good alibi for the cities around to support their destruction plans of the industrial architecturial patrimony, and, afterwards, new housing and road projects. But it's another subject...
Anyway, we re-recorded our recent Przewalski's Horses session. It was raining hard, lots of wind too, and i think it might transform quite oddly the original recording... Meanwhile, i added some more images to my collection of engraved stalagmites... can't find of a good name for the serie yet. Maybe the "Temporary" one would fit, though... Under the rain, i had to be quick with the camera before the word disappeared.

Below, is a quick video i did with our digital camera. It's one of the most fascinating spots of the place...

Dawn's Rose

2007-09-28T02:26:00.000-07:00

I've recently been reading Ted Hughes' Crow again, and thought I'd share this. It seemed to resonate, in some oblique way, with the sentiment in Constantin's previous post.

Dawn's Rose

Is melting an old frost moon.

Agony under agony, the quiet of dusk,
And a crow talking to stony skylines.

Desolate is the crow's puckering cry
As an old woman's mouth
When the eyelids have finished
And the hills continue.

A cry
Wordless
As the newborn baby's grieving
On the steely scales.

As the dull gunshot and its after râle
Amongst conifers, in rainy twilight.

Or the suddenly dropped, heavily dropped
Star of blood on the fat leaf.

Odomez is leaving

2007-09-25T11:00:00.000-07:00

That's it, it's happening now. They're tearing it down. It seems so strange, even now that all the trucks have come and the openings have been shut for official "safety" matters, because when we first landed on that outer place a year ago, it seemed so strong and invincible. Like an old giant, lying there quietly for almost fifty years.

Fifty years that the textile factory was shut down, twenty years that they have been using a tiny part of it for selling goods from that charity community. I was born twenty-five years ago.

Just like when i first read the official report of the decision of the destruction (it was by that time that the Robert Horton 3"cd-r was made), i now feel that there is still a lot to do with that place and my mind is filled with new ideas.

They still let us come over to take pictures. But honestly, it's a bit of an excuse. We will do more... this week, Aurélie will continue her serie of interventions. She lies down, like a lost dog, on several of the rooms' floor. We document it with square format pictures. I like that gesture. I feel it is a good way of expressing what is it to be there : the loss, the comfort, the abandonment, the feeling of being at home and far away at the same time... Another project for this week is to re-record a one-hour session of Przewalski's Horses inside one of the rooms.

It's bitter to come back, because we cannot freely roam as we used to, and most of the magic is gone. It's like visiting a dying relative. Very bitter. But we will create out of this, even when they are gone, leaving behind them only a new portion of land, completely flattened, everything buried, we'll come back, and create more.

Most of my recent pictures on flickr are from that place. I also wrote (in french) a bit about it on my website canardsauvage.

Anyway... i thought that starting here with the story of a doomed place would give a good idea of what may be next...