Without knowing much about the production of compelling and convincing documents, but graced for a day with a red metal vehicle that would allow us to record impressions of a long swath of land from downtown to the far western shopping mall-- we set out to capture the narrow space between misery and possibility.
The nagging thought I have now in 2009 is that something might have changed since 2003. But let us think for a second about this: does the image above, with its flat, suffocating slab of sun-baked sidewalk, tell us that 2003 was a time of relative prosperity and stability? Was something lost between the new cracks that must microscropically radiate across these panels of pavement. What lingers is a desire to fill up the empty square.
We went to document, but still I feel our purpose was also to fill the blank realm with words. Which assumes, of course, a staying power of my own voice, a stinking fantasy that we are no longer likely to luxuriate in.
The small thought that follows is: would it have been possibly to pitch a tent there, build a campfire, and spend the night listening to the crickets, before returning to the proper center of the city with its friends and its coffee that kept us up so many nights until morning?
You have unearthed a great artifact! I had completely forgotten. If we had done this more often, we would have the fodder for some sad retrospective exhibit. You are getting at the heart of things...
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, we should have camped. Probably there are many people who DO spend nights in such places. If I had been more creative and ambitious, I would have staged one of the Black Hawk parties in a historically-accurate geography, hopefully in just such a landscape, out under the light-polluted urban-fringe stars.
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