OVADA Residency

After five weeks, the Residue exhibition opened this evening, and, all in all, I was very pleased with how things turned out. (Click here for more photos from my installation).

The overall installation worked well as a whole, and the individual pieces in their own right, yet what was interesting about this installation was how the works changed and evolved once they were installed. For example, the cups (below) began to leak...

Clearly these cups are not designed to hold liquids for any length of time, and in particular the amount of water that was in each of them. So, my girlfriend Monika and I spent time removing water and in fact, as Monika said, the cups had more meaning with their varying amounts of liquid than when completely full; there was something more individual about them. And the fact they were leaking, becoming thin and ultimately disintegrating, was very apt in respect of my other works on mortality and memorialising. These 'individuals' (which the cups represent) are at different rates of time falling apart, at which point I remove them to the earth beneath the deckchairs (below).

This dialogue between the two works was, and is, very interesting. The earth beneath the deckchairs, which is actually compost, has always been a symbol of death - the final resting place into which mortal remains dissolve, so the fact there is now this dialogue between the two works accentuates aspect. Of course, those viewing the two works will have to be made aware of this fact, and the point of how much to explain to one's audience comes once more to the fore.

Since the opening I have decided to re-write the information sheet I had made available to people and to edit down the blog to about twelve pages which can then be put on the wall, after all it is as much a piece of work as the works themselves. Putting it in a folder and leaving it on the table is all well and good, and indeed valuable, but displaying it this way makes it something of an accessory to the work when it is, as I've said, more important than that.

The final week before the exhibition opens and new ideas are presenting themselves. I wanted to do something with the dismantled typewriter and so I took the letters and the ribbon and printed the title on some paper 'The War to End All Wars'.

What I liked about the result was how the red of the ribbon was smudged beneath the writing, giving the impression of blood. The unevenness too reminded me of some text-based work I did following a visit to Auschwitz and I wondered whether I could reprise this work. However, there would have to be differences. The dismantled typewriter, as a piece, has the title, as above, 'The War to End All Wars'. Clearly we know that this wasn't the case and that there have been hundreds of wars fought since 1918. Giving the typewriter such a title makes it a metaphor for the First World War (I originally arrived at the idea thinking about the names of all the dead being recorded on just such a machine) and so, as the First World War wasn't the last, so the typewriter must be shown to still work somehow. Using the letters and the ribbon does this, but if the result is on paper, it doesn't necessarily follow that the typewriter has been dismantled i.e. it could have been made before it was taken apart. Printing directly onto the wall however does make this connection; after all it is obviously impossible to type with a working typewriter onto a wall, this can only be done if the machine is in pieces. The First World War may be over, but man has continued to fight nevertheless.

During my degree in the early 1990s, I did a lot of work on the Tower of London, and in particular on the inscriptions made by prisoners incarcerated in the Beauchamp Tower. I worked with video at the time, mixing text taken from Dante's journey through Hell with images of my own walk through the Tower. This weekend, while visiting the Tower with my girlfriend, I relished the chance, in light of the work I've been doing on both my MA and this residency, of seeing them again, and, just as they did almost 15 years ago, these inscriptions once again captured my imagination.

Having visited Auschwitz and Ypres, I became aware, in this small room, of the nature of memorials. In Ypres, the main memorials are the graves and the names on the Menin Gate. At Auschwitz it is the possessions left by the victims. In this small room, prisoners who knew they would die, or at least feared for their lives, made their own memorials, sometimes carving very elaborate testaments to their own existence in the most difficult of conditions. Some would memorialise the long hours they endured and the torment which they suffered, such as that by
William Tyrell. Carved in 1541 it is particularly poignant:

"Since Fortune has chosen that my hope should go to the wind to complain,
I wish the time were destroyed; my planet being ever sad and ungracious."

In wishing 'the time were destroyed,' William Tyrell through carving the fact into the wall, has made not only time, but that particular moment, endure for as long as the walls remain standing, a moment which we can share some 465 years later. It's strange how the moment remains yet his suffering has for centuries been at an end. He speaks to us directly and by hearing him in our own voices we can share more directly in his pain. Would the carving be so powerful if it was a fragment in a museum? No, I don't think it would. The fact we are seeing it in situ, standing in the exact place he stood helps us to fill in the gaps more easily. We get a sense of his confinement, his life and the impossible sense of freedom as glimpsed through the window - the freedom which for us is not only possible, but certain. It is this same sensation which I felt in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the knowledge that I could at any time just walk out the gate. Here, I could simply turn and walk out the door. It is this rather uncomfortable contrast which makes the plight of William Tyrell, among many others all the more tragic.

The objects in Auschwitz, in particular the suitcases, were in many respects, memorials in their own time, unwitting memorials perhaps to a place (a home, a normal life) from which the victims had been driven. The names inscribed on the walls of the Beauchamp Tower however memorialise the place of confinement, the period of incarceration.

"We have been living this same moment ever since we were conceived. It is memory, and to some extent sleep, that gives the impression of a life of discrete parts, periods or sections, of certain times or 'highlights'."

This quote from Bill Viola is particularly pertinent when one imagines what it was like to be incarcerated in a space such as was William Tyrell. No doubt during his captivity, Tyrell spent time remembering, casting his mind back over periods in his life, over 'discrete parts' and 'highlights'. And if ever a person is aware of living the same moment, then it must be the prisoner confined in his cell.

There is something else about this quote which is also pertinent to the room in the Beauchamp Tower. The myriad number of inscriptions covering the walls were carved over a period of almost two centuries and give us impressions of not only a single life as consisting of discrete parts, but of lives as being discrete parts of a greater whole or single moment of existence, an existence (the room) in which we are playing as much a part as the men once held prisoner within.

"If things are perceived as discrete parts or elements they can be rearranged. Gaps become more interesting as places of shadow."

Using the example of the Beauchamp Tower, one can see how this rearrangement of which Bill Viola speaks takes place in the mind of the visitor. Time is collapsed into a moment, a period of almost two centuries is visible to us in one look around the room. Years and decades separate many of these carvings, yet we are aware of only the blur of the past. We are in effect rearranging these discreet periods, creating gaps - interesting (and ambiguous) places of shadow - which we fill with our own experience.

Having moved things around for another show this evening, I put the canvas behind the deckchairs and found that I much preferred the way it looked, not so much on an aesthetic level but as regards the way it conveyed its meaning. On the floor, the words were - due to the fact the paint was drying - not so much difficult to read as of a very different quality to those written earlier. These earlier words had almost been inscribed into the paint, whereas those added more recently have been written onto the paint's surface. This graphite of the pencil onto of the graphite of the canvas is itself interesting, but is served better by a vertical placement (see below).

It is difficult to tell from the photograph alone, but the material quality of the canvas surface is also more visible in this position. There is as well the practical aspect of the move in that it frees up more floor space so as to allow people to stand back and take in the works as a whole.

Given that my walking around the same part of Oxford has over the last few weeks engrained the streets, buildings, objects and structures in my mind, I realised that I am some way towards creating a memory place - a place with which to explore those mnemonic arts practised by the Ancient Greeks. I have decided therefore to try and memorise a passage from a book. I will divide it up, and use relevant 'objects' to act as 'triggers,' placing them at various points along the route which I will then recall as I 'walk' in my mind.

The passage I will try and recall will be taken from the Polish writer, Bruno Schulz's story, 'The Street of Crocodiles', which I have chosen in part because he was himself a victim of Nazi brutality, shot in the street by a Gestapo officer in 1942.

A part of the extract is as follows:

"But where the ground extended into a low-lying isthmus and dropped into the shadow of the back wall of a deserted soda factory, it became grimmer, overgrown and wild with neglect, untidy, fierce with thistles, bristling with nettles, covered with a rash of weeds, until, at the very end of the walls, in an open rectangular bay, it lost all moderation and became insane... It was there that I saw him first and for the only time in my life, at a noon hour crazy with heat. It was at a moment when time, demented and wild breaks away from the treadmill of events and like an escaping vagabond, runs shouting across the fields. Then the summer grows out of control, spreads at all points over space with a wild impetus, doubling and trebling itself into an unknown, lunatic dimension."

Such a beautiful description of summer months calls to mind many summers which I myself have known, and, knowing how the author met his end makes the passage all the more poignant. This prose, although a fiction, is borne out of reality, an amalgam of memories which the author must've had of summers in the past, and as with the work I'm making with deckchairs, these memories call to mind happier times in the light of terrible adversity, contrasts which give us the chance, by filling in the gaps with our own memories, of 'getting to know' or at least understand a little better, individuals - such as Bruno Schulz - who suffered so terribly.

"Possibly the most startling thing about our individual existence is that it is continuous... We have been living this same moment ever since we were conceived. It is memory, and to some extent sleep, that gives the impression of a life of discrete parts, periods or sections, of certain times or 'highlights'...

If things are perceived as discrete parts or elements they can be rearranged. Gaps become more interesting as places of shadow..."

Bill Viola, 'Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House'

Whilst flicking though my research journal this evening, I happened upon the above quote which I first read several months ago. I was startled by what I read, particularly in light of what I wrote yesterday ('From Dinosaurs to Human Beings'). This continuous existence which Viola speaks of, could be said to be that same existence of which we and all our ancestors are a part, and to memory and sleep as creators of 'discrete parts' or 'highlights' we might add 'death'.

These discrete elements can be rearranged, and in doing so, gaps will inevitably appear (I've discovered as much through the process of walking and making notes of objects etc.) and it is these gaps, these shadows which I have been working with and in which I am most interested.

Another walk and subsequently, more work on the 'Palimpsest' and 'Hollow Squares'. I started painting the paper cups (for 'The Light of the Moon') as well and coating them in graphite, the results of which (below) were quite interesting.

I like the messiness of them - the finger marks inside. They look as if they've been dusted for fingerprints, as if we've been searching for the individuals who held them and consumed their contents. They are each a fragment of the past, which we can fill (with water), so as to 'fill the gap', and thereby see (as per the title) the moon reflected inside, finding the bigger picture (the moon which covers the earth).

There is something interesting too, in the nature of their 'throw away' existence. The fact that - as Dogen Zenji says - the light of the moon can be contained within a single bowl of water (or in the case of this work, disposable paper cups) could itself be a metaphor for our own mortality - the bowls, the paper cups become, in effect, like our own eyes.

After yesterday's viewing, I began to think about the works I've produced so far on this residency and what it is that links them; not that there should be a link - I just know that there is one. Despite the differences, there is an underlying theme which unites the drawings, the text pieces, the deckchairs and the paintings. So what is it?

In answering this I have started to think about... dinosaurs. Not something which first springs to mind when looking at my work and if I mention Jurassic Park, then it might seem that I'm losing the plot altogether, but there is a sequence in this film which is relevant to my work.

In the film, the visitors to the Park are shown an animated film, which explains how the Park's scientists created the dinosaurs. DNA, they explain, is extracted from mosquitoes trapped in amber and where there are gaps in the code sequence, so the gaps are filled with the DNA of frogs; the past is in effect brought back to life with fragments of the past and parts of the modern, living world. This 'filling in the gaps' is exactly what I have done throughout my life when trying to imagine the past, particularly the past of the city in which I live.

As well as reading about and drawing dinosaurs, I also as a child, liked to create and map worlds; countries which I would build from fragments of the world around me; forests, mountains and plains - unspoilt landscapes. And in these worlds there would exist towns and cities, created from 'the best bits' of those I had visited.

These invented worlds became, as I grew up, the 'invented' or imagined landscapes of Oxford's past; landscapes that were - just as they still are - created from fragments, parts of the past which are still extant in the city; old buildings, walls, objects and so on. Between these structures, these fragments, I would fill the gaps, with my own imagination, with thoughts derived from my own experience. The city's past and the past in general, as it exists within my mind, is then, to use the metaphor of cloning in Jurassic Park, a cloned dinosaur. The extant buildings, structures and objects within museums, are like the mosquitoes trapped inside the amber. They are broken strands of DNA. All that is required is for me to fill the gaps, and this I can do with my own DNA. I am in effect, the frog.

This metaphor is interesting in that DNA patterns are, of course, unique to everyone. My DNA is different to everybody else's as there's is to mine. Therefore, using my imagination to plug in the gaps of the past, means that the 'past' will comprise large parts of my own experience; my dinosaur will contain elements of my own being. (See 'Postcard 1906'). But although my DNA is unique, it is nonetheless derived from my own past, elements have been passed down by my ancestors from time immemorial. The code which makes me who I am, comprises parts of people I know now (parents and grandmothers), people I knew (grandfathers and great-grandmother) and people lost to the past altogether (great-great grandparents and so on). What interests me about this, is that, through stating above how 'my dinosaur will contain elements of my own being' I can now see that 'my dinosaur' will contain elements of my own being, which is itself comprised of elements of hundreds - thousands - of people, the majority of whom I will of course never know and who have been dead for centuries. I like to think therefore, that 'my dinosaur' and my imagination aren't entirely unique.

This leads me to look at paths - not the route I walk around the castle, or those recorded by my GPS receiver (although these are entirely relevant) but to the paths taken by my ancestors so that I might be brought into being. The chances of any of us being who we are is practically nil. In order for me to be born, I had to be conceived at the exact time I was conceived, any difference in time - even a split second - and I wouldn't be me. Also, everything leading up to that moment had to be exactly as it was; anything done differently by my parents, no matter how small, how seemingly irrelevant, any deviation from the path and I would not be me. This is extraordinary enough (whenever I see old photographs of members of my family, I think that if it was taken a second sooner or later, I would not be here) but when one considers this is the same for my entire family tree, again, all the way back to time immemorial, then one realises how, to quote Eric Idle in 'Monty Python's Meaning of Life', 'incredibly unlikely is your [my] birth'. We are all impossibly unlikely. The chances of all our ancestors walking the exact paths through their lives which they walked is almost nil.

Therefore, my walks, my mapping, my identifying (seemingly irrelevant) objects, my recording them, my palimpsests, are all linked. Memorialising objects (disposable or otherwise), snatches of conversation and so on, inscribing them on a slab, shows how vital these fragments are to future generations and to me in terms of my own past. But how does this fit in with my work on Auschwitz-Birkenau, death camps and World War I?

These 'arenas' of death were constructions (although the carnage of a battlefield was often random, the battles themselves were always planned, 'constructed' for the purpose) in stark contrast to the rather arbitrary paths our ancestors took so that we might each be born. Death in these places was designed, it was planned, particularly with regards to the horrors of the death camps and by looking at these places, by visiting them, by looking at the seemingly irrelevant, everyday objects left behind, we can fill in the gaps, each using our own existence to imagine the lives and the deaths of others. We understand what it means to be human, the near impossibility of birth and the absolute certainty of death.

Imagining a group of a several hundred people walking to their deaths, whether down a path to the gas chambers, or on a road to the Front, we can easily imagine the route; we can in places walk the route today. But imagining the paths walked by thousands of people through time, to bring each of the victims into being is almost impossible: I say almost impossible, but, as I've written above regarding each of our births, it's possible in the end.

Looking at death therefore is to to look at life and its inestimable value, whoever we are and wherever we live. It is to understand what it means to be human and to cherish the lives of others.

Spent much of the day (day 13) walking and painting paper cups. I did make a few attempts at reading through and recording the prose versions of the walks but I wasn't happy with the results. I also played around with data, downloaded from my new GPS receiver: very exciting. I surveyed the route of my walk around the castle but twice lost satellite reception in Bulwarks Lane which is a bit frustrating. Anyway, all quite amazing really, especially viewing the data on Google Earth and, via GPS Visualizer on Google Maps too (even if it goes a little wayward once in the city centre).

That was yesterday. Today (day 14) I showed the work so far as part of the Research and Development module, itself a part of my MA. The response to the work was a mix of muted and positive, but as always I was intrigued by which pieces made the most impact. As with last semester, it was my drawings which most people identified with, followed I would say by the text pieces. The word 'memorialising,' was also used which is very apt for that which I am doing.

The key now is to start pulling all the facets of my work together, to make a whole, not by forcing a common theme, but by seeing why I have made these various pieces and discovering exactly what unites them.

Today I walked the second walk in this series and made the following list of additional words:

engines roar
siren
cigarette
sightseeing bus
sunglasses
man in a suit
refuse sacks
red man
pushchair
spire
glass dome
Chinese characters
look both ways
dead end
green wheelie bin
barrier
family walk
girl with a trolley
mound
rucksack
loud music
car screeches
camera
parking tickets
small windows
tree
old railings
flag flutters
sound of a bin moved
shutters
padlock
bookshop
shopping bags
three ducks
bricks and old stones
new flats
rainbow flag
bicycle racks
chefs
traffic warden
worn out face
20 zone
absent baskets
pigeon descends
except cycles
pink bag
net curtain
palm trees
E1
smell of cooking
E2
library
engine
headphones
old sock
bus ticket
traffic cone
flat cap
red waistcoat
crossing sound
green sweet
broken bottle
mound
dropped chips
running water
dog shit
man walks through a green door
red flowers
coke can
libya libya
corner
black door
plastic coffee lid
old brick wall
thick trunk
metal boxes
corn exchange
knitted jumper
cordon around a tree
green dome
push to open
pigeon
market office
fans

With the new lists, I have written the words up on paper in 'squares', and in the example below, those words from the first walk which were not relevant in the second walk have been rubbed out. Of course, as with most things, the presence of the word, or the object is never fully removed; although it may not have been visible on the walk in a physical sense, it still existed a part of my memory.

I've made a similar work with the prose version of the list of words. Here is the prose version of the first walk:

and here the words and attached sentences have been removed.

As well as this method of constructing what one might term a 'document of experience', I have also used the typed versions as a means of recording. Following the second walk, I removed from the prose, all the words which I erased from the first list but left the surrounding words of their relevant sentences intact. Into the gaps I then inserted sections of prose from the second walk.

Everything leaves a mark somehow and whereby in the pencilled versions of the prose I can erase the pencil and still leave a trace, I cannot do the same with an electronic document. Leaving the rest of the sentence intact therefore works in the same way as the trace of rubbed out words. If someone is seen in a street one day, they inevitably leave a trace, somehow, and, when they are no longer visible in that place, this trace might still be seen.

The following prose is that of walks 1 and 2 combined, as described above:

An engine purrs. A woman with The engines of the buses roar. walks towards me. The Somewhere in town a siren is sounding. of a bus's brakes, and then its A man walks towards me with a cigarette in his mouth. He hasn't lit it yet. A sightseeing bus turns around, ready to begin its tour. telling of its departure. Outside the pub on a blackboard is advertised; a. Leffe is also served here. A man gives a A woman checks her sunglasses while behind her a man in a suit walks aimlessly as if he's not long woken up. as I cross the zebra crossing. A man with a On the edge of the pavement, a heap of refuse sacks are left waiting to be collected walks towards and then past me. Ahead, on the opposite side of the street, a shop and a restaurant stand empty with boarded windows. A young man with a The red man is lit so I wait to cross. I look around. saunters down the road while a A woman pushes a pushchair and from amongst the rooftops a spire points to the sky. at the traffic lights. I see people with I notice a glass dome, I'm not sure I've ever noticed it before. making their way to the train station. The lights are red, then red and amber and the traffic moves. On the window ahead of me are written some Chinese characters and on the road, a sign cautions everyone to look both ways. are on patrol. A bus called the Having crossed the road and walked a little, a signs says dead end and down that dead end stands a green wheelie bin. drives past and a man gives his daughter a A barrier is down at the exit of the car park beside which a group of people are out for a family walk. There are two trees on this side of the street. I hear come from a car, while up ahead, a cuts the pavement in two. Up another road, in the distance, a man crouches. I walk past an iron gate and on some railings see a French flag – a poster advertising a market. A wedding party stands on the pavement. The A young girl with a trolley stands at the side of the road dominated by the mound. just before I reach the road and so I wait a while. On the lamppost, a sticker with 404 has been stuck on. I look up the empty street towards the city centre. A couple carry identical A man with a rucksack walks with a group of others; girlfriends and children. happy with their purchases. I cross the road and see A car stops at the junction, loud music pouring from its open window. The car screeches out. littering the pavement. One of the wedding guests talks about sales. Ahead is the castle tower. A Walking down the road I notice a camera hidden away like a big eye watching everything. hangs on a bollard and nearby lies a discarded blanket. Up ahead, a A car is parked with four parking tickets tucked beneath its windscreen wipers. I look; a takes my attention for some reason. On the pavement, old confetti appears stuck down. There's a row of empty cycle racks. The street is quiet, a and I hear. A man wearing walks towards me. Round the corner, the I notice the small windows of the houses here and a tree which grows near the old railings by the river. Some are painted a different colour to the rest – just a few of them.. and ahead I see an arch over the entrance to a courtyard. Birdsong is mixed with the gentle sound of water. A flag flutters above the tower. and a group of To my right I hear the sound of a bin moved across the floor. A shop window has metal shutters pulled down and a padlock is coiled around the railings like a snake. Along the road is a bookshop. talk as they walk past. Dirty water gathers at the weir. On the road, a cordon contains sand, paving slabs and gravel. There's litter too. Above me, the ancient windows of the tower look out. A lifebuoy waits for an emergency while the Two men carry shopping bags and down on the river, three ducks negotiate the litter in the water. on the water. A and I hear 118 is written on a sign. I don't look at the rest of it. Below the bridge is a drowned bicycle and a submerged traffic cone. There are some old plastic bags snared in the branches. I walk beside the old walls. On the pavement is the stain of a splash just where the weeds grow and where petals gather like the paper confetti. Little Derick's doin ok - a scrawled message on a hoarding says. I wonder who he is. A A building here is a mix of bricks and old stones, On the opposite side some new flats are being built. From a building opposite - a pub - a rainbow flag hangs. In the yards of a block of flats are some bicycle racks. Two chefs take a break for a chat while up ahead a traffic warden chats with someone less fortunate. A man in a luminous jacket with a worn out face looks out for litter. A sign says 20 zone. and on the wall of a building I'm made aware of CCTV. An arrow points towards another road while up ahead, the concrete monster looms large. Hooks on the front of a building wait for absent baskets of flowers. appears on his bike and we engage in A pigeon descends with a flap. mainly about the weather. Posters look tatty beside that ugly building – all bricks and shadow. A man with A sign says except cycles. on his arm waits while A woman carries a pink bag and behind a net curtain in a restaurant window a man sits, as if he is hiding from something. is erected nearby. Are they going to knock the ugly stuff down? I wish they would. A Here palm trees grow. E1 bus stop. Here the smell of cooking hangs in the air. E2 bus stop and a sign for the library. bobs on the opposite side of the street but on my side it's all bird shit. A The sound of an engine - not heard by the man wearing headphones. An old sock lays incongruously on the pavement; where is the other one I wonder? scuttles across the path, in amongst the cigarette ends. E3 says a sign at one of the bus stops. Ahead I see the steps I'll walk up. A strong shadow cuts across and in the distance I hear A bus ticket blows past and over the road I see the steps near which a traffic cone has been unceremoniously left. An old man with a flat cap walks past and opposite, waiting to cross the road is a man with a red waistcoat. Then comes the crossing sound. We walk across. - a wedding perhaps? Green lights but I cross anyway, there's no traffic. A bottle of I walk up the steps and see a green sweet and further down a broken bottle. There's a The mound rises up behind the walls while on the ground are some dropped chips from the night before. has been left by the steps. waiting for a visitor, but above it a roll of barbed wire warns against intrusion. A satellite dish sits silently on the wall of another house and above it, a green spire shoots like some massive flower. Here it's I can hear the sound of running water. and On the pavement is a pile of dog shit. I pass lampposts no.2 and no.3 and see ivy clambering over the wall like a thief. Up ahead a man walks through a green door above which, tumbling on the wall are some red flowers. A coke can sits at the edge of the pavement and on a step someone has written the words libya libya; why I don't know. Up ahead is a corner. There's a black door and in the middle of the pavement a plastic coffee lid. Below the gutter runs, as if unsure of its path. Lamppost no.4. Like the ivy, a plastic sheet escapes over another wall. I see an old step over the lost gutter which now goes nowhere. Ahead is a half-painted bollard. A There's an old brick wall above which the thick trunk of a vine twists and turns. has been left on a car parked on double-yellow lines. The driver's seat is decorated with a Three metal boxes are stacked at the alley way to the street at the end of which is the corn exchange. Here is lamppost and a gathering of. says one of them. I notice an just as the smell of fills the air; someone is cleaning. Ahead is a litter bin past which a man pulls a. I pass a red door then a blue door, a bicycle and a pillar box. On the pavement is a A boy with a knitted jumper walks with his parents. Up ahead, a cordon has been placed around a tree and above the roof tops is a green dome. I round the corner and see two people Push to open says a sign. There are a few A pigeon wanders aimlessly. On the pavement is a load of spilled. There are French flags again. The market's here. A girl in walks towards me and I walk past a stall selling and on towards a which snakes its way down one side of the square. A man in a luminous jacket walks past me. An engine purrs. Ahead, three telephone boxes wait for conversation, but for the moment, there's just the sound of Here is the market office and back where the buses leave a number of fans are whirring.

I am also interested in the visual interpretation of memory, i.e. what it is that we remember. Of course it may be different for different people, but whenever I think of a part of the walk and think about what I am seeing, I realise that the image is a very vague interpretation of reality. Below is a drawing which is a drawing of my entire walk, drawn with my eyes closed so as to focus my mind on the memory image, from the left of the page to the right. The image below is my 'memory' of the first walk.

After the second walk, I rubbed the entire image out, leaving a trace of the original drawing on the paper. Over this I then drew my 'memory' of the second walk (below) and will repeat this process throughout the duration of my walking this particular route.

These examples are all in effect palimpsests: whereby even though I have erased words and images, traces of them can still be seen on the page, just as traces of the past can still be found everywhere throughout the city - the past is never fully effaced.