When I was born I inhabited space. At first it was mine, Soon it became populated. It was surreal. It was strange. I wondered.
László Moholy-Nagy / Sil I / 1933 / oil and incised lines on silbert (a type of aluminum)
In the first few years I watched. I watched and watched. No words, just pictures that I stored in my brain for later. The spaces I lived in with people were strange still.
Mayur Bhola’s photo
In which spaces did I feel at home? The spaces others had imagined. Many people watched the same spaces. So they were public right? Or were they in my head? We shared the spaces but I felt they were mine.
I learned about spaces that had existed in a different age.
It was difficult to imagine people there. In the art books there were never people. I imagined these like Plato’s theory of forms. Do they exist in a public space?
How do you feel in public spaces? See, this one
is in the same city as this one
I know which one I feel at home in. And you?
In my mind I mix up the public spaces by pulling in images from dreams, photographs, memories, stories.
Are they still public?
What people do with space. I mean, what people do with space. How do they do that? Are they changing the space? I mean, I don’t understand the science of it but I think they do.
Do you ever wish our public spaces, as we perceive them as adults, were as wondrous as they were when we were children?
Am I resisting public space? What kind of energy is that? Here I’m pretending the digital space is a private space and ignoring the public that may or may not come in. Fly away Peter, fly away Paul. Come back Peter, come back Paul.
