THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT

I was in the city by the bay and I went to the newly refurbished San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  The thing I really wanted to see was the exhibition by Sohei Nishino titled New Work.  It consisted chiefly of what Nishino calls “Diorama Maps,” a kind of photo collage. 

Image - Michael Hoppen Gallery

The method, as I understood it, is that he chooses, or gets a commission to photograph, a city.  He goes there, explores, and takes thousands of pictures.  Much of this exploration is done by walking the streets and most of the photographs are taken at ground level, though some are obviously taken from much higher viewpoints.

Nishino prints off contact sheets, cuts out single frames, and assembles them into large-scale collages that looks somewhat like a map, somewhat like an aerial view of the city.  These collages are then rephotographed and printed large scale, and this print is the final product.

I didn’t absolutely understand all that before I went, and I found myself just a little disappointed by the size of the works on display in the exhibition.  Having seem images like the one below, I’d imagined they might be as big as a gallery wall.

Still, it would be churlish to complain that the prints weren’t big enough, so I’m not going to do that.  Like real maps, these works by Nishino allow a dual perspective – you see them from a distance and they give an overall sense of the city but then you need to look closer at all the details.

Image - Michael Hoppen Gallery

Nishino has been making the diorama maps for the best part of fifteen years but lately he’s started a series he calls Day Drawings.  He tracks his own movements via GPS, brings them up on the computer screen, places a piece of paper over the screen and punches holes in the paper tracking his route.  This then becomes a kind of negative.  He shines light through the holes onto a sheet of photographic paper, thereby again forming a sort of map. 

Photograph - Ivan Vartanian

Nishino cites the great artist, walker and mapper Richard Long as an influence (well, how could he not?) and a work by Long titled “Autumn Circle,” 1990, was situated in the museum conveniently close to the Nishina exhibition. Thus:

You may already know that I once had a job guarding a stone circle by Richard Long in the Tate Gallery in London (I was a security guard – long, not very interesting story) and I spent hours on end walking around it.  This was not long after there’d been some controversy about the Tate acquiring Carl Andre’s “Equivalent VIII” otherwise known as the bricks.

People would come up to me as I was pacing around the Long piece and say, “Is this the bricks?” and I’d take great delight in saying, “No it’s the stones.”  How we laughed.

Meanwhile elsewhere in San Francisco, at the Paul Smith store on Geary Street, the window-dressers (do we still call them window-dressers?) were showing a certain disrespect for the printed map – I mean, really.

IT'S ALL TOO BEAUTIFUL

     

What other walking adventures did I have to in London?  Well, I went walking in Little Ilford Park in East Ham, which may have been the inspiration for the Small Faces song “Itchycoo Park,” although it may not. 

“What did you do there?”  Mostly I discussed map/territory relations and Victorian notions of public good, with Travis Elborough.  More about that later, probably.

I went for a walk along the Regent's Canal from King's Cross, past Gas Holder Park (which surely could be an inspiration for a song), to Camden Lock and beyond.  I was with members of the Royal Photographic Society, who do that kind of thing.

         It was a good walk but I sometimes felt uneasy about the narrowness of the path and the imminent threat of silent but potentially deadly cyclists.  Signs like the one below weren’t really very reassuring.

And in Walthamstow I did see this bit of (I suppose you’d have to call it) street art -

“Not all those who wander are lost,” is a line from Tolkien apparently, though I didn’t know that at the time.  It’s undoubtedly true, although equally I’d say that not all those who are lost do any wandering.

WALKING IN SUNSHINE

 So as you perhaps saw in the previous post I went walking in Dunwich with national treasure Clare Balding for the BBC radio programme “Ramblings.”  And she asked me, the way you do, “So what is psychogeography, Geoff?” and I was ready. I had a bit of paper in my top pocket with Guy Debord’s dreary old definition written on it: "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.”

       Clare wasn’t much impressed, and I didn’t expect her to be.  I said, as I’ve said before elsewhere, that I think this is just a fancy way of describing what most walkers do all the time without having to be in any way aware of the term psychogeography.  Different views are no doubt possible.

Our radio walk was intentionally “improvisational,” i.e. not very well planned, and we’d already come to a couple of places where we had to make a choice between one path and another.  In each case we’d both immediately agreed which path to take.  And I said that’s kind of how it always is, you get a vibe and you decide to follow it, you choose one way rather than another, and you go the way you like the look of.

And Clare Balding said, and I’m paraphrasing here, yes but isn’t it different for each individual?  Some people would choose one way, some would choose another, implying that there aren’t actually any precise laws at work here, just personal tastes and preferences.  I couldn’t have agreed more.  OK, hold that thought.

I was staying in London, in Highgate with Martin Bax, a very old friend indeed.  Martin’s a bit the worse for wear these days, but he was still able to walk with me to and from the Tube station at the end of the road.  He did it partly as exercise, partly just to get out of the house and partly to be friendly.  It wasn’t a great expedition, maybe 20 minutes round trip, but I was glad to see him still mobile even if he isn’t moving vey fast these days

But here’s a thing: over the years I must have walked between the Tube station and Martin’s house a hundred times or more, but every time I’d done it I always walked on same the same side of the street, the south side, the side  that connects more directly the station entrance.  But now when I walked with Martin he insisted we walk on the other side, the north side, the sunny side of the street.

         This didn’t signal any antagonism or ideological difference between Martin and me, but it did suggest that we weren’t responding to any precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment; Martin just liked to be warm.

WALKING WITH TREASURES

Just so you know, I was in England and I walked and talked around Dunwich with national treasure Clare Balding for the radio series Ramblings.  It was good, I think.  I’m told we both came over as likeable, which is not what every writer in the world is looking for, but I’m happy with that.

And since not everything that happens on a walk can be captured by radio; this is me having just found a puffball:

And this is Clare Balding and the producer Lucy Lunt, with the same puffball:

The show’s available as a podcast.  Just click on the link below:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07z728k#play 

ALL OVER THE MAP

You know me, I like maps, and I like people (in the appropriate doses).   And more often than not I carry a map with me when I’m walking somewhere.  And as I also meander through the interwebs I often find myself downloading images of people and maps, and how the two relate to each other.

Fact is, people carrying and consulting maps can signal all kinds of different things.  Sometimes it indicates being lost: if you weren’t lost why would you need a map?  You don’t have to answer that. 

People look at maps and scratch their heads look frustrated, look like losers.

But then again consulting a map may indicate that you’re footloose, happy to explore new places, happy not to know exactly where you are, happy to light out to new territories, just so long as they’ve got a map.

Which may be similar to an interest in and engagement with the world, much loved by politicians of many stripes.

And pointing at a map is always an indication that you mean business.

Because yes, sometimes maps are very serious business indeed.  Guys (I'm sorry, it does tend to be mostly guys) study them, lean across them.  There may well be some frowning and chin scratching “We got us a problem to solve here boys.”

And sometimes they’re not serious at all.  Of course weather forecasters stand in front of maps all the time, and often hilarity ensues.

And of course map hilarity may ensue for all kinds of different reasons.

A lot of people like to use maps as a backdrop: as though a map itself delivers gravitas.  Sometimes it does.

Sometimes less so.

Sometimes scarcely at all.