Kopronomia, Chicago, 2003

Love towards what is left, the economy of a waste. I made a walking piece in the city of Chicago, which photographic documentation I used to make a video-piece. During several months I went to explore spaces in my then hometown Chicago, which were “monuments that have forgotten the future”. One starting point was a famous environmental art piece by Robert Smithson called Passaic, New Jersey, from 1967. I wandered around the areas that got to know, at the same time expanding my territory, photographing sites, which had not utilitarian, clear function; sites which until now, or not any more had no meaning.

I paid attention to the lush nature in these sites; it seemed like that all the wild weeds seemed to burst over the boundaries of the signified spaces. The city-plan of Chicago is based on a grid-model. Opposing this utilitarian model, I found this rhizomatic network of a-signifying spaces. The video-work is based on a photographic animation of these sites. For the book I will select some photographs and text.

(SITES OF THE FORGOTTEN FUTURE OF CHICAGO)

Walking is an activiti based on the human body, which relates directly to the environment. It is movement of a body in space, a way to explore the non-urban environment, nature or the built environment – built by the bodies – monuments, buildings and nonspaces.
Walking is a spiritual practice, political activity and anthro-social expedition, all at the same time. These aspects play a significant role in my work, but the composition of these factors may differ greatly, depending on the specific environment.
One defines the relationship with the environment through the actions. Thus, walking is a political action. The surrounding environment has an affect on us, walking creates an awareness of terrain, breathing, heart beating and eventually one starts to think differently – thinking in 4 mph. Walking is a spiritual practice.
For me the idea of walking in urban environment and as a social behaviour relates to the ideas conceived by the Situationist International in 1950’s and 60’s. Their concept of dérive, ”drifting” was an idea of walking as an effective and playful way to transform the perception of the world and in this way change the structure of the society itself. Walking is a way to define and deconstruct a city.
One reflects the environment, nature or city through oneself. Thus, there is no “nature” outside oneself. Depending on the way of perception, the world is conceptualized by the intellect or the opposite, one is fully immersed in the enthropy of nature.
Walking in an urban environment is a play between these two polarities: I might be fully convinced that everything around me has a rational, pragmatic function, everything in significant. Suddenly, I have to catch my breath, accidentally I lose my balance and then, for an instant the architecture looks different, I become aware of myself in the world. For a walker, the world is different from the world seen through the windshield.
My project for this exhibition is a survey of non-sites in Chicago, inspired by the famous project by Robert Smithson in Passaic, New Jersey in 1967. In my walks I’ve located and documented few hundred sites around my normal daily routes. These places I would define “monuments which have forgotten the future”. They are places, which for the pragmatic mind are “dysfunctional” waste, but through walking around the city, these places have become sites – no matter their physical size – which hold strong presence in their absence of utility. In fact, what constitutes a city and environment has lot to do with empty places and non-signified sites. Urban environment has much more to do with the multiplicity of swarm than with the organized machine, at least when the humans are concerned.
“What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it. (Wittgenstein)



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