Place can rip something out of you and give it back
I read Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s essay ‘Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading’ for the first time in 2018.
Sedgwick suggests that rather than existing in a state of paranoia, constantly alert to ‘dangers posed by the hateful and envious part-objects that one defensively projects into, carves out of, and ingests from the world around one’, queer readers move to the reparative position (a reformulation of Melanie Klein’s depressive position).
‘This’, she suggests, ‘is the position from which it is possible in turn to use one’s own resources to assemble or ‘‘repair’’ the murderous part-objects into something like a whole — though, I would emphasize, not necessarily like any preexisting whole. Once assembled to one’s own specifications, the more satisfying object is available both to be identified with and to offer one nourishment and comfort in turn’.
Sedgwick’s articulation of fragmentation and repair stuck with me; it has informed the way I think about my interpersonal relationships as well as my reading and writing practices over the past few years. I took a seminar about archival practice this semester and noticed questions of paranoia woven into both texts on the archive and the structure of the archive itself.
as Hal Foster writes in 'An Archival Impulse', archival work 'often appears tendentious, even preposterous. Indeed its will to connect can betray a hint of paranoia – for what is paranoia if not a practice of forced connections and bad combinations, of my own private archive, of my own notes from the underground, put on display?’
the 1655 notes in my iPhone, which date back to 2013, are ‘my own private archive'.
to create this work, I aimed to provide a reparative reading of this archive – to assemble its part-objects into a whole that is 'not necessarily like any preexisting whole'. as I combed through years-old writings in search of an entry point, I came across the following note from september 21, 2017:
‘PLACE CAN RIP SOMETHING OUT OF YOU AND GIVE IT BACK’. this quotation speaks to my fascination with fragmentation and repair. it speaks to the emotional resonance of place, something close to the heart of my work and my life. after revisiting it, I chose to do my reading through the lens of place, asking several key questions:
what has place ripped out of me and given it back? how has it shaped and re-shaped who I am? how does it nourish and comfort me?
I sifted through my notes and assembled all mentions of place. at times these took the form of proper nouns:
they also took the form of extended descriptions and evocative details:
this is what the full list looked like:
Paris the little girl playing with bubbles in the courtyard Europe the room a maze one would be happy to be lost in the bookstore Shakespeare and Company some woods 14724 field ct cedar springs mi A glittering debauched club behind high wire fences on range blue lake the corners of alleys intersections and mailboxes the fire escape on the 8th floor the northeast corner of the sky Run down white clapboard houses with flowers out front Watching sunsets and sunrises from airplanes your room New York New Orleans Florida gazing out at the sun on the trees and over the field and the darting movement of reflections across the windowsill, and feeling the crisp breeze somewhere with coffee shops, bookstores, and plane tickets this place these halls UChicago Northwestern Cornell U of M Columbia Barnard NYU UPenn Harvard Johns Hopkins Oberlin Reed a magical, surreal, almost fantastical place EGR alone in a courtyard, drinking in the ivy-coated walls and heavy wooden doors and a lone fountain while sensing the intoxicating hum of Chicago at my fingertips local animal habitats Regions with not much water wasting water It’s easy to believe that all the places in the world exist from the comfort of my bed in the morning nyc treehouses and boats Aquinas home to a bed Ada Bible CMU Sweden a strange white flash in the woods becomes a truck on the highway Ley lines drinking a raspberry chai drink and listening to Bon Iver on the way from Ithaca to New York City driving by mall after mall wondering how they’ll be developed a tunnel from my window to yours back in office other schools eastern live in a new place NZ/Australia UChicago Barnard Northwestern Swarthmore Kalamazoo Patterson ice arena GR 195 south street Sparta MI the town I grew up in metallic picnic tables in the gravel grove outside an ice cream shop, wooded trails I used to run, a friend’s grandma’s house I ate panda crackers and read library books at, the sidewalk where I first felt my heart beat faster the train to chicago west michigan missing places and places in time I’ll walk down new streets and imprint myself onto new places Crowe hall 4-137 library basement a tiny Bungalow in Portland with a garden and a porch swing the farmers market down the street the top of lookout hill at sunset his car Wilcox park lookout hill his house Grand Rapids harbor and city California Chicago Black Mountain the archives Grand Rapids mca Scott Hall’s Guild lounge grand rapids / evanston waking up in different rooms visits home blend into sublets blend into dorm rooms blend into apartments both here and abroad the prospect (more tangible than ever) of London!! fort dearborn park missing Indian monuments on the south side elementary school in chinatown block that was turned into a community garden englewood business development place + potential café and kitchen space Pilsen the museum the neighborhood when you’re on the train there’s a strange emotional stratification. there have been times where I’ve felt miserable and nauseous on the purple line while watching friends laugh. there have been times where I’ve napped on the shoulder of people I love while other passengers sort through paperwork or gaze into space with a strained expression. sometimes when train cars empty out, especially during unlikely hours like 10:30 on a saturday morning, you and whoever accompanies you transform the tiny metal tube into an emotional singularity. but that’s unusual. Grand Rapids evanston / grand rapids Michigan London galleries and coffee shops and side streets near the metra stop surrounded by trees and old buildings heaven is a distance not a place? place is a twist you can’t iron out of the fabric of things a short story where the conceit is identical suburban house layouts evanston what does this place have to teach me? strange experience on the levy, my love for hyde park chicago I opened up door after door of metal and locks and bolts, knowing I was getting close to something meaningful and significant. when I got to the final door I opened it and saw myself sitting on bleachers, drenched in sunlight and surrounded by multiple loaves of beautiful, braided sourdough bread. the university of chicago’s campus the starry night sky in my old backyard the l rambling through the dempster stop at sunset the noyes platform today taking the bus down to the university a few days ago hyde park the mansueto library the special collections gallery heaven being a distance and not a place heaven as a place through a lens of distance the enticing blue mass of it all distance as a lens of place, a place I now recognize is no heaven the place where I want to be, spectrum of color and all hyde park at northwestern and in evanston dinner at majani walked through hyde park deliriously happy I walked to the train station in the morning I took the train to Michigan city LEAVING IS AN ANTIDOTE TO AND A SOURCE OF UNEASE STAYING IS A REASON TO AND A REASON NOT TO LEAVE PLACE CAN RIP SOMETHING OUT OF YOU AND GIVE IT BACK the city is a growth machine Union station palmer house odd fellows monument all it takes is a list of people I love for me to drunkenly dart across town to a party I didn’t intend to go to in the first place! in a wretched cabin amid the forests destitute of all human aid temple with Asha walking with Chris through Monterey weeks ago, associating the taste of burnt honeycomb with preemptive longing gluten free calzones after big sur. the couch in Garrett’s basement my bed now walking to my car and locking eyes in the snowy meijer parking lot, or in provin trails park at sunset moving up the stairs and out of your house–out of–low-lit familiar suburbia–out of your house for the last time off la grave street afraid of running into each other across the map of the city we call home northwestern library the horizon “the sea is no longer a place to be inhabited but a place to be contemplated” at the beach “civilization, we expect, will end on the beach” THE BEACH THE BEACH the beach is isolating, disorienting, but the horizon is an emotionally/spiritually significant thing vibrant, densely populated beach scenes–the beach is a place to see and be seen, not only are we gazing at the beach, we’re gazing at each other “with the enshrinement of the beach as the ideal vacation spot, life there took on an increasingly ritualized quality. no longer a place of status display, the beach served as a performance space for sentimental rites of family solidarity” (conversation on human shore page 161) the lack of horizon in these photographs, the people on the beach are being seen but not seeing, is the beach regaining its disorienting/de-centering quality, what do these photographs suggest about the future anthropocentric meanings of the beach? “frozen in time in billions of photographs, the seaside is where we consign our precious dreams and our most frightening nightmares” misrach linked his work to 9/11 and the surveillance state, taking his photos from a hotel balcony–what does this mean after the October las vegas shooting? we visit the shore to perform social rituals today, the sky is threatening perhaps we’ll escape to the beach madrid cheap shuttle to Baden-Baden–Strasbourg navette a genocidal act in which Native people, my ancestors included, were removed from their homes and forced by militia to march 1,000 deathly miles “I wish the idea of time would drain out of my cells and leave me quiet even on this shore” – Agnes Martin If a river is threatened, it’s the end of the world for those fish love that feels like open plain breeze my high school graham foundation all falls into place with a sense of awe “my whole desire is to run up and down the sea coast looking for you” my roommate’s phone faintly playing “the only thing” by sufjan stevens as she sleeps and I get ready for bed :’) ! rooms and emotion ise shrine hiroshima peace park (pre and post war) co-prosperity sphere monument mount fuji hiroshima peace memorial my apartment the blue light streams through the half-open door in the blue light I see what unfurls within me and refuse to befriend it as children were removed from their homes and sent to boarding schools, a practice described in the Apology, the words on the second page are isolated and removed surreal midwest too-blue roadside pools green industrial water seeing a hunter’s blind my neighborhood looked suburban but was out in the country lyft to the block museum go to work at the block grab lunch at Norris head down to hyde park ran a race through an alternate version of northwestern’s library, got lost in a bank where everyone was making their own maps driving in the car and saw a lion out the window it looked like a retiree’s midwestern pseudo-log cabin house MG47 get to wing M and go down a floor find the room turn left after entering tech enter stairwell on left, go down to ground floor turn left after exiting the stairwell (SIGN) turn right just before james n. and nancy j. farley wing (mechanical engineering) (SIGN) turn right after emergency telephone box / across from MG22 (SIGN) turn right after undergraduate learning lab / across from MG36 (SIGN) turn left before wood doors, you'll see water fountains on your left (SIGN) turn right into computer lab across from benches (SIGN) MG47 is on the right next to a printing station “the description of a glittering city is mapped over the wounds of its inhabitants” (114) I walked into the fourth floor bathroom and it smelled like citronella mosquito repellant. I thought of summer camp then and at various moments throughout the day–walking in warm rain, eating a hot dog, feeling instrument case blisters form in the joints of my fingers. summer camp was unique because you were surrounded by people all of the time; whether you liked it or not you fell asleep to candlelight to stifled laughter. school is different, within the same square mile and across the city it’s easy to feel separate from people you want to feel close to. new orleans / environmental racism pack for MI & be ready to go!!! tenochtitlan compare to plan of tenochtitlan? Tenochtitlan Mexico City the ways we relate to consumer space in late capitalism at sargent? cta rides in a frat house hallway garfield howard in paris london the tube the net our entwined hands build, the net that catches chicago streets and paints them gold Manitoba CA adventures in paris!! the Midwest pilsen with marie Luma grounded in chicago however, themes of place limited artists to bengal (where the photos are from) political situation of bengal “trace and map the American soldier moving from one place to another” the lattice of the city please get me out of chicago Luma women attach themselves to places (55) some places cta cars and evanston streets and the windows of brick apartment buildings dead malls what if we lived in a world that was built for aesthetic enjoyment? would it offer us the same pleasure? interstice meaning “an intervening space, even a very small one” space is key here (?) space / environments / place linked to environmental degradation, and back to colonization what does this mean for art / what does art mean for this? Paris before I leave town the illinois state capital i always miss fjm when he’s in chicago! the lack of miles between us standing on the uica balcony on a grey august day the city below? something comforting about sharing your location with the world not in the disquieting, specific sense of gps but like… here is what i see and what i smell and here’s a name for it! in the car, buzzed from two hearted ale, lips covered in cider donut sugar, danced to a live band, talked about how art will save the world while watching lightning in an open-air barn thousands of miles between now and a week from now figure out shuttle to hostel it was late august & i was walking through downtown grand rapids near the river 2 hour long drive to detroit paris places to go in Paris: Le comptoir general Silencio Le non_jazz Bus palladium (with Justin!) Andy wahloo New morning Rosa bonheur La mutinerie ofr. Shakespeare & company a town where almost every building except for an ancient castle was destroyed during world war ii. the castle is still there today, and high school kids meet there to drink on friday nights what i want i think is to be in love in a seaside resort town i’d really love to see an amalgamation of rural route (r.r.) directions that people enter for their voting registration i feel like it would be really interesting and maybe poetic and at least say something about the way in which people relate to the spaces they live in spend a year walking the french coast the sea is one of the rare beautiful things you can walk into sciences po women in the city / an experience defined by visibility walked through the organic market, wrote and read at the seine, went to port de clingancourt, by far the most fascinating place i’ve been in paris so far, explored the quiet flea market, had a picnic at buttes charmont looked out at the city and sunset from the pavilion on the metro sat in the window and listened to beach house and now i’m home variations in the color of the water on google maps, gets unsettled by the vastness of the sea to wake up to the smell of fresh-baked bread oddly homesick for chicago and the midwest the solférino metro station is a meeting of affect foam museum cat boat eye museum anne frank house scandinavian embassy market area around sarphati park hostel grocery store anarchist bookstore walk to anarchist bookstore find place to charge phone and portable charger bagel spot going back home feels close enough for comfort but far away enough that i still have lots of time to experience what i want to do in paris ongoing list of my paris recommendations: les grands voisins radiodays secco artisan boulanger (for a quick sandwich) l’étoile du kashmir (amazing and cheap indian food) parc buttes charmont marché near porte de clingancourt le zero zero station after abbesses at their apartment pitchfork paris bathroom on the canal getting home drunk at 3 in the morning the bathroom at pitchfork paris i might go to new york city this summer the Whitney Chicago gaite lyrique i won’t be at sciences po for lunch today, grabbing last minute lunch with a friend who’s in town! le zad chez justine only feel at ease once i’m alone with my thoughts in the paris rain modern culture is wrong about temporality, epochs can and should “wander” back to Chicago Chicago art scene in Chicago visit le Corbusier house montreuil: communist bakery, breweries (we should probably go here on a saturday bc that’s when the two craft breweries are open…..) communist party headquarters + exhibition (apparently a cool building) art space near la vilette (generally hanging out at la vilette but during the day) why are you so obsessed with place and space theory and why do you get so deeply emotional about them i can’t stop thinking about the love poem about waking up to metal pipes and snow outside a specter haunting Europe porto Dama Pé de Cabra Casa da Horta Serralves museum ceramic studios in porto “Soon after their arrival, the group found buckets of terra-cotta-colored paint, believed to be left over from the nearby Golden Gate Bridge. Some took to spelling out declarations of native sovereignty and painting raised red fists on the island’s dilapidated prison buildings, including the water tower.” I think that the apartment is shaping up to have a blue and yellow color scheme !! the Sparrows, Madcap, or Rowster the appropriation and displacement of social desire from the streets into the aesthetic forms and affirmative circuits of administered art in the streets and squats and social forums, in the communes, like Oaxaca, that flare up in struggle go to communist bakery and cool breweries have go to brunch at les grands voisins go on lots of walks when the weather isn’t too cold Alcatraz island budget airport hotels my own bedroom those trips to provence I think similar things on the paris metro and think you’ve won Rundstrom wrote this essay about place, and he made this argument. He bases his argument on the geographical definition of place, which is [definition]. This definition incorporates both the tangible and the social elements of place–both land and “life.” what about the built environment of the island original: office alcatraz alcatraz the aesthetic break opens space for occupiers to build Indigenous relationships to the island, to make a place standing rock france hon books? les grands voisins my hometown République République coworking café The visible means of organizing this community and making Alcatraz a place, from détournement to deconstruction to reconstruction, continue to play a part in contemporary Indigenous organizing and artmaking Standing Rock annual Thanksgiving sunrise ceremony Alcatraz in the case of Alcatraz, visual strategies resulted in a decolonial “community of dis-identified persons” grounded in relationships to land (= dis-identified with settler colonialism) the silence in the room at shakespeare and company that i wrote about more than five years ago. walking into a space and hearing the blood in your ears in your yellow-lit room in the sliver of your mirror a curled up leaf walking into a silent room that could change my life random encounters in the city are beautiful your face in the too-bright light of boats on the slope of buttes-charmont by the seine crouching to see the montmartre cemetary through bars walking into that room i wrote about years and years ago and stepped into again earlier this evening in the same city walk in park go to sciences po & cancel phone plan after 8 books (find present for ruby) art supplies store (find present for dad) museums with justin we went back to the metro stop and then the bar where we met our table was next to these obnoxious flashing christmas lights we walked back to the metro in the rain we sat together and kept talking until mabillon, one stop away from sevres-babylone where i needed to get off i got off the metro and walked the wrong way my heart is breaking for this place and these people the iceland rock ‘n’ roll museum or whatever if i end up stuck in Iceland Whitney Museum 3-bedroom apartments I’m back in Grand Rapids hanging out at sciences po with justin drinking cheap vending machine espresso the kind of gloomy sciences po library taking breaks from work to grab banana bread or a kind bar at a fancy bakery or grocery store in the neighborhood writing with a beer in a café with léa going to les grands voisins on wednesdays, and the walk to censier, usually somehow in sunshine the metro, whether packed or empty, and the sound of each station’s name in the announcer’s voice. always getting wistful at solferino. looking for my reflection in the tunnels. watching for the ghost station between mabillon and sevres-babylone journaling in parks i miss long walks from place to place even when it makes more sense to take the metro the walk from censier to the sorbonne to my homestay grabbing a croissant and coffee at the franprix feeling significant in the strange streets of the city even when that significance felt normal. i want to tear up when i think about andré breton talking about the sense that [something] essential could just happen to you on the streets of paris. i want to run through the smoggy wide boulevards again and drink at all of the happy hours and smoke by the seine at dusk. i want to explore the tiny cinemas near censier, to buy vegetables at covered markets and walk with purpose through a million sunsets and past a million buildings, all with their own histories. i feel like i can hold paris in my head and in my heart. i mean that in a very physical way that i felt for the first time in porto. i want to hold my hands out towards it, it’s a weird reciprocal sense that makes no sense because a place can’t reach back to you. leaving paris is like leaving behind someone you’re in love with. i don’t want it to feel like a dream, at least not forever, and i don’t know how to express this to other people, and i hear a train whistle in the night and think about chicago and liminality and how i’ve made it through these odd spaces before. place is a set of personal and shared meanings. place can rip something out of you and give it back. i will make place where i walk, mark my words. a map of Chicago footsteps in snow the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art in Turin, Italy the Walker Museum of Art sculpture garden An occupier’s comment on plans for Alcatraz’s future, recorded in the minutes of IAT’s 1969 National Conference, stands in stark contrast: “it is important. . . to use contemporary architecture, knowledge, and art skills to express [traditional Indian art ideas] in a way to say that this must last forever” (emphasis in original). walking into a hotel bar in the dead of winter in paris this whole thing is making me feel very much back in the united states in contrast to my weird life of parisian adventure In the spirit of healing, we would like to take a moment to acknowledge that we are on the land of the Council of Three Fires, comprised of the Potawatomi, Odada, and Ojibwe tribes, as well as the numerous other tribes that passed through this region for trade, ceremony, and diplomacy. They are the original and ongoing inhabitants of this land. We would also like to to remember the lives that were lost 153 years ago in the Sand Creek Massacre, an event integrally tied to the memory of Northwestern University’s founder, John Evans. On November 29, 1864, U.S. soldiers under the command of Colonel John Chivington attacked a Cheynne and Arapaho village in the Colorado territory, at this time governed by John Evans. They slaughtered around 200 people–mostly women, children, and elders. Over a century and a half later, the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations continue to recall this day with great pain. visited many museums, galleries, and art fairs around France, both with the ALCET program and in my own time. Some of my favorites were the Fondation Cartier in Paris, which had an exhibition on South American geometric art that spoke to my interest in Indigenous art, the LUMA Foundation in Arles, which inspired me with its dedication to bridging art with ecology and urbanism, and the Paris International fair in Paris Observable forces have shaped earth’s landscape throughout natural history Person “can’t conceive of the amount of time that has passed on planet earth” Geographical pilgrimage back from my semester in Paris the Whitney MoMA the MCA the Block Museum the Graham Foundation the Block Museum blanket fabric (mali) looks like a map or a continent recuperation in the desert Things I’m interested in in France: LUMA Arles Paris La Colonie Chicago AIC in Chicago are the streets so full of it that i can’t resist. the 200 steps at abbesses the bright significance of times where I felt like every corner and slant of light was significant. I’ve been stuck inside for over 24 hours now, and I want to leave even though I love waking up to streaks of sunlight and the steam from the apartment next to mine rushing past the window. Or falling asleep and seeing the moon in the cold blue sky. every single train ride we took to and from the south of france The shimmer in the sky on my walk across the Seine near Gare D’Austerlitz Like the air was somehow more alive A similar shimmer when I sat by the Seine journaling Taking the train to Port de Clingancourt Weird market stalls Upper level of an abandoned mall he’s fascinated by changes in the color of the sea and sometimes looks at the vast blue on google maps to scare himself across from me on a misty November night in Montmartre Peeked through cemetery bars and into windows and down staircases I went to the Jeff Rosenstock show with Léa and Justin It was a mess of sweaty bodies and beers, we joked that it was Dionysiac Solférino the Musée D’Orsay We sat by the river and drank wine and ate grapes and watched tour boats with too-bright lights pass by I’m literally not in Paris And winter break and school and Chicago have knocked me pleasantly back into reality And I dream of going back but somehow know that it wouldn’t be quite the same I think it’s beautiful that the streets of that city are so full beachy head paris thinking about how Indigenous notions of land and environment and temporality show up in a work in jazz clubs and university cafeterias I could see you across the platform and run to meet you in the tunnel below our feet. village movement in chicago (newberry collections) telling stories makes paris feel both more and less real–because to other people, all of the people sound like characters in a book –and makes me feel closer and further from all of my experiences. it’s an easier way to live with them than longing though. something about whispering images, even of walking to school germany the rock Northwestern i had a nightmare about going back to paris last night i needed paris to grow and to freefall and to explore, i think. and it’s a small pleasure to miss it now i feel so grounded in orange peels and dewy branches catching the february light, in connections and rivalries and collaborations, in making soup and catching the purple line indigenous performance artist who swam to alcatraz sciences po the sedgwick purple line stop. the graham foundation old town stealing flags from hyde park old town ale house people at the bar cheered logan square houses and orange-lit playgrounds critical place inquiry walking makes you slow down processing histories of a place through the body routes detroit to chicago the crystal palace content enough in my evanston life in that room in that odd apartment logan square walked down the alley to a fancy coffee shop it was a breezy grey morning and i loved all of the weird painted garages i listened to new order on the train on the way down to hyde park we drove up lake shore drive at golden hour with some quiet guitar music playing and it felt cinematic again we went to half acre brewery we drove to the red line and i came home and listened to indie rock and felt warm Allowing a city of strangers to speak to each other Vietnam memorial in Washington (wound in the ground) Monument that comes to the people i remember one of the first evenings we spent together we met at concorde and walked along the seine warm the bus ride to normandy and back warm at the dinner table we sat together in your aunt’s apartment by the canal we said goodbye by the odéon stop, again in the rain you surround me well enough like you did when we walked by the seine live updates from the pub standing on the corner waiting for the 172 bus i feel like i’m always torn between places and communities, i’m thinking back to paris and wanting to cry and thinking back to grand rapids and ahead to new York the Whitney Museum of American Art NYC I’m open to living anywhere anywhere reasonably priced and within reasonable commuting distance of the Whitney Bridgeport spring has walked up and away and down from evanston many times, hopefully it’ll stick around soon Grand Rapids, Michigan She is interested in the relationship between visual and literary culture, place, and decolonial protest cold water! visiting the lake! crying in the humidity! to be swept up in it all! anchor for the images of places we carry in our hearts one place because of another, activated by listening agency of places land is a character, not a setting place is working on us!! aaron arrived at northwestern the Whitney Museum Williamsburg Manhattan Brooklyn Northwestern University Footsteps weave places together produced by masses that make some parts of the city disappear and exaggerate others, distorting it, fragmenting it, and diverting it from its immobile order “A universe of rented spaces haunted by a nowhere or by dreamed-of places” Steel bridges / bridges of sunlight and soft voices Most beautiful and wistful things I see are living room lights and pools of park water out the train window In the muck of self-doubt and eating mochi by Lake Michigan. Leaving the party to whisper in an alley, his thin face drenched in green light. on the bus to the train station an empty field the stunned, numb walk home Justin, Makaa, Isabel and I went to chili’s and drank $5 margaritas and shared chips and salsa we walked home in the night breeze CHEAP sublet near CTA 1420 Chicago Dempster Purple Line Station commuting into Chicago Trader Joe’s, Jewel Osco, and Binny’s Close to fun spots like Bagel Art, Hewn, Blind Faith Cafe, and within walking distance of parks + Greenwood Beach Evanston lights expose the living room like a raw nerve on a tooth leaving chicago for the summer on Monday before i leave town i’ll be back sometime in august nyc in the meantime thousands of miles away in his room this song so tied to this place but now shared with him and making its way to paris the block Go home! NYC Vinecroft Pros of going home Walk around the neighborhood in the brewery sustainable aesthetics as an alternative to post-apocalyptic ones, like overgrown grasses and urban meadows (but especially when juxtaposed with people and activity and noise)? I want to go back to Paris tbh !!!!! What if I got the Fulbright grant….. want to hang out in the archives fall in love with more places and people Bodys by Car Seat Headrest reminds me SO clearly of Paris The haze at the blue edge of rue de rennes where it intersects with blvd saint-germain Feeling like you’re there somehow more than usual I keep thinking about how visceral my love for Paris is I want to run down its streets and hold it in my arms New York participants occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) headquarters in Washington, D.C. for six tense, now infamous days So I’m here in New York! I got here in the afternoon, Justin met me at penn station and we walked for half an hour in the sun Passed a lot of happy hours and got a lot of sun The west village is winding and small and reminds me of the Marais I live in what’s called the treehouse and I sleep on the fourth floor in a loft bed The lights in half of the room don’t work and there’s a moth mounted on the wall just outside the door The skylight is so beautiful! And there’s a patio and backyard I can climb to And lots of pots and pans and a cabinet full of essential oils Justin and I got a beer at this bar that felt like the result of a machine-learning algorithm spitting out a bar walked around until my feet bled got falafel at mamoun’s ate it in Washington square park until the rain started pouring I stopped at the stonewall national monument and put down tobacco now I’m here and humid spring quarter feels like an ocean away more time in Doylestown and Michigan later in the summer Ready to get swept up in this city A feeling I felt for the first time since Paris walking home today A little beer-drunk and feeling like running along boulevards And taking it in with all senses Soaking in the streets does something become yours when your things are strewn across it riis beach (take a all the way to the end) brooklyn go to museum go to coffee shop and work on fellowships in grand rapids reading and writing for my world’s fairs final researching obscure native artists at the whitney east village Makaa came to the Whitney, we drank gin and tonics in art bar and made big I walked out into the streets drunk in the sunlight but not heavy Went to Bushwick, the sky pink and it felt like I was in some strange industrial town I keep thinking about the Lyft ride home last night How the birds were chirping and how the sky was blue but already light around the edges The girl in the front passenger seat rolled down her windows and stuck out her head when we drove over the Williamsburg bridge The only places open were crowded dollar pizza joints another time I stumbled home at 4 in the morning and heard birds chirping and felt like there were parts of me I needed to stay clear On the train to bed-stuy, meeting Justin before going to the clubs back through old texts, all the way back to Paris reading on the roof earlier in the evening primed me for sentiment but I What followed has those sharp sunny edges now, even in the middle of a New York summer night a place that is your own, imbued with significance “My window” running down a street in the suburbs under orange streetlights courtauld, exeter? exeter? interference archive at elsewhere coney island w/ amanda and molly a figure on the street or in the woods union square drinking coconut water in the park after waking up hungover watching people watch outside of their windows rode the 7 train to queens yesterday, went to the night market thinking about how easy it is to feel alive here when the light hits right walking into the club just as bizarre love triangle starts making place where i walk Paris subway station announcements It always feels as if they ask first and then answer hopefully this won’t be a problem in chicago I’m in grand rapids through thursday & again in september in grand rapids another 1969 occupation–Young Lords occupation of a Methodist church at 111th Street and Lexington, called the People’s Church UK/Northern Ireland trade issues Go to lake Stop by block museum Come home Catch train This trip to chicago was lounging around and feeling indulgent Taking the Metra into the city for parties, walking across Wicker Park and Bucktown and Logan Square, meeting friends on the platform and swigging from half-empty cans on the train. Danny’s Bridgeport sitting in Colectivo writing essays Going back to the Block Museum Northwestern Walking to the CTA drinking coffee in the sun and looking at the houses and feeling the kind of buoyant I only feel standing above the Dan Ryan Expressway and looking at the Chicago skyline The skyline Speaking of the skyline, I can see it from my front window, distant on the horizon but unmistakable, especially when it catches a glow at sunset. I see it next the lake, which is barely visible but makes the clouds above it look hazy and glistening. distant blues on the horizon I have photo of the beach hanging up in my room now and they remind me to daydream about the British coastline sipping Malbec in a VIP lounge Chicago Celtic knot when I go into the radio station psychogeographical study of les halles Alcatraz Island in San Francisco AT NORTHWESTERN NEXT YEAR Powwow in Deering Meadow “the demonstration remade, albeit briefly and elusively, the fabric of the city itself by inscribing a colonized alternity at the physical heart of the French imagistic imaginary” the occupied space of Paris Oxford Tate Britain Chicago History Museum the familiar business of sex and death at a seascape Paul Chan @ the Guggenheim carbondale evanston symbols like guns and crosses that I’ve associated with conservatism, especially in west michigan, can they be reclaimed? my hand sanitizer smells like a mixed drink at a house party Evanston After the reading, we will head to the Celtic Knot for snacks, games, and conversation! try to go to knot with friends? Lol and Jacques Hold take a train trip to T. Beach so that Lol can see the Casino once again We see the visit to the Casino through Jacques’s eyes–he notices his surroundings, notes Lol’s reaction and the casino employee’s moment of recognition (not a shared one) She sleeps after she and Jacques visit the Casino I am in Evanston… I am in an armchair in Schuler Books reading dystopian YA on a winter afternoon in winter 2011 “She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.” Embed interests within time at Northwestern and resources to utilize at Oxford Name drop: pitt-rivers museum Ashmolean Thinking of two places at once How does experience in this room project to experience at Rhodes house Oxford Union Very difficult and very pretentious environment as if I need to make crises happen here alcatraz lyft to hotel, get ready for interview in new York I wanted to pine over someone days that I’m not at the block museum? I’m hung up on a city Dalhousie University Archives, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Newberry Library Special Collections, Chicago, IL driving around my hometown with heated seats random and immense depression at the knapp corner meijer driving and noticing that my hands don’t feel like my own and taking it as a relief buy something at train station I am ready to go home I just want to walk around the streets of Paris and listen to Movies by Weyes Blood I think it would only emotionally destroy me a little OXFORD SAN FRANCISCO TRIP PLANNING Staying with Casey the sense and weight of memories tied to places. and the way those tie to people someone who’s lived abroad, sometime with stories this very sneaky lovely fun refreshing break in grand rapids I don’t feel too excited about returning to evanston soon North Carolina University of Leeds Memory tourism in Paris Chicago I go back to create something new lots of geese tracks heard birds squirrel in area lots of geese tracks heard birds squirrel in area squirrel in area squirrel in area pair of geese! squirrel evanston makes me miserable when I’m walking around there at night paris and new york were good for me and even grand rapids–part of family and a history? people in my building doing karaoke to closing time at 1:17am on a saturday night I think I want to be in a city where people go out excited to go back to paris next month see beautiful places and do research and live in a tiny studio apartment! San Francisco Casey’s house Yellow line to Antioch rock ridge 4142 Fruitvale Ave Oakland San Francisco History Center Alcatraz Alcatraz tour dive bars on residential streets, carrying around a saxophone, taking pictures in the streetlight and the sunlight that red couch getting lost in the presidio, shivering in the front of the bar with a glass of skin-contact wine and an eve babitz collection richmond (past twin peaks and haight ashbury at night) the restaurant the bar I asked the bartender for a recommendation and we went to casa nova (a 20 minute walk away punctuated by flowering trees) the bar was red and orange-lit with lots of nude portraits. I talked about light catching trains at sunset the same city chicago I went home to oakland and the flowering trees and piles of concrete riding the BART to SFO, looking at houses and hills out the window, all hit by sun, watching the sky turn to pink as I got closer to the airport The bed I slept in, grey and comfortable with a clear view of the Mormon temple I left my apartment and ran across the bank parking lot thousands of miles away Thesis work day (in city?) prairie moon whiskey thief frances willard house koi bar louie la macc the knot evanston pub the deuce the alcatraz wall anecdote the sap is starting to melt! thinking about the spaces we’ve never inhabited but could have that we carry with us Events/exhibitions to attend in Paris Block Museum the Block like waking up to the sound of tv evanston dispensary “a place by the lake for all my relations” I think they installed a new streetlight near the train tracks because now every time the metra passes by it looks like it’s on fire. It makes me think of a really unsettling war of the worlds scene but it’s also really beautiful there is a fly inside of the bottle ant on spile Leeds and Bradford Midyear retreat in Cardiff Whitby (beach town closer to leeds) Liverpool (doing cool things with contemporary art, seaside town —> launching point for British empire) Working class beach weekends in the North the new apartment buildings Lois moved back in with her family in Michigan yesterday. She packed up her belongings and left her apartment indefinitely within a 12 hour window, and is unsure when she will return to Evanston. Block Chicago Important to have security in the main gallery because these works of art do not belong to us if I was in Chicago how much time we spend alone in our rooms consuming media I think about something I wrote in high school about how it’s easy to imagine that the whole world exists from the comfort of my bed in the morning, and I think that has something to do with it–when your physical world shrinks other parts of it grow. On my first night back in Grand Rapids, I walked around the block and laughed out loud at the tiny space I occupy now. Even my longer walks just brush against Riverside Park and Huff Park. I wonder if there’ll come a time months from now where I walk to places like Provin Trails or cul-de-sacs near my high school. two days before I moved home before I decided to move back to my hometown indefinitely. On my first night home, on the first of many long walks around my neighborhood I couldn’t stop thinking about an entry from September 21, 2017: “place can rip something out of you and give it back.” I went home the weekend of march 7th. Just for two nights, enough time to get a new phone and vote in the Michigan primary and drink beer in a sunny booth at the craft brewery down the street. In the next 12 hours I slept lightly, packed up my apartment, and moved back to my hometown for the indefinite future. I didn’t grow up in this house. My parents moved here at the end of my freshman year, and my first time sleeping here was a weekend trip with a friend. But I feel more at ease here than the house I grew up in. The door to the basement faced a blank wall, and the huge window in the living room faced a dark forest. I didn’t like the vastness, and there were no sidewalks to follow. Milwaukee Art Museum Lake Michy When I visited Northwestern as an high school senior, I spent an entire day at the Block Museum I am spending the online quarter living with family in Grand Rapids, MI! Abdelhafid Khatib’s “Attempt at a Psychogeographical Description of Les Halles” the “bridge” between decolonial protest movements I would draw a comparison between bridge-building as a form of placemaking/decolonial mobilization and the need to rearrange and/or sunder the built environment that Khatib identifies I’m thinking about paris and new york a lot I reached out to tell you about not moving back from a place of maturity and respect NAISA’s trip to Sand Creek in Fall 2016. On our first day, we drove out to the Sand Creek site. I took this photo of Asha, Makasha, Forrest, and Lorenzo walking across a parking lot, and to this day, it is one of my favorites. running into people on campus, in Evanston, and Chicago! I’ll also miss walks by Lake Michigan laughing with NAISA in Swift 104c “Alcatraz Island,” June Leivas I am interested in examining Rancière’s ideas in relation to Blue Cloud’s vision of San Francisco back in san francisco but it’s also urbana illinois can’t remember if I took a bus or a train or a plane to get there reading a french play about children and labor in a bookstore with a signature sweet potato gnocchi recipe texting my friends trying to figure out where to meet and seeing all these art school kids by monuments at a party at asha’s apartment drinking coke zero running into chris at the club going to someone’s beautiful studio apartment in grand rapids—I was accompanying someone to visit the father of her children? he told me about the difference between a studio apartment and a one bedroom driving across the bay bridge and seeing the sun rise across san francisco seeing alcatraz again in the pink morning light thinking about the poem “rage, rage against the dying of the light” but then remembering that the light was growing and not fading Jemison looked out toward the Bay and, upon seeing the fiery red wall, turned his attention away from work and toward the political possibilities the occupation represented. Transformation of a street scene “It’s the light that comes to us from afar, so places very high and very far appear to us as blue, too: places like distant cities or mountains or even the flat lip of a foggy horizon at sea.” leeds the pain of staying and the pain of leaving would you run up and down the seashore looking for me? would you walk through fog by lake michigan in january to find me? would you answer this feeling that ties you to sebaldian walks? I am going to be in chicago for the day to run apartment errands on monday—maybe if you’re free we could meet in a park I sat in the sun on my friend’s porch with gin and tonics and the dog she’s watching I sat on the rocks by lake michigan with my ex-boyfriend, we took off our shoes and dipped our feet in the strands of sea grass I was with my friends at the observatory. one of the amateur astronomers greeted us and told us to look up at saturn, at jupiter, at the fuzzy patch above our heads he identified as the milky way I thought of my room at night when I’m adjusting to the dark, when I can only see the streetlight coming into the corner through the corner of my eyes I’m nervous about days feeling the same in a new place very very soon, much later and sooner than I’m ready for it is so strange to be able to say the sentence “I hope to visit London in the near future” and mean it. it looks like the south shore line and beach towns and something I just don’t know how to express right now. I want to drive around California with him again, look at greenery and the waves and almost fall asleep in the passenger seat on the way back from San Francisco. I want him to hold me while I shiver on a plane and wonder if the clusters of orange below us are small towns or forest fires. I’m getting ready to leave the country now that the people and places I love here are part of me and it’s almost as if I’m not actually leaving I think it would be enough if we could walk through the half-deserted loop at midnight again. chose to come to Grand Rapids to see me tomorrow in Leeds I believe that there’s something to this beach (shoreline) project on more levels than I fully comprehend yet the dream about walking into a starry-skied backyard I had forgotten about the dream about sourdough bread and bleachers and unspeakable illumination behind a series of doors, the dreams I have and will probably always have about waves. looking up at the chicago skyline as a child, looking up at the sunset over dempster my senior year of high school, looking out at paris in the gaze I looked at a google street view scene in a leeds park and knew it, knew I would know it it felt right to go to the lake today. heart-shaped rocks and the smell of medicine on the tips of my left fingers. seeing a cardinal after putting down tobacco at greenwood beach my whole weekend in san francisco can’t sleep on the flight to dublin he week that alanna olivia and I stayed inside of blue whale for 72 hours. our friends, acquaintances threw buckets of water which froze in midair. I see the blue of the ocean, in enough detail to make out valleys and ridges but not enough to make out colored variations in depth. I once knew someone who told me those variations, seen on maps and from boats, shake him to his core. opened up plane window to the big dipper!!! find a way to stay here in leeds Headingley or Hyde Park Liv–I will always remember when we met on Amy’s back porch and you told us all about the novel you had written standing in line for the observatory back in august hearing about the places where you find inspiration I watched the kids in line squabble, I heard an onslaught of crickets, I saw car headlights turn the wooded hill in front of us silver–and later that night I wrote everything down gr houseshares in the Headingley area before you come back to Leeds the opposite feeling of living at home - like my life isn’t all present at once, sensible from my bed in the morning - it’s all new somehow! in leeds I want to move to the nice apartment in burley someone on tripadvisor told me to “put it in my diary,” so I went to the moors a clean kitchen with space for all my things!! went to LA I just want to dance on promontory point with you. I want to look at the museum of science and industry and listen to the fireworks and go home see you from across the room show up at my first exhibition opening in the bathroom guesthouse near a barn! adorable visit me in the UK for a few weeks to campus alchemical moments that leave us irrevocably changed of course they happen on the shoreline–of course so much happened on that shoreline can’t remember if we were holding hands or not when we left the magic of haze in the air, whether from heat or fog or smog huge facility miles above the city you used an elevator to get to different levels I wound up in a waiting room where people were doing research on the future trips to Paris major city train stations and airports Leeds in the house in leeds I’m very happy in this space/location and I’d prefer to stay here unless we decide moving is for the best it would be convenient to stay in Burley in the neighborhood leeds is treating me well!! the city itself the countryside ilkley & the dales living in a beautiful bright house by a canal? they invited me inside of the house, which had low ceilings but was impossibly beautiful and bright–the colors reminded me of those days/moments where the sky is sunny and foggy at the same time and I feel like I’m on the right path. the back of the house was darker but in a cozy way, and reminded me of what Hannah said about her apartment + of sleeping on the couch at my grandma’s apartment as a kid. The International Seamen’s Club Duckdalben in Hamburg Harbour is visited by hundreds of seafarers every day has anyone else reached out with interest in the room? viewing the installation on Ojibwe land headingley/meanwood? ability to move to Somerset Being a contemporary art curator in a British seaside town!!!!! Headingley I want to walk around Paris/through metro stations on a snowy night and listen to this going on walks through headingley always helps campus home campus start at karaoke club Duckdalben International Seamen’s Club woke up to the full moon in the sky like it was the flash of a camera, felt similarly exposed the block museum in Chicago being in another city staying in the UK return to Paris Leeds Chicago the shoreline the beach how my feet feel in the sand the shore a calm sea the beach runs up and down the shore across the world on the shoreline the car ride home from the dunes, the hike in the mirfield hills that day in york when we talked in the woods at townsend park your visit to Leeds in the same city in the water reach the shoreline the Block Chicago here in Leeds I’m sitting under a tree in beckett park. my back curls against it perfectly, and when I tilt my head back I see the leaves blowing in the branches. this is where I bury my armor. this is where I let the earth take on my burdens this is where I put down sema in thanks both your soul and your whole world might subsist forever in some desert-like state of ontological impoverishment The choppy waters in front of the boat the waters behind the boat are smooth The promise of a harbor lies ahead in Chicago ‘Place can rip something out of you and give it back’.
by assembling it, I was still working in part-objects. so I carried out a reparative act: I printed everything on a single sheet of paper in 4pt font, and cut it up with a hole punch.
in anishinaabe/cherokee tradition, putting down tobacco – sema in anishinaabemowin – is a way to give thanks. when you ask for something – i.e. a prayer or guidance – you offer a tobacco tie.
I combined the cut up pieces, fragments of place, with loose tobacco and took them to a tree in beckett park – a tree I wrote about in the list, where I found guidance in a time of pain.
I offered the tobacco and place fragments with my left hand, the hand closest to my heart, in alignment with protocol.
I gathered up the tobacco, together with place fragments and blades of grass – place fragments in their own right.
I wrapped them up in a tie.
I left the tie in a hollow of the tree where I sat weeks earlier. I said a prayer, something like a whole.
Written and performed for ARTF5052M Adventures in the Archive, University of Leeds, in May 2021