messy retrospectacles

Walking through urban space is such a dreamy, surreal experience. Nothing is tangible like fields are, or forests and rivers, as in the countryside or in the wilderness. In the city, there is nothing like the path you find yourself through the unbuilt space of nature, may it be cultivated, untouched, impenetrable. In urban surroundings there is nothing like the crystal reality of outside space which is a void and which you cannot enliven. Nobody can, that is  certain. Whatever image you throw against the creations of nature, it will fall back on you. The world will stay voiceless and  real.

Whereas in a city, you walk straight into a seemingly flat world of never-ending sensations. Nothing is real, dadi da – dada dada da. Here, in the sphere of human habitations, apart from nature, people are continually creating their own space. They do so by communicating with the urban objects around them, even though these are firm, usually immovable, and mostly from wood, stone, steel or any other kind of hardened material. Walking through a city, you can throw out your thoughts like a net into the urban landscape – casting your spell even on a heaven-assailing highrise –  and you will always haul in a miraculous catch of corporal, emotive space, just for yourself to breathe in. It appears to come from the objects which people co-habitate together with you and where they create their urban livin’ rooms in an otherwise empty nature. And even if you happen to get back freezing loneliness, it’s human and it has a voice.

City Voices I