Nothing seemed more real than when concrete dug into my palms as I fell
silver-gelatin processes, salt print, procedurally generated sound composition, found materials
4th year bachelor’s student
Erasmus+ student
University of Ljubljana
Each advancement is a step in untethering ourselves from the real world it seems. In our quest for expediting tasks with which we wish not to spend time with, we created these “transport modules” (be it elevators, public transport, personal automobiles …). Instead of remembering how the road felt on my feet, how the air smelled, what sounds the passerby’s made, I remember the texture of the trolley bus seat and how it differs from the older model, what sounds the tram makes when it momentarily disconnects from the powerline, and the pungent smell of the exhaust on an old Škoda bus.
My experience is being untethered from my surroundings. The space I am in serves no other express purpose than to get out of it as soon as possible, just to save time. Time seems to stop, and we mostly do not perceive these spaces even as spaces, even though most people enter them daily. With them we save time and energy but lose our spatial awareness of the general surroundings. The “transport modules” carry the spatial linearity which was once held by “desire lines”.
The title phrase is my personal axiom regarding my experience in space, not just material, but immaterial hyperspace. The exhibited material is a subjective impression of my memory formation. A map of intersections created by desire lines, where the subjective material is juxtaposed with the attempted objective contextualization. The created points serve as anchors, tying down experiences in a certain space-time range.
The guiding principle of this exploration and accompanying research is to delve into my own subconscious process of creation of implicit memory (one of the two forms of long-term human memory, which is acquired subconsciously and effects thoughts and behaviors). I strive to achieve that through inspecting my own form of automatic “drawing”, or more correctly “archiving”.
