A few minutes north of Oberlin, in the middle of a field and at the end of a long-ignored driveway sits a small farmhouse. Back in the day, when they were Oberlin students, my friend's parents lived there. I've heard many stories from their time at Oberlin, and having the context of their youthful, carefree years spent in the house made the desolation in which it now sits even more accentuated. Clearly they were not the most recent residents, as the house is now littered with children's toys and clothing. Ashtrays and broken glass suggest that the house also serves the occasional squatter or curious college student. Considering a space by focusing not on any of the properties it possesses, but on the various people that have occupied it lends a very different perspective to the way we interact with our surroundings. In this piece I tried to capture the feeling of absence that hung so heavily in the house. The images have a strange and eerie quality when taken out of the context of a bustling family life, and carry a nearly tangible feeling of memory. Although this mapping task could be taken very literally, I chose to view my personal project as a more figurative mapping of the house's previous occupants, as represented by the traces they have left.
No comments:
Post a Comment