//10 sites of nostalgia and decay//

I've been collecting spaces for years, so some of these photos are somewhat old and some are very new. While they might all look very different, there are common themes binding them together - my interests in science fiction and urban decay, in imaginary futures, in the old and cherished, in the breaking down of things and the potential for making things anew out of wreckage. 

space 1: submarine interior

This is the interior of the USS Blueback, a retired submarine that now lives at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland, OR., which I got to visit last June. Despite having been launched in 1959, this imagery feels futuristic to me, albeit in a nostalgic, retro, original Star Trek way. It comes with connotations of the idealized future Star Trek offers, in which humans and aliens work together in peace and harmony to travel the stars and gather knowledge, in which money no longer exists and everyone has access to what they need to thrive. 

space 2: graffiti at park

This park is a few blocks from my home in San Carlos, CA. If one climbs up into the hills away from the children's play areas and main trails, one can find this undisclosed concrete structure covered in graffiti. I love the mystery of this old concrete place interrupting the nature all around it (and slowly being reclaimed by that nature) - invasive grasses and bay laurel trees and lots of poison oak, and this odd relic, that people have chosen to use as a surface for art.

space 3: old car on remote hillside

            I found this car on a 12 mile hike in Portola Redwoods State Park last summer. It's old and rusty, and it's anyone's guess how long it's been there or how it ended up roughly 4 miles up a steep, narrow trail that definitely could not be driven on. This space would not necessarily be ideal for an art piece, as it's not accessible in the slightest, but as an exploration of aesthetics I love it. This is a further exploration of decay, and what happens after decay.

space 4: doorways within doorways

A still further exploration of decay: an old, dilapidated building at Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline in Richmond, CA. I love everything about this setting - it's right on the water with a view of the mountains; it's another example of people using an old, abandoned structure as an art surface; the chain link fence offers the idea of forbiddenness, which artists have instead taken as an invitation to engage with this particular space.

space 5: stage through chain link

Another chain link fence, this one in Chicago. Apparently I enjoy taking photos through fences - something about it feels like privileged knowledge, being granted access to forbidden spaces. There's no graffiti in this one, but I love the construction site layout, with the hulking piles of cinderblocks and airy, colorful paint pulling attention upward. The boxy, enclosed nature of this space makes it feel like a found stage. Like any site of decay, this is also a site of rebirth, but perhaps more explicitly so than some of the others in this post, as it is literally a site of construction.

space 6: cemetery

In addition to decay, I'm interested in literal, human, embodied death. I spend a fair amount of time at Riverside Cemetery near campus, where I took this picture last term. Using a cemetery as an installation art space might be a little dubious, ethically speaking, but it's an aesthetic I'd love to play with recreating, abstracting, someday. Why do we memorialize our dead like this, and why might challenges to our memorial practices be really productive? 

space 7: resistance to remaking I

This image, taken in the garden at the Filoli Historic House in the Bay Area, shows just a fragment of the area depicted, so imagine a full half circle of cypress trees, with concrete towers every six or so feet, joined along the top by rusting chains and along the bottom by rotting benches. This is a different kind of decay, one that resists being played with and remade... for now. 

space 8: resistance to remaking II

The tunnel behind the College Avenue shops. There used to be graffiti in this tunnel, which has since been painted over. This is another way of interacting with a space, a continued interruption, a thwarting of someone else's vision and work. I'm interested in this resistance to remaking, and I also just like the weird white tetris-y shapes against the gray concrete wall.

space 9: house/home I

I've never lived in a house with a basement before, so it's still strange and wonderful to me that this place exists (Sol House, across the street from Big Exec). In contrast to the previous two spaces, this space is actively and joyfully being remade by the people who live in my house; odds and ends, like the mannequin and wall vinyl, have slowly accumulated, and the pipes criss crossing the ceiling are adorned with string lights. There's something conceptually fascinating to me about basements - something about the secret life of the liminal space above which life happens.

space 10: house/home II

Another basement shot. This is one of the deep recesses of the basement; I'm pretty sure it's not even under the house at this point, but then again, it's weird and liminal, so maybe my sense of space is way off. I love the faded green door, the humming electrical box, all the junk that's been stuck down here over the years. Nostalgia plays heavily into my love for this corner of the basement. I wonder how long this corner has looked roughly like this, and how long it will continue to look roughly like this after I've moved out.