FREE SPACE
Considering public footpaths.
Mulling over their ability to fade and disappear.
Left without human contact for too long.
If, when they become unusable, and no one notices, they let fall away, their status of 'footpath'.
They leave the public with a missing link.
A trip in a trail that would otherwise allow a footfall tour of the country.
It is sometimes noticed that a passive landowner, may, with a small and proud smirk, resist the demand for footpath signs and hope that people will forget.
About the small strip of land, along the side of one field, that is embarrassingly not entirely theirs.
This could be a free space.
This is the kind of space that is just space. Ambiguous.
The space in disuse, that is waiting for a decision.
Tension-filled but wild.
It is a selfish rewilding.
A place where the river stops.
Where the flow slows
pools and stagnates
A damn has been erected.
What is a free space if it is free in pursuit of ownership?
what is a free space if you need to own it in order for it to be free?
Can it be free despite its belonging?
where do I have a space that doesn't demand a specified use?
where do I have a space that I am allowed to be free within?
what do I leave to go wild?
or where do I leave space for space?
This series of photographs are taken of myself in the small space in my bedroom in London that is empty.
Is it free for my body to act without direction?
As it wants?
And so I attempted to explore the ways in which my body could come to know this space. To understand how empty may still be active.
I realized that this space was not so empty. It had two ends, a passageway.
It was punctuated by a door.
This space was for liminality. Freedom in its self, when in the practice of drift.
Not for dwelling
Not for pooling
or Stagnating
For finding or belonging
it is to move as a free transformation
In this way, to stay was enclosure.
An attempt to STAY free was building the damn.
Closing the door. Halting the flow towards potential.
To strive for ownership of freedom, only reinforced my limits.
As a big cat paces and an elephant sways. This is what happens when you restrict space.
