When Memories Aren't Enough

Let me paint you a picture of my trip. Or maybe ten. Or why not just show you my 4,000 + images of every building, fallen leaf, plastic bag, funny statue, perfect sunset, piece of art, and shared laugh I've chosen to "spontaneously" document over the past three months.

As three months of time and stuff have accumulated, I'm having trouble reconciling the virtual space I have gathered during my time in London. How many hard drives can I fill to prove that this experience was meaningful, educational, "architectural," and really, that it was everything I'd hoped for and more!?!

The last time I was abroad, I traveled around Italy for four months with a manual camera, a discman, and a leather-bound notebook. Sometimes, if I was really moved, I would take a photo or two. Other times I would jot down song lyrics or thoughts on the train, listening to one of the few mix CD's given to me by friends to bring with me on my big trip.

Things were simple. Like dreamweavers invoking ghosts' and century's past, each professor weaved a yarn of stories and relationships that brought each building and work of art to life. I was expected to take textual notes. Sometimes I did. Other times I listened. Either way, while the visual dialogue was apparent it was not essential, as words became a means of relating the past to the present.

This time around is not so simple. Rather than weave stories of intricate happenings and histories, I am often left in a place "survivor style."

But instead of carrying a Swiss army knife and a canteen, I am instead armed with a bulging backpack complete with sketchbook, digital camera, notebook(s), computer, external hard drive, mouse, ipod shuffle, ipod shuffle charger, camera charger, and mobile. I am not there to take notes as much as I am there to MAKE notes and pose rhetorical questions. Why is this space important? What is working? What isn't? How does it make me feel? How does it function as part of a whole? Or is it whole in and of itself? What should I sketch? What should I photograph? What happening should I record? What audio would be applicable?

Sometimes I just want to be an observer. An observer in touch with the rhythm rather than the rhetoric. Watch people animate space rather than allow them to become yet another data set.

But other times, in sifting through my digital photos, reconnecting with images of small moments that made me breath a little bit deeper and comprehend the big picture a little bit more, I am appreciative of architecture's definition of "place" as something in-flux, thus requiring constant revisitation. While there is always a first impression, it is the second or third that can often be the most telling.

The trick this semester has been how to capture "place" as quickly as I can by means of visual and graphic analysis. As much as I am meant to observe, (not to mention internalize), I am also meant to do more than remember.









In a quick venture to the Tate Modern two weeks ago, I experienced Doris Salcedo's "Shibboleth" in the Turbine Hall. Spanning the 50m of space, the large, deep, oscillating crevice in the floor became a place for spectacle and phenomenon. Over the course of an hour I watched people dangle their baby's above the crack, watched men and women hold hands to bridge the visual divide between them, and had a friend recount witnessing a man take his blind friend's hand and place it on the floor where the origin of the crack began. Salcedo herself claimed that her work was primarily about the history (or memory, if you will) of racism. I found it to be mostly about phenomenological engagement.

But then again, creating an abstract representation of memories is never an easy task. And as I look through my 4000 + images, 24 blog entries, 15 videos, and 40 sketches, I am left to wonder how I should filter, experiment, and produce encapsulated memories over the several weeks I have left in London. While it may sound like a horrible, analytical process, I would argue that the visual representation of travel has become something beautiful and fulfilling to me. And whether the culmination of my trip ends by drilling a large crevice in the warehouse floor of the Syracuse Architecture studio, interpretive dance in a public square, the posting of fliers searching or my lost wanderlust, or the launch of a short video I have been somewhat sporadically working on, only time will tell...